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17th February 2015, 05:40 AM | #121 |
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I have said before that it is disconcerting that in this, a first world country, the people are being led up the garden path as is happening here with an impossible theory.
Without the stomach contents research in the Kercher, Steenkamp* and this case, I would be another ignorant Wally. *Steenkamp ate around midnight, and either Pistorius was unaware because she was silent, or he chose to supress the knowledge not realising it was totally conclusive. Neither truth helps determine whether he knew who was in the bathroom. |
18th February 2015, 02:43 PM | #122 |
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Is this case still up before the court? Anything happening?
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18th February 2015, 04:01 PM | #123 |
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Reporting is not particularly good, they are discussing petrol consumption and missing petrol but not the parameters, and whether he refilled the car or where. The prostitute left at 12 40am, so after 2 is the earlest time for the prosecution, more than 8 hours after the McDonalds drive through, and recognisable ingredients still in the stomachs.
We might hear something from Chris Morrison, by skype, who was due to meet Lundy the morning the bodies were discovered to discuss the settlement due that day, that obviously couldn't happen with or without the murders. He immediately noted a missing jewellery box from Christine's bedroom table when accompanying police after discovery, but said he did not really know what had been in it. Later he told people the contents were worth 20k, so insurance should feature heavily in the trial, but no word yet. Recent link by a quirky journalist Chris Braunias says "Brent Potter, who also gave evidence, said he invited Lundy for morning tea in his Lower Hutt joinery business on the day the bodies were found. When he left the courtroom, the two men gave each other the familiar New Zealand male greeting of raising their eyebrows at each other. "I bought a sink tap off of him that day," he remembered. "It was an impulse buy." He said Lundy and his staff sat down for smoko. "He was cheerful, the same as ever." Smiling, laughing; the smoko room, the buying of a tap; a chat about placing an advertisement in the police gazette ... All while Christine and Amber lay dead in their home, blood all over the walls - "brains" as one witness said - with the ranchslider open and the curtains closed and the phone ringing, and Helen Weggery, Christine's mother, about to drive over for lunch." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=11401820 |
18th February 2015, 04:53 PM | #124 |
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Thanks. I'm not clued up on the missing petrol. (Getting mixed up with Gilroy, who may have burned a lot of petrol getting his car stuck and then unstuck again.)
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18th February 2015, 11:20 PM | #125 |
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I get it, here is todays link
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=11404397 It seems the prosecution has added up the trips he disclosed in the 9 previous days, and the actual distance, which presumably started with a tachometer reading for some purpose, and the discrepancy is 400 km, just right for the dash up and back. However, this recollection of course will include every trip he remembers and exclude forgotten trips. Shades of what were you doing 96 hours ago, and if you misstate a detail, go directly to jail. Of course in this case they are now creating this trip for a time the victims were long dead, plenty of parallels with Kercher. I did not think our guys were so stupid. Let us see if the case turns on bombshell testimony, where the defence ditches their previous requirement, stomach contents are unreliable in substantiating an early death, and replace with the absolute truth, stomach contents preclude the late death and all is forgiven, surgeon Pang. |
19th February 2015, 01:12 AM | #126 |
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Right, digestive evidence is not precise, but neither can it be written off as meaningless.
It sounds like the prosecution is cornered on the drive time. They realize too many people have performed that experiment since the original trial, and it always fails. So, they are moving TOD to the wee hours of the morning, après hooker. Now they will have to say the digestive evidence, which they formerly insisted was accurate within 15 minutes, means nothing at all. I guess anything is better than to admit the truth, which is that the case is a giant mistake, and this guy should not have been charged in the first place. |
19th February 2015, 02:37 AM | #127 |
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These processes should not be left to police lawyers and judges. Clearly they will do ok 99% of the time, and accordingly the general public are complacent and hoodwinked. I was one of that number after the first trial.
