North & South - Lundy's Last Change

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North & South - Lundy's Last Change

Lundy Truth
Published by North & South in Press Release · 27 December 2012
Tags: Nort&South





“North & South Magazine, released Jan 12 th 2009, has a far-reaching article on this case conducted by their senior investigative reporter , Mike White. The Magazine has gone to enormous effort to thoroughly investigate this tragedy and have released an in-depth investigative report. We encourage you to purchase a copy of this edition and read the truth about the Lundy Murders“.



The FACTUAL Team have prepared the following statement in support of this report.

A copy of the North & South article has been made available for PDF download by clicking here, Letters to the editor published

February 2009 & March 2009 are also downloadable.

The FACTUAL Team would like to thank North & South for their permission to provide this article, FACTUAL

also acknowledge that North and South are not sponsors or supporters of this website they have simply allowed

THE FACTUAL TEAM to reproduce an article written by Mike White.



he “FACTUAL” Committee firstly would like to thank the Editor and Management of North & Southmagazine for giving Mike White the time and funds to investigate the Lundy case. It has been a story, a big and controversial story, for a number of years, but not one of the major media has shown any interest to investigate, until now. Mike White has put in the time and the energy and the commitment and the determination to write what he has. He is a professional, and we personally thank him for that. We can assure readers of North & South that we have had a severe grilling at the hands of Mike White. Nothing un-asked. Nothing un-investigated. Nothing taken for granted. We have been put through the hoops.


TIME OF DEATH


We have long known that the determination of a 7pm time of death by the pathologist, James Pang, had nothing in the way of scientific validity. Paper after paper published on the estimation of time of death puts stomach contents as the most unreliable method. Pang’s claim that “absence of gastric smell” is a valid determinant is utterly without support. Professor Bernard Knight, CBE is quoted by North & South. An additional quote from his book referred to is telling – “As proof in a criminal case must be ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, this leaves little scope for firm testimony based on such shifting sands as gastric physiology”.


In addition to those quotes referred to in North & South we could add many more, however these can all be accessed on the internet and we invite you all to look. We will quote just one, from F.A. Jaffe of the Forensic Pathology Branch, Department of the Solicitor General, Province of Ontario, Toronto, Canada as published in the American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology 1989 Mar;10(1):37-41


“The inspection of the contents of the stomach must be part of every postmortem examination because it may provide qualitative information of the nature of the last meal and the presence of abnormal constituents. Using it as a guide to time of death, however, is theoretically unsound and presents many practical difficulties, although it may have limited applicability in some exceptional instances. Generally, using stomach contents as a guide to time of death involves an unacceptable degree of imprecision and is thus liable to mislead the investigator and the court”.


In the Lundy case, we believe that the court, and jury, were indeed misled.

In the Truscott case referred to, the Court of Appeal for Ontario found the evidence of time of death based on stomach contents to be “scientifically unsupportable” and “scientifically untenable”. Truscott has been pardoned. The full judgment of the Court can be found at


Witnesses were clear and unequivocal that lights were on in the Lundy home at 11pm that night, whereas no lights were on in the morning. The lights were turned off by Christine Lundy or by the murderer. Either way, Mark Lundy is innocent.


As noted by North & South the Lundy trial judge said to the jury that if they were left in reasonable doubt about a 7pm time of death “then it is fatal to the Crown case”. If there are enormous doubts over Pang’s findings, as there are, then the judge’s direction should be heeded. The Crown case fails.


THE COMPUTER SHUTDOWN


The exact sequence of the shut down of the personal computer is firstly the accounting program used for the Lundy’s company was closed off at 22:51:42, then the computer itself was shut down and the shut down process lasted from 22:51:54 until 22:52:02. If, as was alleged in court, the shut down time had been “manipulated” by Lundy, then it is clear that the “manipulation” must have occurred also before the accounting program was closed off. If Lundy had performed the process described by North & South while the accounting program was running, the program would show signs of having been interrupted. Our computer forensic examiners have been unable to find any such signs. The alternative is that the accounting program was started up after 7pm and that it was started up by Christine. Mark Lundy is innocent.


The accounting program shows that Christine had prepared a total of 19 invoices on August 29 th and it was her normal practice to do such work in the evening, particularly if Mark was away. It was also Christine’s normal practice to play “Solitaire” on her computer at night. The game was indeed accessed on August 29 th 2000 but unfortunately it does not leave a time stamp for opening or closing.


