Lévi Belfield was born on 17 May 1968 at West Middlesex Hospital in London to decent Roma Jean and Joseph Belfield. He had two siblings and grew up on a council estate in southwest London. His father died of leukemia when he was 10 years old, so his mother raised him with his siblings as a single parent.
In '81, when Levi Bellfield was first convicted of burglary, trouble began to rise. He was later convicted in 1990 for assaulting a police officer. He filled his criminal record with numerous convictions for theft and driving offenses.
Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler, a 13-year-old schoolgirl, reportedly disappeared on June 23, 2001, as she had not been seen since she had been seen since she was walking along Station Avenue on her way home from school in Walton-upon-Thames, Surrey. After an intense and thorough search, her remains were found in the Atlantis Forest in Hampshire on 18 September. Due to the state of decay, the cause of death could not be determined, and the case of missing persons was officially transferred to a murder investigation.
Millie Dowler, 13 years old
In October 2001, Anna-Maria Rennie, a student aged 17 at the time, sat alone at a bus stop as she was sorting out her thoughts after a late-night argument with her boyfriend. After sitting for about 5 minutes, she began to walk along the hospital bridge road and then turned back to herself. She spotted a man coming towards her and upset about him, so she crossed the street. Anna's attention was then drawn to the driver of a passing car, who had a conversation for about 10 minutes. He gave her a ride home, which she refused, but still walked to the car. The man who had followed her before put his arm around her, and she screamed and fell to the ground, trying to make things difficult. He covered her mouth with his hands and picked her up from the floor. He led her to the car parked on the side of the road, and the rear passenger door opened. She kicked with all her might, punched and kicked, screamed, and the man let her go before getting into the car. She ran as fast as she could through a nearby park.
Anna Maria Rainey, 17 years old
In February 2003, 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell was found bleeding to death from a serious head injury just yards from her home in Hampton, south-west London. She and her friend were severely beaten when they came out of their home. She died in hospital two days later, and an autopsy found she had suffered multiple skull fractures and a brain hemorrhage.
Martha MacDonald, 19 years old
Irma Dragoshi was waiting at a bus stop to call her husband when she was attacked from behind. Her husband described hearing his wife scream and then the phone ran out. She told police a man approached her from behind, tried to snatch her cell phone and then hit her on the head. She suffers from nausea and amnesia. She was left with only two dark eyes and a terrible lump on the back of her head.
On May 28, 2004, 18-year-old Kate Sheedy celebrated the end of her exam with friends at a karaoke bar and was on her way home after taking the H22 bus back to Airworth. After spotting a white transporter parked on the road and turning on the engine, she crossed the road to avoid it because she had a bad feeling about it. As soon as she stepped onto the road, the van sped towards her and hit her in the face. After the initial impact, the wheels went over her body and the driver reversed on top of her before accelerating away, leaving her dead on the street. After trying to get up, she stumbled back to the ground, unsure of the serious injuries she had just suffered. Luckily, she managed to call her mother and tell her she was dying. Her parents left the house, again just a few yards away, and found her lying on the street, her belongings scattered across the road. They called an ambulance, and the true extent of her injuries was revealed at the hospital. Her lower back was torn, her liver was split in two, multiple ribs were broken, her collarbone was fractured. Miraculously, she managed to keep breathing and survived, even though one of her lungs collapsed and the other was pierced. She stayed in hospital for a month before being discharged and allowed to continue treatment at home.
Kate Siddy, 18 years old
On August 19, 2004, Amelie Delagrange, a 22-year-old French student visiting the UK, was found with serious head injuries in Twickenham Green, London, and died in hospital that night. Within 24 hours, police linked her murder to 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell, who had died of similar injuries the year before.
Emily Delagrange, 22
After linking the murders, police appealed for information about a white van that circled the area on CCTV before Amelie's body was found. There are more than 26,000 white Ford couriers to be eliminated. So they cross-referenced a list of van owners with a list of 129 women who thought their ex-partner might be involved. They met Jo Colling, who reported that Levi Bellfield came to Emily in a state of trembling and fear the night he killed her, claiming to have done something unforgivable. Levy is a well-known hater of blonde women, fitting the image of the police.
They linked Levi Bellfield to Marsha McDonnell's murder as CCTV footage showed her getting out of the car before being attacked and there was a Vauxhall Corsa nearby. It was discovered that Levi had bought and registered the car for £6,000 only a few months before she died. In the days following her murder, he sold it for £1500 in an attempt to get rid of any evidence that might be linked to him. They managed to match his old car with the description of the vehicle involved in the attempted murder of Katie Siddy.
