I'll go through the list.
Motive according to the Crown was $500,000 life insurance policy because the Lundy business was running at a loss and the Lundy's owed a small fortune on 2 wine properties that they were struggling to settle on.
Fact. In the previous 12 months, the Lundy's kitchen appliance business had made a $100,000 profit. It had new products to launch and it was predicted that within 5 years the Lundy's would be making half a million profit per year. The Lundy's had a clause in their sale and purchase agreement that if they were unable to settle the wine-growing properties would be onsold and they would be responsible for penalty interest and any shortfall in the price. Both properties sold in 2001 at a major profit wiping out the penalty interest and putting increased money into the vendor's pockets.
On the Friday before the murders, the Lundy's considered new life insurance policies at the suggestion of their long term broker. They immediately rejected a million-dollar cover and settled on the second offer of half a million which they signed up for. Experienced in such matters they knew the new insurance would not be in place until several weeks passed before it was improved by insurers.
Lundy Marriage was in trouble
Fact. On the Saturday night before the murders, the Lundy's held a dinner party at their home. That was to celebrate the new product range their business had distribution rights for, and secondly to celebrate the finishing of renovations to one bedroom. In the process of tidying after the renovations, the house conservatory was cleaned of dust from the work and because of the material from the bedroom that had been stored, there was finally moved. No one present at the party nor anyone in the respective families had noticed anything amiss in the couple's marriage. Some commented about Christine being excited about the new products and how much busier they would be as they had the lower North Island distribution rights. They were also pleased that the room was finished after a relatively long job. Someone speaking on the phone to Christine on the evening before her murder said she was elated about the prospects of their 6-year-old business.
In terms of the wine-growing enterprise, the couple and their business partners had crops ready to plant and they were advertising for investors with several interested. They knew the value of the properties they had under contract had increased in value something proven to be correct after the deaths of Amber and Christine. In short, the couple was happy and their business prospects were better than at any time previously.
Mark Lundy staged the breakin.
Fact. The proof the Crown has is an assumption based on a presumptive blood test on the window next to a ranch slider in the conservatory. In the presumptive blood, DNA belonging to Christine was found, however her fingerprints were also found in the area which as mentioned earlier had been cleaned. The presence of DNA was higher than blood tests taken from her person and near where her body lay. That mean's it was transferred if it was in fact Christine's blood at all, the transfer doesn't strengthen DNA readings but rather weakens them.
The Appeal Courts heard that the lock on the slider could only be opened by a key, what followed from that by the Crown was that the breakin was faked because real intruders could not have been able to open the door, despite breaking the window and reaching for the handle. That myth persists.
Mark Lundy would have run a grave risk because the door was visible to the neighbour's property who in fact saw the door open at a quarter to 12 with the light on. He was also definitely in Wellington at that time. Police worked to discredit the neighbour in front of the Court. A Supreme Court Judge claimed the door could have been left open to let air in, despite that it was some distance from Christine's room which in fact had 2 windows open and safely on the latch. All the family and friends said that Christine was very security conscious. The handle on the window next to the conservatory was broken from having been forced with a bar. There are many forensic scientific points that exclude that it was a mock breakin, including that there were unknown fingerprints found in the area (noting again the area had just been cleaned). None of those fingerprints matched to some 49 people known to have been in the house in the months preceding the crime and whose prints were taken for elimination.
There was no effort to match the unknown prints to the 21 hairs found in Christine's hands, nor the DNA of 2 males wedged under both her and Amber's nails as they fought for their lives. Before blaming Mark Lundy for breaking into his own home police should have found the owners of the prints and DNA, as well as the hairs. Those hairs were somehow "lost,"
In the Scott Watson case in 1999 Scott was convicted by the use of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) (being the DNA of the female line of the family.) In 2001 the same scientist central to Scott's conviction ignored testing the mtDNA found under the nails of both Christine and Amber, as well as the hairs found in Christine's hands. She also did not test the unknown fingerprints for DNA. Why did she do that? You decide. The Lundy Jury had the right to know that Christine died with the hairs of a male in both her hands that were not her husbands.
If Christine and Amber were not killed in the early evening, then they were killed after 3 am in the morning,
Fact. In the first trial, the Crown needed the times of death to be in the early evening, it was a tight situation because Mark needed to in Wellington (where he was on an overnight trip to visit customers) by 12am when he was entertained by a call girl in his motel room. When that didn't work at the Privy Council, the Crown said the killings had happened after 3am, which allowed for a quick trip after the 'alibi' of the call girl's visit. This did not match with the open ranchslider and door open before 12am, so that witness was still "wrong." It also did not match with the stomach contents of Christine Lundy which were never photographed in-situ, an absolutely unheard of situation in any case - except the Lundy case.
The already disgraced pathologist Dr. Pang changed his time of death from 6.30 to being anytime between the pair were last seen alive until their bodies were found at 9am on the 30th of August 2000. To explain the Crown's new time of death he said that Christine must have eaten just before her death and that it was, according to Crown, also correct that 7-year-old Amber had got out of bed to eat in the early hours. This was meant to explain that the undigested stomach contents that Pang said he saw at autopsy.
But even that point is challenged by the evidence of a crime scene detective who unlike Pang recorded his notes at autopsy. If other cops were being economical with the truth Detective Jonathan Michael Oram was not, he said in his notes (remember no in-situ photos) that Christine's stomach contents were firstly fluid-based - meaning that digestion was well underway. So no late night feasts with a 7-year-old obedient child leaving her bed to eat, but digestion well underway at around 11.45 when that much-maligned neighbour noticed it open, noting that it was never used which was why he remembered it along with a call made to his father of which records exist.
As it happens that door was still open the next morning when the courier arrived to deliver a parcel, he'd never seen the door open before either, and put the courier parcel there were it was found just over 2 hours later by the family member who visited and found the bodies.
Like I said nothing is right in the Lundy case.