As noted by North & South the police expert Kleintjes denied he had ever heard of the KAK virus. This is, to say the least, very surprising as the virus had been widely publicised and warned about in early 2000 by computer giants such as Microsoft and Symantec, suppliers of ‘Norton’ anti-viral software.


Mark Lundy had no specialist computer skills, just an average bloke who could do most of the simple jobs we use computers for. The method outlined by Kleintjes for the so-called clock manipulation has been described by two computer forensics experts as “This technique for adjusting the clock that may leave no forensic evidence is an advanced topic that would not normally be understood”, and “It is quite highly expert knowledge, similar to the level of a specialist computer forensic examiner or even greater. Testing some other very experienced computer forensic examiners in New Zealand about this issue, none knew that this was even possible”.


So how was Mark Lundy supposed to have done this?


He didn’t. The computer was shut down by Christine Lundy, still alive at 11pm.


Lundy is innocent.


THE LAPTOP


The police would have us believe that there are two computers sitting in the same small office and they clone one (the pc) and not the other (the laptop). They had been told both by Mark Lundy and Glenn Weggery that Christine was expected to have worked on the laptop on the evening of August 29 th. Police procedures are that ALL computers at a serious crime scene MUST be cloned. Further, Kleintjes’ theory about the clock manipulation required a floppy to be made on another computer. Isn’t this all the more reason why the laptop should have been cloned and examined?


As noted by North & South, if a police officer is waiting, on October 4 th, for Kleintjes to release the laptop information when Lundy had uplifted the physical laptop on September 15 th, it begs the question of what information is Kleintjes going to release if he doesn’t have a clone?


The computer forensics expert, Allan Watt, who has given evidence in many criminal trials, was advised of the police claim that the laptop was not cloned and he writes in his report “The fact that this has not been disclosed from a technical perspective and an evidential perspective is considered a very important issue and the fact that it has not been disclosed and made available to the Defense should be considered a gross miscarriage of justice”.


MARGARET DANCE’S EVIDENCE


Dance’s visitors are the key here. They had been to a shop which shut at 6pm. The stated that they arrived at Dance’s home when it “had just become dark”. The Met. Office report for that night gives 6:21pm as the end of civil twilight, the definition of “dark”. Dance’s choir practice was due to start at 7pm. We have no doubt whatsoever that the visitors arrived at about 6:30pm and that Dance was in her car and away to choir practice well before 7pm. Indeed, at Depositions, Dance evidenced that her visitors arrived before 7pm.


Dance’s evidence could have been validated or, more importantly from our point of view, invalidated by the police but they did not do the necessary work. At the time Dance surfaced, the police had no evidence, none, against Mark Lundy. We believe that they got this “evidence” against Lundy and did nothing to validate it in case it was destroyed. What should have been done, in a normal well-run enquiry, was to interview the shop owner to ask what time he closed his shop, and perhaps whether he could remember the Chinese couple and what time they had left. Secondly, the choir mistress should have been interviewed to ask if Dance had arrived at choir practice half an hour late. Neither was done. Very sloppy police work, in our view.


According to the Crown case, the murderer had to carry away a jemmy bar, a tomahawk, bloodstained head-to-toe overalls and a large (350x180x350mm) wooden, quite heavy, jewellery box. Dance’s runner wasn’t carrying anything. If there was a runner at 7:15pm on August 29 th, and we doubt it very, very much, he or she cannot have been the killer.


The issue of the memory recall of eyewitnesses is very interesting. Two of the people who have researched this matter in depth are Maryanne Garry and Lauren French of Victoria University’s psychology department. French states that memories are corrupted by new information or talking to others. Garry advises that with particularly significant events, “often what we do is start talking to other people about it, we give statements, we read press accounts, we watch it on television…..Once you start introducing imagination into the picture you start corrupting your memories dramatically”. “It’s like putting it into a blender, a blend of reality and inference, and it just gets worse as time goes by”. Dance, we believe, may have seen a runner at some time on some day but was also exposed to all the news about the Lundy murders through reports and pictures in every branch of the media over several days.


We note that Det. Insp. Grantham thought that Margaret Dance gave “good evidence” as a supposed eyewitness. We also note that when asked for comment for the book “Convicted” (by Michael Guerin) Grantham was more than happy to mention two supposed eyewitnesses as having come forward after the Lundy trial (18 months after the event) to say they had seen Lundy’s speeding car. In fact they said no such thing. One saw a “Holden Falcon” at a time which did not tie in with Lundy’s alleged journeys, and the other saw a “new” car with X in the number plate. Every car registered in 1998 and 1999 had an X in the number plate! The XA through to XZ series ran through that time, around a quarter of a million cars.


