Lundy murders

Christine Marie Lundy, 38, and her 7-year-old daughter Amber Grace Lundy were murdered in Palmerston North, New Zealand, on 29 or 30 August 2000. In February 2001, after a six month investigation, Christine's husband and Amber's father, Mark Edward Lundy (then aged 43), was arrested and charged, and in 2002, he was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.

Mobile phone data proved that Lundy was in Petone at 5:30 pm and 8:28 pm that night. He was also confirmed as being in his motel in Petone between 11:30 pm and 1:00 am by a sex worker. At his first trial, the prosecution claimed Lundy left Petone immediately after the 5:30 phone call, drove to Palmerston North, killed his wife and daughter at about 7:00 pm, disposed of his bloody clothes and the murder weapon, altered the timing on the family computer to suggest they were still alive at 7:00 pm, was seen running down the street wearing a blond wig and drove the same 134 kilometres back to Petone by 8:28 pm. Lundy's defence maintained that travelling to Palmerston North and back in three hours was implausible.

In 2002, following his conviction, Lundy took his case to the New Zealand Court of Appeal; the court rejected his appeal and increased his non-parole period to 20 years. In 2013, on appeal to the Privy Council in Britain, the convictions were quashed because of exculpatory evidence that had been withheld at the first trial, and a re-trial was ordered.

At the retrial in 2015, the police accepted that Lundy could not have made the round trip between Petone and Palmerston North between 5:30 pm and 8:28 pm, and presented an entirely different version of events. They now claimed that he travelled back to Palmerston North in the middle of the night after spending time with a sex worker in Petone. At both trials, contentious evidence was presented that specks of matter found on Lundy's shirt came from Christine's brain tissue. In April 2015, he was found guilty again.

Lundy has continued to claim he is innocent, and in 2017, took his second conviction to the Court of Appeal. On 9 October 2018 the court dismissed the appeal. In 2022, following an application, the new Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) agreed to investigate his case. the CCRC has yet to return its review. In 2022 and 2023 Lundy appeared before the parole board where he continued to maintain his innocence; the board denied parole, stating Lundy "remain[s] an undue risk". Provided by Wikipedia