They placed Levi Belfield under police surveillance and found him patrolling the bus stop and talking to a young woman who was alone. Three months after Emily's murder, he was arrested not only for the murder of Amelie Delagrange, but also for the murder of Marsha McDonnell. However, it wasn't until two years later, in 2006, that he was charged.
The trial of Lévi Belfield began on Friday, 12 October 2007. His charges include the murders of Marsh McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange. Attempted murder of Irma Dragoshi and Kate Hildi, attempted kidnapping of Anna-Marie Rainey. He denied all the allegations.
During the trial, Levi Bellfield's apparent accomplice, Sunil Gharu, was questioned as a witness. He said he was in the car with Levi when he stopped, shouting "look at this" before getting out of the car and attacking Irma Dragosi at the bus stop. Levi tried to put the blame on the attack and pointed the finger at Sunil Garou.
It was revealed in his trial that just six days after the murder, if Emily Delagrange, Lévi Belfield had collapsed in his bedroom and had overdosed on antidepressants at the time of the suicide attempt. He was spotted by a friend who said Levi was upset and claimed he said "you don't know what I did". Levi was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he told staff he felt depressed and suicidal. He was then discharged the next day.
Throughout the trial, he denied being present at any of the attacks and claimed his work as a wheeled camper gave him access to a variety of cars, as well as others in his team, so it was just a coincidence that his vehicle was found near the scene. Levi Bellfield appealed to the jury and claimed to be the victim of a mistaken identity.
Despite his efforts to misrepresent what actually happened during the trial, the jury found him guilty on February 25, 2008, of the murder of Emily Delagrange and Martha MacDonald and the attempted murder of Kate Siddy. The jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges of attempted kidnapping of Anna-Maria Rainey and attempted murder of Irma Dragohi. Lévi Belfield did not appear in his sentence, but was sentenced to life in prison.
On May 10, 2011, Levi Belfield was tried again for the murder of Millie Dowler and attempted kidnapping of Rachel Cowles. The day before Millie Dowler disappeared, 11-year-old Rachel Cowles was walking home from school alone when Levi Bellfield approached her in a red car, claiming to be her new neighbor, and drove her home. When she refused him, he drove away and a police car drove by. It was only three miles away from where Millie Dowler disappeared the next day. When Rachel told her what had happened when her mother came home, she called the police, but Rachel was too shocked to describe the man who tried to get her into the car. It wasn't until three years later that police began linking Levi Bellfield to Millie Dowler's disappearance.
Rachel Cowles, 11 years old
During the trial, it was unusual for Levi Belfield's family to be away from home on the day Millie Dowler disappeared, and his ex-partner, Emma Mills, remembered not being able to catch him that day. Standing at the trial as a witness, she recalled that he was wearing different clothes than when she left in the morning, telling her that he had spent the night at a different address where the couple lived, and that when Emma arrived there was no sheets, duvet or pillowcase on the bed. It is clear that no one sleeps in bed. The day after Millie Dowler disappeared, Levi Belfield moved his family from the Collingwood address where he was supposed to live and hastily moved them to West Drayton.
The red Daewoo Nexia, which Levi was driving at the time, was believed to be part of the attempted kidnapping of Rachel Cowles, who was seen leaving the area Milly Dowler was last seen just 22 minutes after her disappearance.
Timeline of Millie Dowler's disappearance
In some sort of power transfer by Levi Bellfield, he told the judge he would not give evidence for his defense. Instead, his defense team took the opportunity to put Millie Dowler's parents, Bob and Sally Dowler, on trial. They mentioned Bob Dowler as a suspect in her murder at the time of the police investigation and even revealed a note written while Millie was alive to prove that she was an unfortunate teenager who wanted to flee her family. Levi Belfield was convicted of murder on June 23, 2011, and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2016, Levi Bellfield made a full confession to the murders he committed. He concluded by detailing what happened to Milly Dowler. He explained that he kidnapped her in the car and took her to an apartment near the Walton train station, where he attacked her. He then drove her to the driveway of his own mother's house and raped her in broad daylight in the trunk of his car. He continued the cycle of attacking her until the next day he strangled her and threw her body in the woods.