It is worth noting that the U.S.-based “Innocence Project” has found that in cases of wrongful conviction,71% involve mistaken eyewitnesses.


THE CAR TRIP TIME


North & South
make all of the main points well in the limited word numbers they have to play with. We would only add that there was another incoming phone call to Lundy’s cellphone which was timed at 8:13pm. Lundy evidenced in court that he was in his motel sitting on the toilet when the call came in. This evidence was uncontested which, we are told, means it has been accepted as fact by the Crown. We believe that it was not contested because the police had been told by Telecom that the incoming call connected through a Petone cellsite. It may not appear on their billing records (as an unanswered call) but we are sure that the connection is recorded. If the recipient’s phone rings, a connection has to have been made via a cellsite, and Telecom’s system is ready and waiting to start timing as soon as the call is answered. There will be a record.


If Lundy was supposed to have left Palmerston North (according to Dance) at around 7:20pm and then be in Petone at 8:13pm he had only 53 minutes to drive the 150km. This would be faster than the race record for V8 Supercars at Pukekohe over the same distance in the early 2000’s. These cars are nearly 3 times the horsepower of Lundy’s car, and they hit top speeds of over 280km/hr on every lap. Even a moment’s thought confirms that Lundy could not do that. Lundy is innocent.


MISSING PETROL


North & South
correctly state that Lundy had used about 58 liters since filling up the day before. He was known to have driven approx. 65km in and around the Hutt valley and Wellington city, and then 150km in his very fast drive home on August 30 th, that is 215km in total. This works out to be a fuel consumption of 27 liters per 100km which seems high. However, the police checked with a Ford Technical Service Engineer as early as September 6 th and he is recorded as saying “it would be possible for this type of vehicle to use approx. 58 liters of petrol if the vehicle was to travel between 50 and 100km around town at speeds of up to 50km/hr and then 150-170km at speeds averaging 140km/hr”.


So, there is no “missing petrol” at all. This Ford engineer was not called as a Crown witness, for obvious reasons, and the jury did not get to hear about his opinion.


The police had admitted to using 17.32 liters of petrol per 100km on one of their “reconstructions”, which they deny making. Lundy allegedly drove faster than they did (more fuel) but just taking the police figure, Lundy was short of 30 - 40 liters of petrol if he was to have driven at speed over 300km to commit the murders and return. The jury never got to hear any of this. They only heard about “missing petrol” and a vain attempt to explain it via siphoning. We agree with North & South that it is simply not good enough for the police to say that there is no evidence that Lundy didn’t buy petrol. In fact it is extraordinary. They must produce evidence that he did. That’s how the Justice System has to work.


We believe that the Court of Appeal judges did indeed “speculate to fill in gaps in the prosecution case” which they should not have done. The need to purchase more petrol is not something the jury heard, and it is a matter for a jury to decide, not the Court judges.

Mark Lundy could not have made the alleged drives at the alleged speeds, and he could not have made the alleged drives without buying more petrol. There is no evidence that he did. Lundy is innocent.


CELL PHONE CALLS


Well covered by North & South. The Crown Law Office is the most serious offender here, in our opinion. In their submissions to the Court of Appeal they say repeatedly that only WPET-1 could be accessed from the motel, which is untrue. They even said that the 8:13pm call was made when Lundy was in his car, that he ignored it and retrieved the message when “he thought he was safely in the vicinity of his motel at 8:28 and returned the call to his friend a minute later”. As stated above, we believe that the 8:13pm call was routed through a Petone cellsite which is why the Crown did not contest Lundy’s evidence. If the Crown Law Office’s new theory, not heard by the jury, is to be believed, Lundy would have been nowhere near Petone. At the phenomenal speeds he was allegedly driving, 15 minutes would have had him about 40km away, up near Waikanae.


PAINT FLAKES


It was alleged that the murder weapon was a tomahawk, but several of Pang’s wound descriptions do not match this in our opinion. It is difficult to imagine a flailing 2kg tomahawk could leave cuts, no bruising, cleanly incised edges, and no damage to the underlying bone in a very thin place like the scalp. One of our overseas experts has ventured that a cleaver is a more likely weapon.