Meanwhile Bain must prove innocence... I will update the thread soon. |
19th February 2015, 03:50 AM | #128 |
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Thank you, I get it now. Not impressed. The police were doing these sums in order to incriminate him, and I can guess which way the rounding errors went. A point to bear in mind I think is that 400 km seems to be the least that they need. If they have only 400 km and there are likely to be some forgotten trips, they're screwed. He's still not guilty if they can only find 200 km of unaccounted-for mileage. It's quite surprising how much a whole bunch of relatively short trips can add up to. It seems to me the prosecution are close to coming up short on the distance they need already, with significant uncounted mileage. Well, there is other competing evidence suggesting a later time of death in this case. Christine apparently being in bed. Possibly having switched off the computer just before she went to bed at eleven. The lights in the house and so on. I appreciate that these things may have other explanations, but they still carry some weight. I don't believe in people carrying McDonald's meals home from a drive-through and then keeping them to eat hours later. Especially not when one of these people is seven years old. But I'd like a better explanation for the whole scenario. It may be that the digestive evidence could push the time to beyond eleven, if we knew the details. Though that sits very badly with the earlier Crown declarations that they definitely died at 7.15 according to that evidence. I don't see how you can get it to 2.30 am though, and that's what you have to do to make Lundy guilty. They never had a case against this guy. It's a shocker. |
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19th February 2015, 04:01 AM | #129 |
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It is tempting to push TOD beyond computer and lights out, to conform to domestic habits, and indeed if I could be persuaded to suspend the science of gastric evidence I could get there.
However the Kercher case has driven me to read as many studies as I could find, and all roads lead to Rome, and they could not have been alive at 11 pm. I regard it as crucial to establish more about the window tampering and blood. There is still no theory that wraps the case up, yet something happened. |
19th February 2015, 05:14 AM | #130 |
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This is starting to sound like the Willie MacRae death. Something happened, but the circumstances are so bizarre that nothing seems to fit. There hasn't been any court case about that though, not even an FAI, so there's nothing to discuss in this subforum.
As far as the gastric emptying goes, I'm inclined to agree with you, but I'm unsure what the exact, reliable findings were so I'm not yet wholly convinced it couldn't be pushed later. Either the domestic circumstances are misleading us or the gastric contents are misleading us and I don't really know which yet. If Amber usually went to bed at eight, can we push it past that time? Was she in night clothes when she was murdered? |
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19th February 2015, 02:43 PM | #131 |
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My understanding, from what I have read over the years, is that digestive evidence can be a reliable indicator of TOD, but only if accurate information is available. The reason is that digestion is slowed by the consumption of additional food. Investigators have to know when the person last ate, and what they ate.
We have that information in the Meredith Kercher case: pizza at roughly 6 pm, dessert at roughly 8 pm, a completely empty duodenum and small intestine. It suggests she was killed before 10 pm. We don't have a clear fact pattern in the Lundy case. The victims were an obese woman and an obese child. They may have eaten at 6 pm and then continued their poor dietary habits through the evening with snacks. There is some evidence they did so. Moreover, the pathologist noted an absence of material in the duodenum but does not seem to have examined the intestinal contents closely if at all. So... is it not possible they were murdered around 11 pm? I think it is. My conjecture, which has evolved as I have gathered information, is that the killer(s) waited for the woman to go to bed. She shut down her computer just before she did so. As soon as she was in bed, with the lights out, the killer(s) got into the place silently, by a means they had worked out in advance, and they blitzed her in her bed. Then they killed the child, who had been awakened by the disturbance. They could not leave behind a witness who would no doubt run to a neighbor as soon as they left the crime scene. Theft was not their primary motive, but they grabbed some valuables that were in plain sight, i.e., a small box of jewelry. I do not see this case as an impenetrable mystery in which nothing fits. It looks familiar and prosaic. We just don't know the motive. |
19th February 2015, 02:44 PM | #132 |
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You've hit the nail on the head here. There is 423 km of unaccounted for travel in the 9 days up to the time he was stopped by the police. If 300 km of that is the supposed return trip to Palmerston North on the 9th day, it leaves 123 km unaccounted for in the previous 8 days. It would only take, say, 160 km to be accounted for in the first 8 days for it to be impossible to do 300 km on the 9th. 160 km = 20 km a day, which is nothing - especially considering police have no data at all for 5 of those days.
