Khandallah murder crime scene 'very confronting', says detective

RNZ News

5 hours ago

Julia DeLuney in the High Court
Photo:
RNZ / Mark Papalii
Warning: This story contains graphic details.
The jury in the DeLuney murder trial has been shown pictures of the broken-off tip of a fake nail - bright orange - next to the body of 79-year-old Helen Gregory.
Her daughter Julia DeLuney is on trial, accused of her murder, after she was found dead at her Khandallah home in January 2024.
This week, detectives gave evidence about the bloody crime scene, clumps of hair and scalp on the floor in the hall and by the body, and about how they
began to treat the death as suspicious
, rather than an accident.
The Crown says DeLuney murdered her mother in a violent attack, before staging it to look like a fall from the attic.
But the defence says another person caused those fatal injuries, in the 90-minute window in which DeLuney says she left her mother - at this point only minorly injured from a fall from the attic - on the floor of a bedroom, to fetch her husband from Kāpiti to help.
A detective giving evidence said it was when she saw clumps of hair amongst the blood around the body that her mind shifted from thinking of the death as "unexplained" to "suspicious".
Also found beside the body was the tip of an orange false nail.
Other pictures show bloody handprints and streak marks along the walls of the hallway and the entrance to the attic, as well as on the wall at the back of that cupboard, and on various items around the house - the bed in the bedroom where Gregory was found, a mug in the kitchen, and bloody footprints on the kitchen floor.
Detective Constable Kristina O'Connor said on the stand, the gravity of the situation was not lost on her.
"Naturally, it's a very confronting view," she said. "I guess in my profession, you're matter-of-fact, and as you're doing it, you do it, it's very much a job, but it doesn't pass me, the gravity of - and especially looking back - the gravity of what I was standing there looking at."
Forensic experts were yet to weigh in on the evidence, but the trial was set down for another three weeks at least.
The house was checked top to bottom - every magazine page, every cup in every cupboard, every object itemised.
O'Connor said she discovered Gregory - like many older people - kept plastic bags inside more plastic bags in the kitchen, and everything in her house was very neat and ordered.
Meanwhile, the defence was also building its case around the possibility another person was involved.
Lawyer Quentin Duff, cross-examining Detective Sergeant Guilia Boffa, put to her that the police never really considered someone else for the crime.
The court had already heard a neighbour reported a doorknock with nobody there on the night of Gregory's death, around the same time that evening.
He said there had also been a suspicious male reported by an off-duty officer at a nearby park the following day.
But Boffa said their task at that point was to figure out what happened in that house, with manslaughter in mind.
"We're suspecting that that's what's occurred, and we are using emergency powers to gather information to support a charge to be laid," she said.
"And would you agree with me that, to the best of your knowledge, the investigation didn't ever seriously contemplate the idea that there might have been a burglar that had killed Mrs Gregory?" she was asked.
"That is absolutely incorrect," Boffa replied.
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