Lundy appeal painful prospect, says wife's friend

Mark Lundy. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Mark Lundy's latest appeal against his double-murder conviction and sentence is a painful prospect for his murdered wife's good friend.

Christine Lundy's friend Christine Lockett said she expected the appeal but it was still upsetting.

"It's just putting the family through [agony] so yes, I can understand that people will not be very happy," she said yesterday.

Lundy was again found guilty on April 1 of murdering his wife Christine and 7-year-old daughter Amber in their Palmerston North home.

Despite an unsuccessful appeal and retrial since the killings in August 2000 and his first conviction in 2002, Lundy's lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade said the convicted murderer would appeal again.

Ms Lockett believed Lundy was self-centred and would exhaust every possible legal outlet without considering other people's feelings.

She said it was a now a case of waiting with "bated breath once again" to see how the latest appeal panned out.

Ms Kincade said the appeal would be lodged in the Court of Appeal.

"The appeal is against sentence and conviction. It is not appropriate to rehearse in any detail in a public forum the grounds of the appeal, but it can be said that the issues raised will include a consideration of the [messenger RNA] evidence." Ribonucleic acid (RNA) was discussed during the most recent trial.

A key plank of the Crown case was that Mrs Lundy's brain matter was found in one of her husband's polo shirts.

Prosecutor Philip Morgan, QC, said testing showed two stains found on the shirt were from tissue one billion billion times more likely to belong to Mrs Lundy than any other person in New Zealand.

Dr Laetitia Sijen from the Netherlands Forensic Institute said she arrived at a conclusion brain matter was present on Lundy's shirt based on tests performed on RNA in a sample. But professor of molecular medicine Stephen Buston claimed there were problems with timings and the test.

Lundy was first found guilty of the murders in 2002 and sentenced to life. In 2013, Lundy appealed to the Privy Council, which threw out his conviction and a retrial began this year.