It feels right here... Josie Russell buys childhood home

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12 April 2012

A girl who was left for dead 14 years ago in a hammer attack that killed her mother and sister told how she has found peace and has bought her childhood home.

Josie Russell was nine when deranged killer Michael Stone attacked her and her mother Lin and six-year-old sister Megan as they walked home from school near Chillenden in Kent on 9 July 1996.

Josie was the only survivor of the horrific assault with a claw hammer. Her head wounds were so severe that a nine-square-inch area of her skull had to be replaced with a titanium plate.

But with the devotion of her father, Shaun, an environmental scientist, she went on to rebuild her life, graduating in design and textiles at Bangor University last year and becoming an artist.

Now aged 23, Josie has used her trust fund — boosted by compensation from the Criminal Injuries Board — to buy the family's former home in Snowdonia, Wales, where she has many happy memories of her mother and sister.

She said: "It just feels right here. I'm going home and I'll never leave."

The £380,000 home is where the family lived before moving to Kent. Josie is planning to move in with her boyfriend Iwan Griffith, 24, a sound engineering graduate she has been with for five years.

She said: "I know that Michael Stone has been refused another appeal and I'm happy about that. I just want to close him off in a chapter of my life that's over. I did go over to Megan's grave on what would have been her birthday this year — 15 August. I sometimes feel shocked that I am the one that lived and, of course, sad but also very lucky to be alive and to have Shaun as my dad.

"Now I understand how much he had to deal with, losing his daughter and his wife but also caring for me. He is the best dad in the world and I am so proud of him."

Speaking about her relationship with her boyfriend, the budding artist said she hoped they would one day raise children in the house she remembers playing in with her sister.

She added: "We get on so well. I love the fact that he didn't know anything about my past when we first met and has always accepted me for what rather than who I am. We aren't in a hurry to get married or have children yet, but one day it will be an amazing feeling to bring them up in this house in the same way that Lin and Shaun brought me and Megan up."

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