Mark Lundy used to be a builder and he marked his carpentry tools so that he could identify them on a building site. Firstly, a tomahawk is not a carpentry tool. Secondly, Lundy’s tomahawk was not marked with light blue and orange paint. Thirdly it did not have any forensic traces of blood. There was no evidence that he had ever owned two tomahawks, nor that he had bought another one.


OIC Grantham believed as late as November 2000 that there had been two people in the murder scene, and also that the scene had been cleaned up. Why?


The trial judge in his summing up was not sure about either the tomahawk or the paint flakes. “It may not of course have been an axe. How the paint got there may remain a mystery”.


The paint fragments found in and around the victim’s bodies were described as chemically identical, exactly matching etc the paint on Lundy’s tools.


The paint fragments were “matched” for colour by eye only. They should have used microspectrophotometry. The manufacturer had approx. 80 variations of what most people would call “light blue”. A number of particles did not even pass the eye test. They didn’t match. Where did they come from? Important question left unanswered. Further, the ESR described the paint on the tools and the remaining paint in the tin as matching in colour. The paint had been on Lundy’s tools for 16 years, and we all know how paint fades, particularly the alkyd paint used. How could the paint in the tin be the same colour? That is why colour matching by eye is not recommended.


The ESR also used the word “inconclusive” which was described in court as “These differences could be because of some form of contamination such as dirt which makes the fragments different to the controls, or they could be different”. Some form of contamination (minor?) first, different second. The written report is not the same – “Inconclusive means that there were differences seen between the sample and the control. This could be because the samples are different, or because there is a large amount of contamination present”. Different first, or a large amount of contamination as a second choice.


The ESR used scanning electron microscopy to identify the elemental content of the paint fragments. This picks up elements such as iron, copper, calcium, manganese, silicon etc. Where the silicon, for example, didn’t match, it seems that the ESR put that down to “silicates” such as may be present in dirt. There is another explanation. Elemental silicon is probably the most widely differing element in paint formulations. The most common added ingredient is titanium dioxide and every tiny particle is silicon coated. Silica clays are also used, talc commonly used also contains silicates and aluminum silicate is another common ingredient. Widely-used flatting agents are also silicon based. If the elemental Silicon content was different, it seems to us that it is more likely that the formulations were different than a large amount of undescribed “contamination”.


Our look at the paint fragments evidence shows that three dark blue fragments were found, and none matched the controls. Sixteen orange fragments were found and just nine were said to be “indistinguishable” to the controls, but all nine are marked with an asterisk which means they are different or largely “contaminated”. The other seven probably didn’t match in colour.


Twenty eight light blue fragments were found. Thirteen were not tested and thus likely the wrong colour. One was declared as being different. Three were “inconclusive”. Two are described as “probably not paint”. Nine are described as “indistinguishable” to the controls, but seven of these are marked with an asterisk signifying different or having a large amount of “contamination”.


Forty seven paint fragments in all and just two unqualified “matches”, and the detailed analytical data not heard in court.


LUNDY THE LIAR


In addition to those mentioned by North & South we would like to add some more. Lundy said he had been to Lighting Direct with Christine to buy a lampshade on the morning of August 29 th, 2000 before he drove to Wellington. The shop assistant said in evidence that he wasn’t there. She said that the man in the shop while Christine was there was “average built, middle aged”. Her Brief of Evidence however, given much earlier, said the man there was “solid and tall” which sounds more like Mark Lundy at 6’3” and 135kg.


However, in court before the jury Lundy was made to look a liar (again) as he needed to contradict this witness, as well as the two about the 8pm phone calls and the two mistaken customers. The police had in their possession two statements from people that Christine had told that she had been to Lighting Directwith Mark. Would she lie, or is the shop assistant mistaken? Why did the police and the Prosecutor attack Mark Lundy on this matter when they knew he was telling the truth?


The owner of the motel was away in Australia. The manager made a statement that Lundy checked out at 8:09am based on the EFTPOS receipt. This ties in with Lundy stating he checked out just after 8am. The manager did not give evidence. The owner, who was not there at the time, evidenced that Lundy normally checked out at 9-9:30am. This was also used against him, in conjunction with the two mistaken customers, to leave the jury thinking Lundy could not explain where he was in the morning. This was widely reported in the media, and if the media believed it we are sure the jury did as well. It is untrue. All of Lundy’s declared visits to customers tie in with the customer’s confirmations or, where they don’t, they tie in with police notebooks and/or cellphone records.


