Lundy murders

Mark Edward Lundy was a travelling salesman who lived in Palmerston North with his wife Christine Marie Lundy, 38, and their 7-year-old daughter Amber Grace Lundy. On the morning of 29 August 2000, Mark Lundy (then aged 43) drove to Petone on business and checked in at the Foreshore Motor Lodge at around 5:00 pm. That evening, he had an encounter with a prostitute at the motel at about 11:45 pm, and she left around 12:48 am (on 30 August). He checked out at 8:09 in the morning.

The murdered bodies of his wife and daughter were found about an hour later by Christine’s brother, Glenn Weggery who went to the Lundy home in Palmerston North around 9.00am. Both had been attacked with a tomahawk like implement (which was never found) leaving blood and tissue splattered on the ceiling and walls. Twenty-one hairs, presumably belonging to the attacker, were found under Christine Lundy's fingernails, but were never tested or analysed for DNA. Police initially had 60 suspects, one of whom committed suicide five days after the bodies were found. Police ruled out 55 of the 60 suspects and focussed on Mark Lundy. In February 2001, after a six-month investigation, he was arrested and charged.

At his first trial, the prosecution argued that a tiny mark found on Lundy's shirt was Christine's brain tissue. They claimed he left Petone immediately after making a phone call to his wife at 5:30, drove to Palmerston North, killed his wife and daughter at about 7:00 pm, disposed of his bloody clothes and the murder weapon, altered the timing on the family computer to suggest they were still alive at 7:00 pm, and drove the same 134 kilometres back to Petone by 8:28 pm - a journey of three hours. A private investigator who made the journey three times, testified his fastest trip took him two hours each way. In 2002, Lundy was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.

For more than 20 years, he has claimed he is innocent. In 2002, he unsuccessfully took his case to the New Zealand Court of Appeal, and in 2013 appealed to the Privy Council in Britain. His convictions were quashed because exculpatory evidence about the reliability of testing done on brain tissue (that had been withheld at the first trial) led to profound divisions between the experts, and a re-trial was ordered.

At the retrial in 2015, the prosecution presented an entirely different version of events. They now claimed that Lundy drove to Palmerston North and back in the middle of the night - after spending time with a sex worker in Petone. They also presented the results of different tests, this time based on mRNA, conducted on the spots on Lundy's shirt. In April 2015, he was found guilty again. The mRNA evidence was subsequently ruled inadmissible, but the jury had already heard it. In 2017, Lundy took this issue to the Court of Appeal. The appeal was dismissed, as the court decided all the other evidence still proved he was guilty.

In 2022, the new Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) agreed to investigate his case. He was granted parole in April 2025 and was released on 7 May after serving 23 years in prison. His case is still being investigated by the CCRC and his supporters said they would continue the fight to prove he was innocent. Provided by Wikipedia