Since Levi Bellfield was in prison, police have reviewed old cases and believe he may have been involved in some of their unsolved murders and assaults. A senior social worker released a report saying Levy had links to six other men accused of pedophilia, grooming and murder. Some of them were named Victor Kelly, a man convicted of child sex offences and found offering drugs to girls under the age of 14 in an attempt to manipulate them. Suraj Gharu, a 25-year-old man, was convicted of seducing a 14-year-old girl from a children's home and seducing her to have sex with him. Suraj's brother, Sunil Gharu, actually served as a witness in Levi Bellfield's original murder trial and was jailed after making false statements to police in an attempt to cover up his brother. He was sentenced to nine months in prison for misrepresenting the judicial process.
After Levi Bellfield was convicted in 2008, police revealed they were reviewing the murder of 51-year-old Judith Gold in Hampstead in October 19909. She died a few yards from her home, was attacked, and was struck several times by an unidentified object, a striking resemblance to the case Bellfield is known to be responsible for. Police believe he is responsible for another 20 unsolved assaults on women in London between 1990 and 2004. They are all linked to Levi Belfield, as police looked at the frequency of blunt traumatic attacks on women and children using objects such as hammers and found them so rare that only one unsolved attack in Greater London during this period could realistically rule out being the work of Belfield.
Police were told in early 2015 that Levi Bellfield had confessed to several unsolved rapes and murders. The Metropolitan Police coordinated several investigations with 10 separate teams. On November 9, 2016, a statement said: "All lines of inquiry have been exhausted and it has been decided to close the investigation as there is no evidence that the individual is linked to any case for which he has not yet been convicted." Police believe he was only there to cause suffering to the victim's family.
In prison, Lévi Belfield confessed in a letter to the murder of a mother and her child in July 1996, details known only to the killer, according to another prisoner, Michael Stone's lawyer. Dr Lin Russell, 45, and her two daughters, Josie, 9, and Megan, 6, and their family swam home along the country lane around 4:20pm. A car passed by them, and Josie waved to the driver in the car. As they walked further down the road, the car stopped opposite them. The man got out of the car with a hammer and asked them for money. Mother Lin left the money and wallet at home, so offered to take him back to their house, where she would give him money, but he refused. Then she told Josie to run to the nearest house to ask for help. The man grabbed 9-year-old Josie and hit her on the head with a hammer. He then led the three of them and the dog into a small group of trees, where he tied them up with Josie's blue swimming towel, a pair of boots, and a pair of strips torn off by a pair of tights. After killing the family dog, Lin was shot in the head at least 15 times, causing severe head trauma and killing her. Josie's skull was smashed, her brain tissue was exposed, and there were several wounds on her skull. Meghan, 6, was hit at least 7 times and suffered a severe skull fracture. The attacker then got back into his car and drove back along the road he had come. Half an hour later, a man was found a mile from the murder scene, acting agitated. He dropped a rope bag full of towel strips, stained with blood. Josie survived the attack, but her mother and sister Meghan unfortunately died before helping get there.
(left) Megan Russell, 6, (center) Lin Russell, 45, (right) Josie Russell, 9
In July 1997, 37-year-old Michael Stone was arrested for murder because of the airing of the television show "Crimewatch." A psychiatrist called to report his suspicions about the stone, as well as two paramedics who also thought Michael Stone was a possible person. Medics called to report that they had only worked with him days before the attack. They described him as aggressive and threatening to kill people and their families. He also threatened his probation officer with a hammer. He was found without an alibi on the day of the murder because he had taken too many drugs and it had been a year since he could remember. During the trial, he insisted he was innocent and said he could not remember where he was. Receipts shown at the trial show that he must have been at a cash exchange shop in Chatham at 12.21pm that day, 40 miles from the murder scene.
Michael Stone, 37
Michael Stone told police he had never heard of the area where the murder took place, but many friends testified that he knew the area inside out. It was revealed that he spent time as a child at Istri Children's Home, just 2 miles from the murder scene. Prosecutions could not determine any justification for Stone in the area because he lived more than 40 miles away, but argued he was responsible for the Russell's theft because he funded his drug habits by robbing his house. Police discovered that a lawn mower had been stolen from a cabin just a few hundred yards from the murder, and Michael Stone tried to sell the mower in the days following the murder. His friend testified that he knew to carry a hammer in the car because of his heroin addiction.
