Scott Watson and Mark Lundy are as different as chalk in cheese, not only physically but by their backgrounds at the time of their imprisonment. Scott was finding his way in life after his teen years in which he got into relatively minor trouble with police. His life had become the sea, in fact his links with the sea are lifelong. He had become a capable quasi engineer able to have built his own boat the Blade, a 26 footer. He worked in boat yards and sailed the coast having a girlfriend in the far north. He was such a casual bugger that he even told investigating police that'd he smoke dope on NYE 1997, information police would use against his friends he socialised with that day unless they co-operated with police. Mark on the other hand was married, with a young daughter and active in many community activities, he and his wife Christine had a passion for dancing, as did their daughter the 7 year old Amber. The Lundy's were the operators of a small business selling kitchens, hard working with Christine 'doing the books' while Mark dealt with customers who found him reliable and helpful. He preferred to let Christine do any debt collector such was gentle and obliging character. He was a builder by trade and when arrested for the murders of Christine and Amber he was renovating the house the family owned. He was essentially a salesman on the road who would put the packages together for customers orders and displayed his goods for sales in several stores where he would call into service orders on road trips away from home. Scott on the other hand at the time of his arrest was at home on his boat and where ever he sailed. His most recent trip had been to see his girlfriend in Whangarei, a rare enough event in any country where a young man would sail to visit his girlfriend and pickup work in the boatyards which had become his trade. It might be fair to say the sea was in his blood as he and his family had lived aboard a yacht for some years doing much the same as Scott found himself doing as he matured into a young man. So both builders of the type who could turn their hands to any sort of work but little else in similarity until their lives changed forever.
It's the changes that happened to both men which ultimately mean they shared a common experience. That experience until recently was not known to either man, both of whom are in minimum security prisons, one in the north island and the other in the south. I doubt that they given each other much thought over the years Mark is essentially a fish out of the water in prison while Scott has been more openly resistant to his imprisonment. No doubt both had an interest in the progress or lack of progress of the other's fight for freedom. While the 2 must hate what has happened to them, they have shown that in different ways. Scott with art, some disdain and some rejection of the system, Mark with study and somewhat isolation of his generally outgoing personality. The 2 would unlikely ever be friends and may not have sympathy for one another in terms of their cases. Unfortunately, or perhaps very fortunately ticking along in the cases of both men has been a time bomb not understood fully by either, nor until recently their legal teams both of which have changed over the years. That ticking bomb has been forensic science out of the same bottle but applied to each case differently in order to get the same result - convictions on evidence which cannot now withstand scrutiny.
Christine Lundy died with 21 hairs in her hands and another red, to red brown hair on her buttock, that has never been evidence against ML. It has in fact been evidence never properly investigated despite being carefully handled to avoid contamination, collected with a high degree of forensic caution which recognised the potential value of finding a clue to the killer(s) of Amber and Christine. One area that was not gathered or stored with forensic caution was the shirt of Mark Lundy told police he had been wearing the day leading into the night they were killed - something in itself a guilty person would not do, just as Scott would not have revealed to police his dope smoking had he considered it would used to bring pressure on witnesses to lie. On that shirt there would later be found to be 2 microscopic spots or 'stains', one of which was said to be human brain after being rejected by forensic scientists worldwide as too necrotic to be tested, this after never being kept in forensically proper conditions but rather in a non-temperature controlled safe away from other exhibits. Human brain degrades on contact with air something which mankind have known for centuries and the ancient Egyptians even longer. It was that alleged brain which saw ML convicted, while evidence of other offenders including not only the 21 hairs, but male DNA under both victims fingernails along with signs of breakin of the home, witnessed by a neighbour, where fingerprints were discovered that did not belong to any person who had visited the house in the 3 months prior to the killings.
We don't know how, or indeed if, Ben Smart and Olivia Hope were killed, there is an assumption that they were with no evidence in support apart from 2 hairs and the inevitable prison narks recruited to verbal an innocent man. There is no evidence that Ben and Olivia ever met Scott, no evidence that they were seen together or leaving Furneaux Lodge as a group on a naiad. So we now turn to evidence ignored in Lundy - hairs. There were about 400 removed from the Blade, many in isolation as scientist's carefully did their work. Then something unusual happened, a blanket from aboard the blade with visible signs of hair on it was bundled up and taken ashore. Consider that 2 years later a police officer would lift each hair from Christine's hand, wrap it in an individual tissue record a description and make a sketch as to where it had been located from - no chance of contamination in that process, the hairs never tested but rather eventually lost. How convenient.
