Will the Lundy case finally crack this time?

I am aware that the final submissions are to be filed in the long running saga which is the Lundy case today. This case generally remains the most poorly understood convictions in New Zealand history. Most people have formed an opinion on the case despite all the concrete facts being unknown.

Rather than starting with the 'Lundy shirt' and all its controversy I'll start with the hidden and neglected parts of the case. As I've written before there is evidence of at least 2 strangers being in the home contemporaneously with the deaths of Christine and her 7 year old daughter Amber. This is known because the DNA of 2 unknown males was found under their nails. DNA in this location can more probably than not be attributed to scratching or grabbing at the clothing of an attacker. DNA of this type lasts a relatively short time if innocently picked up by contact with another person or DNA source, 6 hours is the maximum time until around only 5% of the DNA will remain as a person goes about normal tasks including, eating, dressing and washing the hands.

There were signs of a break in of the Lundy home while Mark Lundy was in Wellington and his wife and daughter home in bed when they were attacked. The police blamed that break in on Lundy, saying it was staged to cover his tracks. It's quite normal unfortunately that someone being framed is blamed for anything unexplained. In the eyes of the Jury it can easily make sense that a guilty person would hide their trail. The problem in Lundy however, as it has emerged years later, is that unknown fingerprints and footprints were also found in the house. Now Mark Lundy, in fact nobody, can leave unknown footprints and particularly fingerprints at a crime scene unless they are the perpetrators. Moreover, nobody can put unknown male DNA and fabric fibres under the nails of a deceased person. So while Lundy was blamed for a mock break in, evidence was hidden that points to it have been a real break in by 2 offenders who left DNA, finger and footprints at the scene along with fibres from their clothing. Of course the paint found on the victims in the area of their wounds, that was said to have come from Mark Lundy's tools, has since also been disproved

This unexplained evidence is actually the key to Mark Lundy's innocence and as I write above it was hidden, eventually emerging piece by piece over time. Not everyone knows it was hidden and obscured in an argument over novel science that remains highly controversial and more than a little suspect. The 'science' took over, was reported on at length, conveniently helping obscure evidence that over time would emerge as far less obscure in understanding the Lundy case. It's time for that evidence to be dealt with. Police have never explained the fingernail DNA and fibres, the finger and footprints, the paint, they got away from doing so by hiding or masking the evidence and shouts of a prosecutor that 'no man has the right to have his wife's brain on his shirt.' That phrase appears to become destined as the most inappropriate part of a prosecutor's closing ever in a New Zealand case. The reason for that being that the validity of the novel science is under siege and no longer can have any support from a crime scene that indicates that Mark Lundy did not kill his wife and daughter.

I also suspect that the appeal submissions will question the validity of the Crown being given 2 bites at the cherry and effectively changing their own case dramatically when it was in deep trouble, given the chance to say 'forget that story, we have a new one.' However, the real story is not the 'new one' they dreamed up to try and salvage their case, but rather the one they hid from the public and Jury that relates to two men, their DNA, foot and fingerprints, paint from a weapon, that were never found. At the same time as our Courts were duped into accepting 'novel science' while the prosecution secreted away critical evidence alarm grew in the established forensic science community that IHC testing was being used in manner where it was not only unaccredited to be employed, but that it was being used far outside the clinical standards where its use was established to test for disease on known samples, not on random poorly degraded gunk that would be blasted with high doses of dilution until it displayed a 'colour' that the testers wanted. Yes, negative tests were ignored, dilution rates increased until the required colour showed, mix the cake with any colours until the right colour was found - not in the least forensic science, but going after a result to fit a theory.

I think now the Court will demand answers, that the public needs, forget about the cake mix and explain how the finger, footprints, fibres and stranger DNA found its way into the Lundy household after a break in and how it could possibly not be connected to the murders of Christine and Amber.