The key witness in Russell's murder was a woman who was driving on an adjacent road when the killing. She said she saw a man quickly emerging from the intersection at the murder scene in a beige car. She could tell he was angry, and he kept looking back at her through the goggles. This is the same woman who helped police sketch the suspect during the investigation. Another witness recalled that he drove past a man and behaved strangely. He wasn't in the car, but he walked back and forth in frustration with a claw hammer in his hand. A third witness said he saw a beige Ford escort parked next to some bushes nearby, and half an hour later, while walking his dog in the same area, he found a rope bag filled with blood-stained towel strips. Michael Stone was never registered to drive a beige Ford escort and was registered to own a white Toyota Tercel at the time of the crime. However, Michael Stone's friend testified during the trial that he did ever drive a beige car that matched the scene. Curiously, the only known witness, Jodie Russell, who explicitly saw the attacker, insisted he was driving a red car, and Stone admitted to owning one.
At the scene, a bloody fingerprint was found on the lid of Josie's lunch box and hair that did not belong to any of the victims was found. A black boot, stained with blood, had been used in the attack. Michael Stone is known to use boots as a tourniquet to elevate veins in his arms while injecting drugs. The items found at the site were tested and returned with no contact with Stone. A hammer was found near the scene of the attack, but it was not possible to identify it as the murder weapon. The day after the attack, Michael Stone's friends remembered that his clothes were stained with blood and he refused to enter their home as usual. They also saw blood-stained toolboxes in his car and on a blue sweatshirt, though there were no traces on Stone himself. Shortly thereafter, accomplices claimed he removed all bloodstained items and clothes from the car and burned them all.
He pleaded not guilty at the first trial in 1998, but he was found guilty, with testimony from a witness named Damian Daly claiming that Michael Stone confessed to him while talking through a heating tube in the back of his cell in prison. It is known that he attempted suicide at least twice in prison during the alleged confession. Two other inmates also testified during the trial that Michael hinted he was involved. As there was no physical evidence that Michael Stone was at the crime scene, he was convicted solely on the basis of testimony from other prison inmates. The jury spent nearly 15 hours over two days and found him guilty by a 10-2 majority.
Damian Daly
The Court of Appeal ordered a retrial in February 2001 because the evidence of two of the three prisoners who testified had been discredited. Within 24 hours of Michael Stone's first trial, a prisoner who presented key evidence admitted that he had lied to Stone and retracted his evidence. It was also found that one of the other prisoners who gave evidence was paid £5,000 by the Sun and promised to pay another £10,000 before he gave evidence, arguing that his statement was unreliable.
Still, Michael Stone was convicted for the second time in 2001, and the jury had less time to find him guilty than it did for the first time. As part of the trial, the jury visited the cell where Michael Stone allegedly confessed to Damian Daly and listened to a book read through the pipes connecting the two cells to judge whether the confession was reasonable. Michael Stone's attorney objected and said it was unfair.
He was again granted leave to appeal in 2004 when his lawyers claimed that Damian Daly's testimony was unreliable, but it was dismissed in 2005, when the judge still did not believe the evidence that his lawyers believed undermined Damian Daley's statement. In December 2006, a High Court judge ruled that Michael Stone should spend at least 25 years in prison before being considered for parole.
In February 2022, Michael Stone's attorney claimed to have received a 4-page letter from Levi Belfield confessing to Russell's murder with details. However, Levi Belfield flatly denied this, and his ex-girlfriend insisted that Levi had spent the day with her when the murder happened. After investigating the possibility that it could be Levi Belfield, they determined that the confession he provided was false, that the details did not include anything that had not yet entered the public domain, and that he most likely fabricated a story based on known evidence. The detective investigating Belfield's known crimes said: "Knowing Bellfield as well as I do, it could be that he was playing a mental game.
I think it's safe to say that Lévi Belfield is rightfully behind bars and should stay there. He most likely attacked and killed others who would never be revealed because he liked to hold on to power and play with people's emotions. I don't think he was involved in the murders of Lin and Meghan Russell, but I do think that specific cases should be investigated further because the evidence for Michael Stone's conviction is circumstantial at best.
Levi Bellfield was confirmed to have converted to Islam in prison and asked to be known as Yusuf Rahim since he found his religion in 2016. He is currently serving his sentence at HMP Frankland and he has proposed to his girlfriend, whom he met in prison in May 2022. Dominic Raab, however, said it was unthinkable to approve his marriage request because his partner had great security concerns. Prison Director Victoria Atkins said: "I just want to reassure people that I know that an application has been made that is pending and that he is certainly not married, but, if he can, he currently has the right to marry under section 12 of the Human Rights Act or they have the right to have the application considered by the prison director." This is absolutely appalling. I have ordered an immediate review of this. I very much welcome our upcoming debate on the Bill of Rights and human rights in the UK in the 21st century.