More. The Crown stated in Court that Lundy had received an important phone call late morning on August the 28 th to say his land deal was off in three days. Lundy said it was not the 28 th , actually up to a week earlier, but the Prosecutor was adamant and thus Lundy was again made to look like a liar. Lundy’s cellphone records show that no such call was received on the 28 th, rather pm on the 23 rd. Lundy was correct again, but the jury did not hear that either.


THE BRAIN TISSUE

North & South is to be commended for the writing on this subject as immunohistochemistry is not an easy matter to get to grips with. It is obvious that there are major disagreements between Miller on one hand and Sheard and Duxson on the other. And therein lies exactly the problem.

Scientific evidence given in Court which results in a man being put in prison for 20 years must be accurate and reliable, as well as being objective, and reproducible time after time. It must not be variable. This is the sort of standard which applies to fingerprint analysis, dna analysis, blood typing etc. Immunohistochemistry (ihc) is nothing of the sort.


The United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA) does indeed repeatedly describe ihc as “Subjective and Variable”. There are many, many papers available on the internet bemoaning the unreliability of ihc, and the lack of objectivity. Two recent papers are good examples of the debate-


Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science 38:215-220(2008)


“Immunohistochemistry is widely used in diagnostic practice and research but is limited due its subjective nature and weakness in reproducibility”.


Applied Immunohistochemistry and Molecular Morphology 2007 Jun;15(2):124-33


“Immunohistochemistry continues to suffer from variable consistency, poor reproducibility, quality assurance disparities and the lack of standardization resulting in poor concordance, validation and verification”.


The definition of “subjective” is useful here, “taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias”. Objective, on the other hand, means just the facts, just the facts. No interpretation or opinion. There should be no possibility of a major disagreement, over so many points, as there is between Miller, and Sheard/Duxson (and several others) over ihc as a test method, as well as over Miller’s methodology and Miller’s conclusions.


Members of the FACTUAL team attended the conference put on by the Innocence Project in Wellington at the end of 2007. Two American forensic scientists were there to give us talks. These two are highly qualified and spend much of their lives in the world of forensic science and its use to convict or acquit defendants. We discussed the Lundy case briefly with them. When told that this “brain tissue” had been identified using immunohistochemistry what was most interesting was that neither of them had ever heard of the science. Never heard of it. One even asked how the word was spelt!


It is our clear view that the Miller evidence, variable, subjective and not accurately reproducible, should never have been allowed in Court. It would not surprise us in the slightest to learn that the Lundy case was the first and last anywhere in the world to use immunohistochemistry and to have a jury and court accept it as a reliable science in a forensic sense. Even in the field where it has some respect i.e. as an adjunctive (supportive) test in determining a cancer diagnosis, ihc is seen as unreliable.

Miller, before the jury, described the specificity of the stains he used. What he said is in quotation marks, with our comment underneath.


GFAP - “deep nerve tissue, by that I mean brain or spinal cord”.


GFAP also stains with all the peripheral nervous system


NF - “deep nerve tissue, also positive in peripheral nerves as well”


NF is abundant in the peripheral nervous system, not just ‘also’.


S100 - “nerve tissue, deep nerve tissue”


S100 is actually a group of proteins, 21 in number, that exist in the peripheral nervous system and various

other tissues as well, including the skin. S100 is widely used in the diagnosis of skin cancer (melanoma).


SYN - “nerves and nerve-related material


SYN is present at all nerve terminals, including in non-nerve tissues where nerve endings are present (eg muscle, skin, gut etc.)


Miller’s descriptions were not challenged in front of the jury, nor at the Court of Appeal.


METICULOUS OR RIDICULOUS?


A “meticulous” plan which required Lundy to enter the house, find the garage door key, go to the garage and get the tomahawk and put on the overalls. Re-enter the house and go to the office next to the bedroom where Christine was allegedly lying awake and sit down at the computer to “manipulate” the time. What if Christine got up to see what on earth he was doing? How did he get to and into the house when she had not heard his car come down the drive?


The garage door key, by the way, was found under Christine’s handbag on the kitchen bench.


Think again about the inherent and absolute ridiculousness of the idea that Lundy can frame a “meticulous” plan which totally depends on Christine agreeing to sex at 7pm on the planned night. AsNorth & South point out, if Christine simply says no, the whole “plan” falls to pieces. A plan which has the intended victim completely in charge does not sound too “meticulous” to us.


