Bloodstained samples from Lundy murders discovered untested

Sunday, 23 February 2025

Fibres from a bloody stain at the crime scene were collected by a scientist, but they were never tested. Nobody knows why. Mike White investigates the latest development in one of the country’s most controversial murders.

The scene that greeted the first people entering the bland weatherboard house in Palmerston North was as awful as could be imagined.

Christine Lundy lay in her bed, hacked to death by an attacker armed with something like a tomahawk.

In the bedroom’s doorway lay the body of her 7-year-old daughter, Amber, struck from behind with the same weapon.

The attack had been so violent, so frenzied, the bedroom was painted with blood - apart from a “shadow” on the curtains behind where the offender stood.

Police immediately focused on Christine’s husband and Amber’s father, Mark Lundy, despite him staying in Petone the night of the crime.

He was found guilty of the murders in 2002, and re-convicted in 2015, after his original convictions were quashed by the Privy Council.

He remains in prison, with his next parole hearing in April.

Lundy has always protested his innocence, and his case is one of the most controversial in New Zealand.

Now, it can be revealed another important sample from the crime scene was never examined.

Fibres in a bloodstain where police say the offender entered the Lundys’ house, were sent to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), but never tested.

The blood was on the outside of a window by a conservatory door, and was later shown to be Christine Lundy’s.

Police say there are no records or documents explaining who made the decision not to examine the fibres.

It comes after The Post revealed 21 hairs found entwined in Christine Lundy’s fingers when her body was discovered, were also never tested, and were later destroyed by police, despite Lundy repeatedly requesting all samples be preserved.

The new discovery that other vital crime scene samples weren’t tested, has led to further criticism of the police investigation, and concerns that a chance to either clear Lundy, or help convict him, was ignored.

When police examined the murder scene at 30 Karamea Crescent, they quickly concluded the attacker entered through a sliding door in the conservatory at the rear of the house.

To do this, the intruder had prised open a window to the left of the door, breaking one of the inside catches, and leaving dents on the frame where the window had been forced.

They then reached through the window and unlocked the conservatory door.

The window was left ajar.

When police and an ESR scientist examined it, they found bloodstains on the bottom right corner, and the window’s underside. Testing showed the blood was likely Christine Lundy’s.

Thus, it was assumed it had most likely got there when the attacker left the house, and touched or brushed against the open window.

The police theory was that Lundy had stolen home from Petone where he was staying at a motel on a business trip, driving 150km back to Palmerston North without being noticed, and had faked a break-in by jemmying open the back window, before murdering his wife and daughter.

To make it look like a burglary gone wrong, Lundy took a heavy jewellery box from their bedroom, police said.

On August 31, 2000, ESR scientist Bjorn Sutherland took two “tapelifts” from blood on the window beside the conservatory door - ES503 and ES512. (Tapelifts are where adhesive tape is placed on an area to collect anything on its surface.)

Neither was ever examined.

In police documents, ES503 is referred to as a “tapelift from bloodstain from lower edge of window - possible point of entry”.

However, in files obtained by the Sunday Star-Times under the Official Information Act (OIA), Sutherland’s handwritten notes on a diagram of the window, alongside reference to ES503, appear to say, “a few vis [visible] fibres vis on stain”.

The Star-Times requested all documents and communications related to ES503.

Police responses and documents provided suggested the sample was simply a tapelift of a bloodstain - blood identified as Christine Lundy’s.

But the Star-Times has obtained another police document clearly stating ES503 is “fibres” from the bloodstain on the window.

When asked why police didn’t provide this document, as required under the OIA, police initially advised all relevant information had been released.

However, police later accepted they hadn’t provided the document.

“The document was not located as it was in the notes of a scientist who did not collect the samples or give evidence about them.

“The information released were the documents linked to the scientist who collected those samples you requested.”

Police did not, however, explain why the document would have been in an unrelated scientist’s files, and how they had managed to find it there, once the Star-Times complained.

The latest revelation that police failed to examine possibly important samples from the Lundy crime scene, follows exposure they didn’t test 21 hairs found tangled in Christine Lundy’s fists after she was killed.

Ten hairs were found in her right hand, and 11 in her left, during her autopsy, which were immediately sent to ESR.

Given Christine had defensive wounds on her hands and forearms, there was a possibility she had struggled or come into contact with her attacker, and may have grabbed their hair, as has occurred in other murders.

However, the hairs were never examined or tested, and were destroyed in 2003.