Anyway, all these calculations are silly because the prosecution seem to be avoiding the elephant in the room with the mileage: to do the extra trip from Petone to Palmerston North and back in the middle of the night would, by their own testing, have required more fuel than would fit in the car's tank. The only way that scenario works is Lundy has to refill his car sometime between 00:38 am and 8:54 am. I'd imagine there would be very few petrol stations within range open at that time of night, and if there were, some CCTV evidence or witness should have been relatively simple for the police to track down. It's a bad joke. Yesterday there was the police office who said the testing of the trip runs between Petone and PN were "hardly a scientific experiment". Really? You're convicting people for murder and sending them to jail for 20 years based on unscientific experiments? |
19th February 2015, 02:56 PM | #133 |
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19th February 2015, 03:01 PM | #134 |
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19th February 2015, 04:17 PM | #135 |
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Welcome to the forum, Hard Cheese! It sounds as if you have a good grasp of the details here, excellent!
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19th February 2015, 07:30 PM | #136 |
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Well, the fact that both Christine and Amber had the DNA of two unknown males under their fingernails tends to point to towards either...
1. burglars who were caught in the act and killed witnesses who could describe them. If so it is going to be very hard to prove or solve as there are no other leads. 2. burglars who were known to the Lundys and were going after the jewellery box. They were caught in the act and killed witnesses who could identify them. If so, a DNA sweep of known acquaintances would require the co-operation of a lot of people. 3. a targeted killing of Christine for some reason that is not yet apparent. Amber was killed because she witnessed the killing of her mother. If so, then there is vital information about Christine that is entirely missing. 4. killers hired by Mark Lundy. Amber was killed because she witnessed the killing of her mother. If so, then Lundy has been meticulous in not leaving any kind of money trail. He would have needed to hide money taken from his business for a considerable time beforehand and without leaving a trace. Alternatively, he could have told the killers to take the jewellery box (apparently the contents were worth $20,000+) as payment for the contract. |
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19th February 2015, 07:37 PM | #137 |
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19th February 2015, 08:05 PM | #138 |
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19th February 2015, 08:13 PM | #139 |
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True - but just the other week I had to borrow a weedeater and put it along with a 2 litre plastic milk bottle half filled with petrol in the back of my car. Even after a short 1 hour trip, You could still smell petrol in the car for a couple of days afterwards. I'd imagine the smell would have been obvious to the police when they picked him up the next morning.
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19th February 2015, 08:24 PM | #140 |
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Yeah, the fuel consumption figures are pretty poorly reported. The police officer did PN - Petone, then visited some (but not all!) the businesses around Wellington that Lundy was supposed to have done, then Petone - Palmerston North, 330.92 km. (His records showed he put 75.95 litres into the car, but apparently the car only has a 68 litre tank - ???). The police are saying that Lundy did an extra round trip (say, 284 km) in the night to bump off his wife and daughter, so 615 km in total. So the question is, where/how did Lundy refuel?
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19th February 2015, 08:36 PM | #141 |
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20th February 2015, 09:07 AM | #142 |
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I always carry a 5 litre plastic container of petrol in the boot of my Gold hatchback. I never smell anything. (It's in a car-boot organiser bag that prevents it being thrown around.)
I haven't got my head round all of this yet, but mileage and fuel aside, there seems to be no opportunity for him to have returned home before about 2.30 am. |
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20th February 2015, 01:18 PM | #143 |
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The evidence in this case leads to only one inevitable conclusion. Mark Lundy hired his secret blonde transsexual lover to do the killings for him! She was the one the psychic saw running towards the house on the night of the murders.