IF NOT LUNDY THEN WHO?


North & South
note that there were seven unidentified fingerprints and a partial palm print found and that this fact was not revealed to the jury. Why Not? Because the police notebook which contains this information was not disclosed to the defense. Five of the prints, and the palm print, were in and around the conservatory, the point of entry.


A lot of suspects were eliminated because they had an alibi at 7pm. This was not the time of death.


FACTUAL will take this opportunity to address some of the issues we have with the book “Convicted” written by Michael Guerin, which contains a chapter on the Lundy case. Note that we are sure that Mr. Guerin did not make things up, rather that the information given to him by his sources was not always accurate.


He writes that Lundy was “vague” about what movies he had seen on TV the night of August 29 th, 2000. We assume he is referring to the Kelly interview which was six months later. His interviews closer to the date were not vague at all.


“A technician confirmed that it was impossible for this call (via WALI-2) to have been made from his motel room”. Not correct, as you have read in North & South.

Guerin also refers to the “missing hour and a half” on the morning of August 30 th. There was no missing time. Lundy was where he said he was.


He writes that the “duodenums and small intestines” were empty. Pang only checked the duodenum, a very short (25cm) piece before the major length (6 meters) of the small intestine. As noted by North & South through their expert opinion from Dr. Nicholas Diamant, food passes very rapidly through the duodenum to the major part of the small intestine. Pang checked only the duodenum. Solid gastric content would not be seen there. The duodenum’s basic function is to inject enzymes into the food as it passes quickly through for digestion further down, as well as hormones which stimulate other organs to do their bit.


He writes that time of death based on digestion can be estimated with 95% accuracy. Completely false, as you have read in North & South.


The 8:29pm phone call did not place Lundy “somewhere between Petone and Lower Hutt”. He was in his room.


Guerin writes that Lundy told a witness that he was driving home because his wife and daughter had been murdered, when he hadn’t been informed about that. Lundy says he told the caller he didn’t know what was going on, and that he had to get off the phone. The same witness also stated that Lundy told him that he (Lundy) had been stopped by the police for speeding. In that he was demonstrably wrong, as Lundy had not been stopped. We believe that both of the witness’s recollections are wrong. Quotes re mistaken witnesses have already been made above. The witness had had 4 days of major news and talk about the murders and we believe his recollection of the phone conversation was contaminated. It is common. Remember our earlier comment about mistaken eyewitnesses being involved in 71% of cases of wrongful conviction.


It is not correct to say that the police did not exceed 120km/hr in their reconstructions. The figure admitted to was 140km/hr.


Lundy did not travel “only 35km around Wellington”. The police travelled 65km retracing Lundy’s visits to customers, and did not visit all of them.


Guerin writes that Lundy told Kelly that 25 liters of fuel had been stolen from his car on August 29 th 2000. This is not correct. Lundy was asked p18 of doc.90636 on February 23 rd 2001 “When was that you recall there was a theft of petrol from your car? Lundy replies “Which time?” He then goes on to say it was “three weeks ago” which puts it at the end of January 2001. And before that? “April/May last year”. There is no mention of August 29 th and no mention of 25 litres. Later on in the same interview Lundy says to Kelly “I just don’t know why you’re even bothering about it”. Lundy thought that petrol siphoning had nothing to do with his case. It was Kelly who insisted it did.


Guerin writes that the suggestion was put to Lundy by Det. Kelly that Christine was in bed waiting for a conjugal evening, and he did not refute it. In doc. 90636 p46 Lundy is talking to Kelly, and Kelly says “You had no reason to return to Palmerston North? And Lundy replies “No reason to return to Palmerston North. If I had returned to Palmerston North I wouldn’t have been in a motel in Wellington”. Kelly : “True. Ok.” In the same document p148 Kelly asks Why was Christine naked in bed early in the night? and Lundy replies “She, I can’t, she wouldn’t have been”, which sounds like a refutation to us. Kelly then asks if a woman might get into bed naked if her partner asked her to, and Lundy replies Yep. Most (optimistic) men would.


Lundy’s arms supported his weight at the funeral? That’s not what the people say who supported him. They say he was “total dead weight”.