In the Watson case, the same forensic science institute (ESR) bundled up the Watson hairs on the blanket and put it into a store from where it was later removed to have 2 technicians carefully lift each individual hair before apparently mindlessly putting them all into the 2 plastic bags where they would freely be contaminated by one another. Those technicians were looking for long blond hairs, everyone in NZ following the case knew that Olivia had long blond hair - none were found. So if there were no long blond hairs they were simply bagged - had the 2 long blond hairs been found they would have been isolated and not mixed with the 100s of other hairs but treated triumphantly as gold for the investigator's with the big gut instinct. In 2 later examinations of the hairs in a different room on a bench still the 2 long blond hairs were not found. So 3 searches and nothing found in ESR labs, not to exclude the careful searches aboard the Blade which must have satisfied ESR scene specialists that no hair of Olivia present or they would have been separated like the Lundy hairs. On a 4th search and after 2 visits to the Hope household for sample hairs - suddenly 2 blond hairs found, 'miraculously' at the same time the sample hairs were in the same lab in a breach of international forensic science protocol. Perhaps anywhere else in the world that 'evidence' would be rejected but not in New Zealand where authorities were on a mission to convict Watson come hell or high water, as they would do a few years later to Lundy in order to solve a second double murder mystery. There appeared to be more at stake than the lives of 2 innocent men with all their differences and dedicated family and friends supporters who have stood by both for 2 decades.
As readers will know ML was convicted using controversial non-forensic Immunohistochemistry (IHC), never used before or since in a criminal Court. IHC was the 'bright new thing' that didn't endure forensic process or methodology. In a forensic setting it is a 'junk' science. As readers will also know SW was convicted on the strength of the 2 hair evidence which all parties agreed may have been contaminated. I think that 'may' is now seen as an unacceptable risk of contamination in case like Lundy as well as Watson, of having no strong supporting evidence and plenty of evidence showing both men as innocent.
What is less known (although increasingly less so) is that the 'hair comparison' tests in Watson resulted in around 98% false conviction in FBI cases where hair comparison was used. It is simply a scientist claiming to have developed powers of discerning between hair and able to 'confirm' the probability that 2 or more hairs are from the same source - absolute codswallop. While the same tests if done in Lundy would have excluded him on hair colour alone (he doesn't have red hair), let alone DNA or mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing, it was simply not done at all. Although in Watson both DNA and mtDNA was used because police had a different objective, find hair to prove Watson guilty, and in Lundy ignore hair that would prove ML innocent.
Both cases use the word absorbed when speaking of potential evidentiary samples used, or potentially used, in testing. Scientifically, that means evidentiary material is absorbed in the process of testing. Both cases have extensive work, I will call footwork for the forensics, which is recorded and placed on file to be referenced by scientists doing any tests on particular material. It has been recently found that both case files contain 'footwork' not disclosed to the Jury that indicate both men are innocent, and not just because hair testing was not done in 1 case when it should have been. In Lundy there is a case note that confirms there was nothing on the shirt to test using IHC so therefore there can be no legitimate result excluding all the crime scene evidence which points away from ML. Similarly in Watson there is a case note which any modern day scientist would know negates the '2 hair' evidence and which was known to ESR in 1998.
When talking about a 'modern day' scientist. The principal scientist in both cases was the same person, Sue Vintiner. As a ESR scientist to this day. Sue will know that both these cases have serious flaws which she intimately knows about. but which she has never reported to the Court as is her job as witness first and foremost for the Court. Not only did she give evidence excluding both matters but when the understanding of the so called science evolved, she did not notify either the Crown or the Defence. To this day she remains silent while 2 quite different men suffer the same fate - false imprisonment.
Why were the documents kept from the Court? Because individually they both destroyed the credibility of the Crown's allegations and arguably would have left the Court no alternative other than to discharge both men. When the 2 documents are considered together not only can it be seen that what I say above, that in Lundy tests were not done which would have excluded him, while in Watson the test results would be set aside as unreliable to the extreme but that the Crown kept that information secret from the Court with the compliance of ESR - purportedly an independent organisation from police, its potentially biggest customer.
For many people the Watson convictions don't make sense because they are 'boaties', know the sea and know boats but they were told to take a hike or that they were mistaken. In Lundy few people understood IHC but there would have been comfort to a Jury that the 'expert' found brain. Years later when the Crown case was in trouble they sought an American opinion to confirm that the DNA was both human and female. The result was probable animal DNA but neither Y or X chromosome was confirmed, so a new junk science was found called MRNA which was thrown out at the recent Lundy Court of Appeal hearing.
So 1 case had an informed public and many eye witnesses contradicting the Crown case. The 2nd had unknown fingernail DNA, mtDNA and nuclear (personal) DNA, and potential fingerprint DNA and hair evidence of which no attempt was made to link together because even 1 link would mean Lundy was not guilty, just as the secret documents mean both men are innocent on the Crown's own hidden evidence. Perhaps a New Zealand first but frightening enough that evidence in 2 cases was exploited in different and opposite ways to get the same result - innocent men found guilty.
Cheers.
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