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 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. 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 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 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 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.
Background
Prior to the murders, Mark and Christine Lundy had been married for 17 years; Amber was their only child. They jointly owned a kitchen sink business. The company was often in debt to their supplier for around $100,000. In 1999, Mark Lundy added to their debt by buying two plots of land to grow grapes in Hawke's Bay. The owners of the plots, Christopher Morrison and Douglas Twigg, told the court at Lundy's second trial that the sale went unconditional in early 2000. Lundy missed a number of settlement dates without paying, which led to penalty interest of about 14%. At the time of the murders, the Lundys owed $140,000 in penalty interest. The final deadline was August 30, 2000 – the day his wife and daughter were found dead.A few months earlier, an insurance salesman, Bruce Parson, reviewed the couple's life insurance and the Lundys agreed on an increase from $200,000 to $500,000. The Lundys signed the new agreement on 25 August, five days before the murders. However, Mr Parson told the Lundys the new amount would not apply until the policy document was issued. Christine Lundy was murdered before the process was finalised. Nevertheless, the Crown alleged that Mark Lundy killed her, intending to use the increased payout from her life insurance to cover his mounting debts. After Christine's death, Tower Insurance paid $75,000 off the Lundy's mortgage but no cash payment was made.
Events on the day of the murders
On the morning of Tuesday, 29 August 2000, Lundy drove from Palmerston North to Wellington on one of his regular business trips. He checked into a motel in Petone at around 5:00 pm. His wife or daughter called him on his cell phone in Petone at 5:30pm and they spoke for eight minutes; Lundy said he was told during the call that they were going to McDonald's for dinner. Police later found a McDonald's receipt in the Lundy home for food bought at 5:45 pm. Christine Lundy took a call at home from a friend just before 7:00 pm that night.Mark Lundy's cell phone records showed he made a call from Petone to a business partner of his Hawke's Bay wine-making venture at 8:28 pm. The computer at the Lundy home in Palmerston North was switched off at 10:52 pm. At 11:30 pm Lundy called an escort service in Petone from his motel. She left the motel at about 1 am.
At Lundy's retrial in 2015, Christine's brother testified that he went to the Lundy home the next morning to see Christine about a business matter. He said he entered through an open ranchslider and found the bodies of Christine and Amber bludgeoned to death. Christine's body was on her bed; Amber's was on the floor in the doorway of Christine's bedroom. Both had died of head injuries caused by multiple blows from what was determined to be a tomahawk-like weapon or small axe - although no weapon was ever found. A rear window had been tampered with and had Christine's blood on it. A jewellery box was later determined to be missing.
At the first trial in 2002, the police claimed Lundy drove up to Palmerston North on the 29th, killed his wife and daughter and drove back to Petone in the three hours between the two phone calls - the first with his wife at 5.30pm and the second with a business partner at 8.28pm. At the second trial in 2015, the police said he drove to Palmerston North and committed the murders in the middle of the night after the prostitute who came to his motel went home at about 1.00am.
Lundy's demeanor at the funeral
At the funeral of his wife and daughter, Lundy appeared so distressed, he had to be supported by a couple of friends. His overt grief was filmed and repeatedly shown on television. His dramatic "outpouring of grief" and collapse at the funeral was covered widely in the media and became the subject of extensive "comment and public debate focusing closely on Mr. Lundy's credibility". In 2018, the Court of Appeal agreed that members of the jury were likely "exposed to repeated showings of the footage of Lundy at the funeral" during the trial.Lundy's lawyer, Jonathan Eaton QC, said the funeral footage made Lundy appear as a pathetic, comedic figure. Eaton believes the image became ingrained in people's minds, and that the constant replaying of scenes from the funeral inevitably affected the jury at both trials, and had a serious effect on the outcome.
First trial
After a police investigation of six months, Lundy was arrested and charged with their murders. The trial took place in the High Court in Palmerston North.Prosecution case
Four days before the murders, the Lundy's reviewed their life insurance on the advice of their insurance broker. Christine's cover was going to be raised from $200,000 to $500,000. However, at the time of her death, the policy documents had not been issued so the increase was not valid. Nevertheless, the prosecution contended that Lundy killed his wife for her life insurance money because of financial pressure, and killed his daughter because she was a witness. The police claimed the murders occurred in Palmerston North, two hours away by car, between 5:30pm and 8:28pm. They claimed that Lundy drove "at break-neck speed from Wellington to Palmerston North, killed his family and drove back to Wellington" within three hours.The prosecution called more than 130 people to testify. Their case was primarily based on a speck of body tissue found on one of Lundy's polo shirts; the shirt was found along with other clothes and miscellaneous items on the back seat of his car. Although New Zealand pathologists could not identify it as Christine's brain tissue, a pathologist from Texas, Dr Rodney Miller, claimed that he did. The prosecution argued the only way this brain tissue could have got on the shirt was if Lundy himself was the murderer. Later reports and tests by other experts cast doubt upon the identification of the material as brain tissue, and at Lundy's second trial, Miller later admitted that his laboratory was not accredited to do forensic work.
No weapon was ever found, although pathologist James Pang determined it was possibly a tomahawk. The police sent 47 paint fragments to be examined by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. Nine had orange flecks and another nine had light-blue flecks. These were described as “indistinguishable” from samples taken from three tools and two paint tins in the garage. In 16 of these 18 samples, the ESR noted there was contamination. Also the chemical match of the paint flecks was never provided to the defence - nor was it described in court. The police eventually recovered a tomahawk from among Lundy’s possessions, but it wasn’t marked with paint, and did not test positive for blood.
The witness - Margaret Dance
The only person who claimed to have seen Lundy in Palmerston North at the time of the crime was Margaret Dance— a 60-year-old woman, who said she had "psychic powers and a photographic memory". She lived about 500 metres from the Lundy home and said she had seen a man wearing a blond wig who "appeared to be trying to look like a woman" running on the street at about 7:15 pm. She also said she saw seven other people outside a takeaway shop in the area. Nobody else, including the seven people she described, saw anyone running in the area that night.Margaret Dance described the person she claimed she saw as “running fast”. However, in What the Jury Didn't Hear, Mike White wrote that Mark Lundy weighed 130 kg, wore an orthotic aid in one shoe after an accident that required ankle surgery and struggled to do anything vaguely athletic. Margaret Dance was not called as a witness at the second trial.