Defence lawyers for Kāpiti murder accused Julia DeLuney 53, have asked the jury not to discount the possibility that there was a third person involved, with a neighbour reporting a mysterious knock on their door that same evening 79-year-old Helen Gregory was killed.
The murder case before Justice Peter Churchman and jury at the High Court in Wellington have heard of scenes described by a detective as very confronting at the home of Mrs Gregory.
Her daughter Julia DeLuney is on trial, accused of her murder, after Mrs Gregory 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 former school teacher Mrs DeLuney, murdered her mother in a violent attack, before staging it to look like a fall from the attic.
Mrs DeLuney 53, told police that when she left the house, her mother had only very minor injuries, yet she’d returned to a “warzone.”
The defence also says another person caused those fatal injuries, in the 90-minute window in which Mrs 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.
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 Mrs 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,” says Detective O’Connor. “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.”
Defence lawyer Quentin Duff, cross-examining Detective Sergeant Guilia Boffa, put to her that the police never really considered someone else for the crime.
He said the court had already heard a neighbour reported a door-knock with nobody there on the night of Mrs Gregory’s death, around the same time that evening.
Mr Duff said there had also been a suspicious male reported by an off-duty officer at a nearby park the following day.
Detective 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,” replied Detective Boffa.
The trial before Justice Peter Churchman is expected to take four to five weeks, with the Crown set to call more than 80 more witnesses.