No explanation has ever been given. Police say the “decision log” regarding the hairs can’t be found.

Mark Lundy’s lawyer, Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, says it is “troubling” fibres in the window bloodstain weren’t tested, and simply added to concerns already raised about the hairs in Christine’s hands not being examined.

Kincade says even after the Privy Council rejected the evidence Lundy was initially convicted on, and quashed his convictions, police remained fixated on Lundy as the culprit.

“To my mind there was really no proper reinvestigation of this case at all. Almost everything the police did between 2013 and 2015 was only about trying to fill obvious holes in the case against Mark.

“Some crucial testing simply wasn’t done, because police never had an open mind about this case. There was just no objectivity.”

Kincade notes police created an entirely new scenario at the 2015 retrial, for how Lundy supposedly murdered his wife and daughter, dramatically altering their original time of the crime, and completely abandoning key witnesses and controversial theories they’d relied on at Lundy’s first trial.

The original police case was that Lundy drove wildly through rush-hour Wellington traffic, at speeds averaging over 120kph, without anyone reporting him; tried to disguise himself in a curly blonde woman’s wig; butchered his family around 7pm despite Christine being found naked in bed, and Amber being in pyjamas and her bed looking slept in; skilfully manipulated the family computer to suggest Christine used it at a time after he was back in Wellington; ran 500m back to his car; and returned to Petone at similar speeds - the whole 300km round trip and murder miraculously achieved in under three hours.

But at Lundy’s retrial, police significantly changed their case, and alleged Lundy left his motel after 1am, drove “unobtrusively” home, hacked his family to death, and was back in Petone around 5.30am, in time to start his rounds as a kitchen sink salesman, without being seen by early commuters or anyone at his motel. Despite extensive investigations, police had no direct evidence supporting this reimagined timeframe.

Kincade points to unrealistic fuel consumption figures used by police to show Lundy could have driven back to Palmerston North to commit the crimes; and the failure to properly test alibis of other suspects after police changed the time of death by eight hours, as further examples of a tunnel-visioned investigation.

She says it’s difficult for the public to understand how important it is for police “not to have a single lens in their investigation”, because only police had the ability and resources to investigate many things, and decide what testing was carried out.

“If they don't tell us something they found in the scene examination exists, we can’t go into the scene afterwards and find it for ourselves. And we don’t have tools police have, like access to the DNA database.”

The crucial bloodstain fibres still exist.

Police say the sample is stored in a secure ESR facility.

The failure to examine fibres and hairs found at the scene, appears to contrast with the exhaustive and often novel tests a speck on Lundy’s shirt was subjected to, around the world, in order to convict him.

In the strongest evidence police had that Lundy was the murderer, experts concluded the specimen contained Christine’s brain tissue.

Long-time Lundy supporter Geoff Levick has always decried the testing done on this sample, and it is at the heart of an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is yet to make a decision on Lundy’s appeal, after more than four years.

Levick is astounded by the latest developments, saying police’s failure to test the fibres in the window bloodstain was “concerning and rather disgraceful”.

There were only two realistic explanations for how Christine’s blood got on the window, according to Levick: The bloodstained offender touched it when leaving the house; or one of more than a dozen people, including ambulance officers, police, family, and friends who entered and left the house via the conservatory after the bodies were first discovered, brushed against it, transferring blood from the scene.

Levick points out that, along with unknown male DNA found under the fingernails of Christine and Amber, were more than 50 fibres - none of which matched clothes seized from Mark Lundy.

He wants the fibres found on the window to be compared with those found under the victims’ fingernails, and if they match, he argues this would point to it being someone else committing the murders.

However, if the fibres matched Lundy’s clothes, it would be a powerful argument for Lundy’s guilt, Levick accepts.

“Police would be madly keen on that.”

Police alleged Mark Lundy wore some kind of coveralls to commit the crime. But these have never been found, there was no trace of blood in his car, and police could find no evidence Lundy ever purchased coveralls, Levick says.

Forensic scientist Paige McElhinney says the fact the fibres were collected suggests investigators considered them potentially significant.

“However, no assessment appears to have been made of them. This represents a missed opportunity to establish a potential connection between individuals, objects, or locations.”

McElhinney, who worked at ESR for many years, says fibres are everywhere, can easily transfer from person to person, and between surfaces, and may or may not be related to a criminal investigation, but if they “were associated with blood, then this would be an important consideration”.

Police declined to comment further while Lundy's case was being considered by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

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