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20th February 2015, 02:34 PM | #144 |
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Golf, even. It's dark blue. (My previous car was a
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22nd February 2015, 08:06 PM | #145 | ||
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Someone might throw light on this I have found in back ground reading. The motive alleged was that Mark was in serious financial trouble, and murdered his wife for the insurance money. In actual fact, When the company Marchris Enterprises was wound up, there was sufficient money to pay all creditors, with some debtors uncollected. The Salu Vino project had investor's money secured in a trust account without any deductions. The land he was trying to purchase for the vineyard project fell through without him being committed for the $2,000,000 purchase at Maraekakaho in Hawkes Bay. The insurance policy increase was not at Mark's request, and nor was he the person that instigated any claim on the policy. This is inconsistent with the crown theory. A very long link, http://murderpedia.org/male.L/l/lundy-mark.htm The judge summed up: Jurors must not consider possible lies in isolation and simply short-cut around them, the judge said. The possibilities had to be considered along with the other associated evidence. Justice Ellis said the jury was being asked to decide on a case of circumstantial evidence which the Crown said came together to prove guilt, and which the defence said was flawed and fell far short of the required standard for conviction. If the jury found the DNA material on Lundy's shirt got there during or very soon after Christine and Amber's murders, "it is a very powerful piece of evidence for the prosecution. But if you are in doubt, the prosecution case is severely weakened." Matters of lights at the house and the computer clock needed careful consideration, the judge said. "For prosecution to succeed, a 7pm time of death is essential. If you have a reasonable doubt about this, it is fatal to the prosecution case." Consider the final sentence here. The prosecution has discarded this idea. How does Judge Ellis therefore regard the current proceedings? |
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22nd February 2015, 10:48 PM | #146 |
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That content looks like it was sourced from lundytruth.co.nz (sorry, can't post a URL yet ), which was set up by supporters of Lundy after the first trial.
Marchris is the kitchen sink business, I get the impression that despite cash flow issues it was viable - it must have been if the Lundys continued to pay their mortgage off the back of it. I'd imagine this statement is true. The prosecution would have concentrated on the $100K the business owed to make it look like Lundy was in bad financial shape. This is probably true also - the problem really being that there weren't enough investors. This is weird, even though they might have got the information from a close source, I can only think his supporters are mistaken here. There would be legal documentation backing up the property owner having accepted Lundy's unconditional offer, and documentation around the penalty interest. I think this is generally accepted by everyone, and it drives a big truck through the prosecution's ridiculous notion that Lundy was in it for the insurance. I mean, really - anyone with half a brain who's ever seen a crime film knows that you can't collect life insurance on someone you've murdered. As the defence said on the first day, by changing the TOD the prosecution have effectively admitted he was falsely convicted. I'm shocked at how weak the prosecution case has been so far - since a not guilty verdict is going to have Lundy come knocking at their door for a huge compensation payout. Somewhat ironic, given their insistence he did it for the money. |
23rd February 2015, 04:07 AM | #147 |
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On the insurance front, it seems incredibly reasonable that a salesman proposed increasing cover as far as possible. Lundy would say hell yes because the premium increase would appear fiscal noise amongst his other business concerns, and the salesman gets instant cash.
Chris Morrison's brother lives three doors down and we are waiting patiently for him to respond to skype queries on the land deal. Something will emerge, but probably nothing particularly ground breaking. |
23rd February 2015, 01:16 PM | #148 |
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23rd February 2015, 02:14 PM | #149 |
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Atheist, you seem quite sure Lundy was personally responsible for the killings, yet Justice Ellis in the summing up in the first trial said the prosecution fails if they can't prove the 7 15pm death time. Having looked at the digestive evidence, there is a basic concensus (on this thread) that it may be possible to push that time of death out to allow Christine a normal bed time, but 2 30 am is completely out of the question. How can this be reconciled with the current prosecution abandoning the evening theory of death, and replacing with a death 8 and a half hours after dinner, when complete stomach emptying seldom takes more than 5 hours, let alone partial emptying.
