One of the people called to give evidence at the inquest was Barbara Stone, sister of killer Michael Stone. Gavin Engelbrecht looks at the role the murderer played in Paul Day's life.

THE sister of notorious killer Michael Stone told the inquest she had persuaded inmate Paul Day to go on a dirty protest.

Barbara Stone, who is leading a campaign to clear the name of her brother - convicted of the murder of Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter Megan - said she had gone to see Day at the request of her brother, who had met him in another prison.

Ms Stone said Day had contacted members of her brother's legal defence team, but had kept moving prisons before they could get back to him.

In evidence, she said: "He actually wrote to my brother who rang me up and asked me if I'd go and see him."

Ms Stone added: "He told me he wasn't a police informer any more. That was the point of my visit really.

"He didn't want to be a police informant any more. And he had made that clear to the police officers.

"They, in turn, had placed Paul in more vulnerable positions with the people that he'd grassed up, so to speak, and the same at Frankland.

"There were two people who he stitched up quite badly on the locations where the prison officers were wanting to move him."

Ms Stone said Day had wanted her to help expose his plight and she suggested he join the dirty protest.

She added: "I really felt for him, and I thought he was in a lot of danger.

"And once he'd spoken to me and said what he wanted to say, once I'd gone to the Press with it, once I left the prison, then I thought he'd be in more danger."

Ms Stone said she thought a dirty protest was a "bright idea" because it would help Day to be moved from Frankland, where he feared people more than elsewhere.

She said Day had also complained of treatment meted out to him by prison officers.