Special agent X in the Lundy case.

When the Crown lost the Privy Council appeal on the Lundy case they were right up against it. There time of death was ruined, their hot shot American Doctor was flayed, the computer expert was shredded so what did they do? Well very early on the introduced a special informant. X I've called him but he could be any letter in the alphabet and a long line of people who prisoners some how confess to in a case that is very weak or under pressure. So X comes along and he confirms the very thing the police want, Lundy admits to killing his daughter when she woke during the axe slaying of his wife.

Of course we know that Lundy was trying to get away with crime, because, well... Because he is a master criminal whose only known alleged crime has seen him in prison for 14 years. So according to X who happened to talk to Lundy in a prison yard Lundy said he killed his daughter with an axe because she woke up as he was killing his wife with an axe.  You'd think that Lundy would have had a rough idea when he was carefully planning his wife's death that his daughter might have awakened during the act of her mother having her head split open with blows from an axe. If X has it correctly Lundy never knew that his attack on his wife with an axe would cause his daughter to wake. Silly fellow. He was also silly if you listen to X because his story means that in Lundy's careful planning in order not to get caught that it wasn't careful planning at all. Why? Well here are a few reasons.

Despite what X has to say about Lundy's alleged stupidity of 'confessing' to a random stranger in prison he must have been stupid for other reasons as well. For example why would Lundy use an axe and not simply dispose of his wife in a manner that wasn't going to create screams loud enough to wake his daughter and therefore presumably his neigbhours. I can't answer that because the idea from X is inherently stupid. About as stupid as police believing that Lundy ran away from his house in order not be recognised dressed as a very large and cumbersome woman. Actually maybe the police didn't believe that because at the retrial that was suddenly no longer evidence, Also gone was the times of death, no longer reliably confirmed by a pathologist who claimed to be able to smell the stomach contents of a deceased to determine accurately when they had died. The computer expert who had maintained that Lundy had altered the time clock on his computer all but admitted the only fiddling that had gone on was with the computer expert fiddling with himself.

Using an axe was likely to create a lot of blood, Lundy would need to clean himself up and dispose of clothes. He would run the risk of being stopped in his car at anytime only to be found to have blood on him and in his car. He also ran the risk of waking his daughter according to X, but if you believe that letter of the alphabet Lundy never considered that in his careful plan. He also didn't consider telling a random prisoner he didn't know something he, Lundy, never told another single person in the whole wide world could become evidence against him over a decade later. I guess X was just a lucky X that day plying his trade as a paid police informer, somehow managing to get placed in a yard with a prisoner from a high profile case who decided, rather nicely, to confess to him. Maybe X was dressed as a Priest and Lundy thought he better cough up before he got hit by a strike of lightening or something. But it was nothing to do with money or favours earned from the police that caused X to dress as a priest or at the very least present himself as a sympathetic ear for a man who wanted to spend a few decades in prison. The money was an afterthought really, as were the favours from the police, it's all just a coincidence that X interrupted his lifetime of crime and offending to help out the police and get something in return. He probably actually quite likes the police despite the number of times they'd sent him to prison.

So when the Privy Council quashed Lundy's conviction, being critical among other things of police hiding evidence, what did the officer in charge of the case Grantham, the man responsible for running the case and disclosing all material evidence to the Crown, Court and Defence do? Well, he didn't resign. By some apparently accidental means he got critical information from an informant that wouldn't make sense or have any credibility at all with most folks. An informant who'd held quiet on the information for over a decade and who well, needed to be paid and a bit of other help.

Let me tell you of a few other informants in high profile NZ cases. In Thomas, a man pardoned for 2 murders, a inmate suddenly contacted police to tell them Thomas had confessed to him. A Royal Commission of Inquiry didn't believe the man even though desperate police did. We also had confessions of a sort from the family of Teina Pora who was convicted of a murder the Crown acknowledge he never committed. Those relatives were paid as well, along with a prison inmate who its clear now absolutely lied in order to put Pora together with the man who did commit the crime but who was found not guilty because of a prosecution muddled by the false evidence against Pora. There is the Watson case where a prison informer has recanted his claim of a confession against Watson, a man who now cannot somehow be found by police while Watson remains in prison.

In California the good 'work' of paid informers is not admissible but it will do in NZ in cases where real evidence is weak, hidden or distorted. So what did Lundy's second Jury get to hear, the lies of X of course. The disgusting fabrication that doesn't make sense apart to Grantham and the Crown whose reputations were rightfully in tatters and who needed to restore their status with the highly incredible testimony of a life time crook. That's who the Crown and Grantham laid down with in order to reconvict Lundy a life time crook called X.

Consider the common denominators of known Miscarriages of Justice in NZ, what do they have in common. Here's a list of some common points, planted evidence, withheld evidence, bogus computer experts, technical experts of invention, bizarre scenarios, evidence from informers. In Lundy we have had withheld evidence, computer evidence by an expert that had to reconstruct it into further nonsense, a Doctor setting the times of death by smell, a bizzare scenario of Lundy using an axe to 'quietly' kill his wife and accidentally waking his daughter according to career criminal. What may have affected the Jury's deliberation more than anything was the evidence of X, the absolute horror of having it 'confirmed' that a father had not only killed his wife with an axe but also his darling young daughter.

I can't cop the bogus science. The  American expert not even able to give forensic evidence in the States and whose lab or methods are not accredited there. I cant cop that it appears that a brain sample went missing before the American was given Lundy's shirt on which to do his novel tests. Tests which the American Professor of Bio Chemistry Chris Halkides wrote this comment about 'I would not have accepted IHC evidence in a courtroom.  It is a diagnostic science that got transplanted into forensics.    I also can't accept that Grantham was not stood down from the Lundy retrial once it became clear the breadth of criticism which arose from the Privy Council Judgement on Lundy's first conviction. I can't accept that other elements common to Miscarriages of Justice in New Zealand featured in Lundy's retrail. I'll never believe that X is anything other than a liar, a disgusting man willing to put an image in the Jury's mind of Lundy killing his own daughter so as to be rewarded for it by a desperate prosecution.

Lundy's retrial was not fair. It began when police right up to the Commissioner did not recognize that Grantham because of the criticism of his running of the case, the withheld evidence in particular, was not taken off the case. That he was then permitted to revert to the worst type of evidence admissible in any Court supported the travesty.

Footnote. Excuse the script change after Professor Halkide's quote, I don't have the expertise to change it.