Also his car had not been touched, containing the regular detritus of a salesman. Where is the blood? |
23rd February 2015, 02:46 PM | #150 |
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Highly unlikely. That would be a lot of extra time at the murder scene
a. grab the lawnmower petrol container from his garage b. take it back to where he parked the car c. poor the petrol into the car d. take the can back to his garage I can see 10 to 15 minutes being consumed doing all that, which would all eat into his already impossible driving time. |
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23rd February 2015, 03:28 PM | #151 |
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immunohistochemical perplexity
The Atheist,
Do you claim that Mark Lundy left his silhouette in biological matter at the crime scene? If so, what is your source? Rolfe, If your friends don't mind pondering a question about immunohistochemistry, I am still stuck trying to understand how likely it is for something to cross react between the brain or neural tissue of a human and a chicken, yet not cross react with other things. It seems to me that the onus should be on the prosecution's witness to have a reasonable and specific scientific explanation. Here is a link to a document about the appeal. There is some information in it on this issue, as well as on gastric emptying. EDT Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) seems to be one of the markers. Cytokeratin 5/6 seems to be another. Paragraph 63. "Dr Miller strongly disagreed with Professor Whitwell’s portrayal of his presentation of the photographs which accompanied his report as misleadingly selective. He pointed out that he had IHC technologists mount a multi-issue control array (MCA) on the same slides as the sections from Mr Lundy’s shirt. The MCA contained up to 90 or more small pieces of tissue of different types, arranged in a grid- like pattern. By using the MCAs and studying them along with the tissue in the sample from the shirt, Dr Miller claimed that it was possible to establish that the IHC stains were performing exactly as they should if the tissue was CNS tissue. He suggested that it was not likely that during a criminal trial anyone would want to view photographs of the 90 individual control samples. To prepare a concise report it was necessary for him to be selective." |
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23rd February 2015, 03:37 PM | #152 |
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I'll see if I can get my brain round it sufficiently to ask my colleagues. I suspect that it may be so way out there all I'll get is puzzled stares.
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23rd February 2015, 03:59 PM | #153 |
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Yes, I am quite sure Mark Lundy killed his wife & child, but it seems to me our pathetic excuse for a police force screwed up again.
I've never followed the evidence closely, because I haven't needed to - I'm neither a policeman or a lawyer in the case. The case is revolting and I never watch TV news anyway. If Lundy didn't do it, an accomplice did. The idea of a stranger doing it is 100% fantasy. And no, I am not giving reasons why I am certain in my view, because I'm not here to convince anyone. As always, what people think is immaterial to me. I only ever mentioned Lundy in passing regarding compensation and saw my name being used in vain. |
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23rd February 2015, 04:04 PM | #154 |
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23rd February 2015, 04:05 PM | #155 |
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I don't know what "lawnmower petrol" you're referring to - I've never heard the existence of such a thing reported anywhere, or anyone in court suggesting that's how Lundy refuelled. Perhaps you could provide a link?
Anyway, the "jerry can" refuelling theory has 3 main problems that I can see: Problem 1. Lundy has 68 litres in his tank when he filled up at Naenae, and 10.1 litres when he was stopped the next day in PN. The police testing required 75.9 litres of fuel to replicate his movements, including the alleged extra trip to PN and back. He would need to add another 18 litres to get to the net fuel position he was found with the next day. That's a pretty big "lawnmower" Problem 2. The police testing required 40.6 litres of fuel to make the return trip to PN. If Lundy was smart enough to realise he needed extra fuel to make the murder trip, and went to the trouble to organise jerry cans and fuel undetected, why would he underfuel from the jerry cans? Surely you'd add the same amount you'd need to make the return trip (to give you a net zero fuel position)? By underfueling by 22.6 litres you raise a big flag saying "look at me" Problem 3. Where are the "jerry cans"? How did he dispose of them? Based on his movements that day, there are only limited possibilities for disposal - and nothing was ever found. Is there evidence of him ever owning a jerry can, or anyone ever see him filling containers with petrol? Without evidence, all you are left with is speculation. |
23rd February 2015, 04:18 PM | #156 |
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Thanks for finding this important link Chris, I am more confounded than ever.
Once again full stomachs with recognisable contents, and empty duodenums, and specifically noting the duplication between victims as limiting interpretive error. Once again an expert saying there is nothing to be learned about time of death, but in this case called by the defence. With the new prosecution theory, I hope they are returning to square one, and finding a new expert. Do we have here a medical specialist, Dr Stables almost perjuring himself to promote (a now abandoned) defence? Was he manufacturing medical testimony as a hired gun? Deeply ironic with the new theory. Quote "It is only after taking into consideration all these factors one might be able to give a 'rough' time framein which death may have occurred. However I myself would not take this position. End Quote. |
23rd February 2015, 04:29 PM | #157 |
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The best I can do on finding anything on a silhouette is a passage from a blog by someone named Alan Charman: "It should have been obvious to the investigators that their proposed time frame didn't work. That means one of two things: that Lundy had an accomplice, or the time of the crimes was much later, in the early hours of the morning. Only the insane or complicit would support a man who hacked his wife and child to bits so insanely that he left a reverse shadow on the wall behind where he stood; a silhouette etched in the blood splattered from his victims, so if there was an accomplice, that's where he would be. Either way, it was certain the Crown case could not stand on the evidence provided, and now we're seeing those pigeons come home to roost.