He writes that Lundy failed to remark on other missing items that had been removed by the police from the house, only the jewellery box. The only object of any size missing from the house was the jewellery box. The Exhibits Officer had only recorded receiving scene items such as 3 empty beer cans, 2 used drinking glasses and 1 coffee mug. The others were e.g. the McDonalds wrappings from the rubbish bin and papers from the Lundy office. If Lundy walked through the house believing, as he did at the time, that this was a burglary gone wrong, it is entirely understandable that he would look for TV’s, stereo, DVD player, CD player, electric jugs, toaster, microwave, computers etc. None of those things were removed by the police. It is equally entirely understandable that Lundy would also have jewellery in mind when he was looking for missing items. We have not been able to find any document, anywhere, nor any notebook, which records any discussion with Lundy about exhibits lists, and Lundy himself says he never had any discussion with any police officer about exhibits lists, nor did he see any before his arrest. It is also worth noting that Lundy was having a very careful look around. Det. Liz Williams accompanied Lundy on his walk-through and she writes in her book “Does this make my gun look big?” p135 “….Lundy was led inside the house, where he began looking around carefully and noting anything that seemed out of place - mostly noting items that had been moved by the forensic experts….”. If he was noticing things moved, he would have noticed things missing if any had been. There weren’t.


Guerin writes that the window latches that Lundy had noticed as being different “were not dissimilar” to the original ones. He further writes “so it required a sharp eye - or some prior knowledge- to spot the change from where Mark Lundy was standing”, because the light was dull. Det. Insp. Grantham had spoken to Mr. Guerin so we assume that is where Mr. Guerin got his information from. The walk-through by Lundy started at 4pm and took 30-40 minutes. In the section re Margaret Dance, you will note that sunset on August 29 th was just before 6pm. By September 15 th it would be later. At 4:30pm or thereabouts it was absolutely not nearly dark, or even dull. The implication at trial was that Lundy noticed the window latches were different because he knew to look there because he himself had faked the break-in. The simple fact is that he knew to look there because he had been told about the break-in site by his brother-in-law, and it had been much discussed. Det. Hughes gave evidence at trial and he first stated that the new latches were “almost identical”. He was later recalled and had to admit that in fact the new latches were different.On the way into the house Lundy was in the conservatory for ‘a matter of minutes’ while Hughes struggled to open a door. He had time to look quite hard at the window and door. He says that he felt something wasn’t right but he couldn’t put his finger on it. On the way out, however, he spotted it and told Hughes that the latches were different. Lundy had built the conservatory and installed the windows. He noticed, and understandably noticed.


Why was Christine’s blood on the outside of the window? All that can be said is that the offender’s clothing came in contact with the window on the way out.


Guerin’s insurance argument was largely refuted in Court. If Lundy has to come up with $3.5 million (his figure) in finance, how would $200,000 help? Lundy had issued a proper prospectus through the Public Trustee seeking investors, and he was way, way more than $200,000 short. He also asks if the increased insurance was “a premeditated action”. The increase in insurance was at the instigation and recommendation of the broker. The broker phoned the Lundy’s, not vice versa. The brokerrecommended that the Lundy’s increase their cover from $200k to $1 million. The Lundy’s said no because they couldn’t afford the monthly premium. (Thought: why would Lundy be worried about the monthly premium if he was planning to collect all the loot when he murdered Christine?). It was agreed with the broker that the policy be increased to $500k. The increase had not been accepted at the time of the murders.


The computer time was not manipulated, as you have read in North & South.


The paint evidence is nowhere near “indistinguishable” as to the fragments, as you have read.


FBI studies show that every person has their spouse’s and children’s dna on their clothes. Soaking pieces of clothing in water for half an hour and then testing the water for Christine’s dna, and finding it, would be considered normal.


The small particle of “Amber’s blood” is covered by North & South.


The Miller evidence is also so covered.


There is little more that we are interested in talking about at the moment. We are lodging an appeal in a few months. If you have questions, there is an avenue on our website. Please understand that we do not have the resources to answer hundreds of thousands of questions. We will do our best. If you want to give us information, there is a similar avenue. Someone, somewhere, knows what happened.


It has been agreed with Lundy’s legal team that an Appeal will be lodged in the first half of 2009. This will be a costly exercise. We are asking for donations, and no sum is too small. If you click on the “Factual Trust ” section of this website, it will lead you to the information needed to make donations. We thank you all for helping us.


FACTUAL – For Amber and Christine, the Truth Uncovered About the Lundy’s.



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