Stone fails in bid to blame Bellfield for double killing

Stone, 59, was jailed for life in a 2001 retrial for the brutal hammer attack on Lin and her six-year-old child.

He has always protested his innocence and in 2017 his legal team launched an appeal with evidence of a “full confession” by Bellfield, the killer of schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

But this week the application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission was denied an Appeal Court hearing, subject to a final ruling on December 2.

The CCRC said last night: “We are effectively inviting applicants to make arguments to try to persuade us that our decision not to refer the case for appeal is wrong and should be changed.”

Lawyers are understood to be meeting with Stone this week before they react to the CCRC response.

‘FULL CONFESSION’

The 1996 murder of Lin and Megan shocked Britain.

The attack left Lin’s other daughter, Josie, then nine, with severe head injuries. Family dog Lucy was also killed.

Stone’s legal team claimed they had evidence of a “full confession” by Bellfield, in which he described to a fellow prisoner how he came across Lin and her children in Chillenden, Kent, and attacked them with a hammer.

Stone’s lawyer Paul Bacon said in 2017: “We have identified forensic material from the scene of the murders which corroborates the confession.”

Serial killer Bellfield, 51, is serving a whole-life tariff for abducting and killing Milly, 13, near her school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in 2002.

He was convicted of Milly’s murder while already jailed for the murders of Amelie Delagrange, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19, and attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, then 18.

Stone failed in a previous application to the CCRC in 2010.