There is no doubt that Lundy is guilty, but there is equally no doubt he will get away with it." So far I have not found any news reports that discuss this negative image from splatter. It may be a legend of the case that is untrue (Mr. Charman does not appear to be authoritarian--quite the contrary). I am open to the suggestion that Mr. Lundy hired a hit man, assuming that someone were to offer evidence to that effect. However, the early-morning murder scenario now being offered by the prosecution just does not make sense, given the digestive evidence. |
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23rd February 2015, 04:50 PM | #158 |
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The silhouette thing seems inherently unlikely, given that the killer would be moving and would have struck several blows. It would also mean that the killer would be liberally spattered with blood and tissue, making the improvised immunohistochemistry method somewhat redundant.
I hate to drag the Sion Jenkins case in again, or Paul Esslemont, but the same thing was wrong in both these cases. If the garment tested had really been worn by the killer when committing the murder, there would inevitably have been far more blood on it than was actually found. (Also, in all three cases the accused seems to have had ample opportunity to launder the garment in question; opportunity which wasn't taken.) You can accuse anyone of any murder at all, if you postulate that he paid someone else to do it for him while he established an alibi. There are distinct problems with this idea though. First, where did the money come from? Is there any evidence of Lundy getting together the sort of sum that might have been required, and paying it? His finances were after all supposed to be at the heart of this case. And second, if you're going to do that, you establish a bloody alibi! Lundy's wasn't nearly strong enough for someone who was aware he would need to prove he hadn't had a chance to get back home that evening. There would surely have been more phone calls, and he wouldn't have moved his car, and he wouldn't have sloped off to read a book by the beach where nobody was observing him. I don't think the evidence ever supported an assertion that the time of death was definitely 7 o'clock, or 7.15 or anything as precise as that. I think it could have been as early as that but it could have been as late as 8.30 or 9 o'clock. That would allow for Amber to have been in bed, but still doesn't explain the switching off of the computer just before 11 o'clock or Christine already being in bed - if she was. I really can't see how the empty duodenums, if that's accurate, can put the time of death much past nine. I can't see it stretching to eleven. And as far as I can see, given the distance involved, Lundy has an alibi right through to about 2.30 am. That's ridiculous. It's impossible. I'd love to know how a time of death no later than nine-ish (say 9.30 at the very outside, on what we've heard about the alimentary tract evidence) can be reconciled with the story about the lights in the house, the computer switch-off time, and Christine being in bed. |
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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23rd February 2015, 07:25 PM | #159 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Nelson, New Zealand
Posts: 25,300
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It is often said (especially, but not exclusively in US criminal Law) that to prove the crime, the prosecution need to establish that three elements of the crime were present; that the accused had the motive, the means and the opportunity to commit the crime
1. No opportunity: The early evening TOD theory has too short a window for him to have made a return trip home from Petone, its simply impossible for him to have done that. The early morning TOD theory is ruled out by the stomach contents. He has a cast iron alibi for the time in between. 2. No Motive: Lundy's businesses were ticking over OK, he was not in the deep financial difficulty the prosecution said he was, and even with the land deal that went sour, he would be off the unconditional hook if the land sold to someone else, and it did. By all accounts he loved his wife and daughter very much. 3. Unknown Means: The murder weapon has never been found. Did he ever own a tomahawk or similar tool that is now missing? For a conviction in a crime of this type, I would expect to see three out of three. The prosecution have less than one. |
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If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong. Its TRE45ON season... convict the F45CIST!! |
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23rd February 2015, 08:01 PM | #160 |
The Grammar Tyrant
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 34,996
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I haven't seen it suggested anywhere, so I brought it up as an option. I don't even know whether Lundy owned a lawnmower, but the majority of Kiwis do, and it's no big deal to have a 20 litre can.
I'm struggling to understand why him getting petrol is an issue. Lots of petrol stations around and 20 litre cans are about ten bucks. |
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