PAULA OLIVER and ALISON HORWOOD give the background to the Lundy trial - how a self-described fabricator thought he could hide two murders.
Mark Lundy once gave his occupation in an electoral roll as "fabricator". He made steel benches.
Last night, a jury decided he had fabricated something far more sinister.
They found the baby-faced salesman - who professed to adore his family, who rang his daughter every night he was away on business, who worked diligently on the family home - guilty of taking a tomahawk 18 months ago and murdering his wife and daughter in their home.
He struck Christine, 38, so many times she was unrecognisable. He left 7-year-old Amber - the one he apparently adored, the one he phoned to say goodnight to when he was unable to be there - lying in a pool of blood with a gaping wound to her head.
Then he constructed a story for police ...
How he had been in Petone on business all the time. How he had been reading his book at the time. How he could not have driven from Petone to his home in Palmerston North. How he could never do such a thing.
The crucial piece of evidence that ensured Lundy's conviction was an XXL navy, purple and fawn polo shirt bearing the brain tissue of his dead wife.
But while Lundy's guilt appeared clear to the jury, some questions remain.
Why was Christine naked in bed during midwinter, five hours earlier than usual? If she and Amber died around 7pm, why were lights on in the house at 11pm, when witnesses say it was in darkness at 10pm? What happened to the murder weapon, the killer's clothes and the jewellery box taken from the master bedroom?
But the biggest question is what drove a man who seemed a dedicated father and husband to kill his wife of 17 years and their only child so brutally?
There is no doubt Lundy's finances were in dire straits.
Shortly before Christine died, he tried to increase her life insurance policy.
Typically for a town hit by a big crime, rumours in Palmerston North were rife and the evidence did nothing to quash them.
There was forensic scientist Sue Vintiner, who said DNA tests confirmed that Amber was Lundy's child.
At one point, defence lawyer Mike Behrens, QC, raised questions about a person never eliminated from the suspect list who killed himself within days of the murders.
For most of his adult life, Lundy was dogged by health problems typical of the obese, such as borderline diabetes, elevated blood pressure and high cholesterol.
With a penchant for large quantities of rum (with Diet Coke) and takeaway food, he weighed a lumbering 139kg at his heaviest.
But after a year in prison on remand, he had shed at least 20kg. The clothes he wore in the dock looked two sizes too big.
Over the course of his trial, Lundy heard 160 Crown witnesses give evidence against him.
His smooth-skinned baby face was often expressionless when they spoke. Leaning forward and concentrating, he would jot notes on bits of paper and pass them to his lawyers.
He often licked his lips. He appeared comfortable for most of the trial, but when an image of the gruesome murder scene in his bedroom appeared on a screen he reacted strongly, and when his daughter's name was mentioned he squeezed his eyes shut.
Every day of the seven-week trial, members of the Lundy family, and sometimes his in-laws, the Weggery family, took their places in the front row of the public gallery. Every morning Lundy smiled confidently at them as he entered the courtroom flanked by two Department of Corrections officers.
He was eager to get to the stand when his time came. Appearing a bit nervous, Lundy swore on the Bible and then emphatically stated that he definitely did not kill his family. He spoke warmly of his daughter's impromptu concert performances at home, and describe how good his marriage to Christine was.
She was his driving force, his everything. "I should have been there. If I had been there it wouldn't have happened."
In a statement to police he said their sex life was relaxed, but they would gross people out with public displays of affection.
In court, leaning forward in the dock, he smiled at his own stories, and looked pained when the evidence was sad.
His attention to detail was impeccable. His evening meal bought at Pak 'N Save in Petone at 4.45pm on August 29, shortly before the Crown says he turned back to Palmerston North to slaughter his family, consisted of hot chicken with potato, kumara and peas.
He cried when he spoke of Amber and the fact that he and Christine could not have any more children. He left the courtroom to compose himself when he spoke of returning home to see the bloodstains.
But Lundy was less comfortable on the stand during a two-hour cross-examination by the Crown.
He raised his voice when he was asked to explain how brain tissue belonging to Christine appeared on his polo shirt. He could not. He was asked to explain exactly what he did the morning after the murders. He could not. Lundy disputed the evidence of at least five witnesses, including his brother.
And still he maintained his innocence.
What the jury was not told about this kitchen sink salesman was his background.
Extensive inquiries paint a picture of an overweight child who very early recognised the power of money in pulling friends.
Known as Chuck and Sally Lunn Bun because of his size, he was involved in the Scouting movement from the age of 8.
A former classmate at Palmerston North Boys High School called him a dreamer.
He was oversized and a bit of a plodder. He was keen to play rugby but his size and speed let him down and he was always in the lower grades.
People hung around him because he always seemed to have money, said the former classmate, who asked not to be named.
He had heard rumours that Lundy had pilfered from the local church collection as a teenager. Everyone knew about it when he was caught.
Lundy worked as a builder in his younger years, and in 1978 he met local woman Christine Weggery through the Guide and Scout stage production The Gang Show.
Christine was onstage, and he worked backstage.
Two years later, they got to know each other better and Christine asked him to a party she was attending.
They were married shortly after, in May 1983, and Lundy was readily accepted into the Weggery family.
"I thought Christine and Mark were a well-matched pair," said Christine's mother, Helen Weggery.
They had the same interests.
In 1986, they bought their Kelvin Grove home, and Lundy worked hard on alterations. Sometimes the changes would take longer than expected because he was easily distracted.
Amber was born on June 9, 1993. In evidence, Lundy spoke of his excitement on the morning of her birth. When the surgeon announced she was a girl, he yelled, "You beauty."
Even in the witness box he threw arms in the air recalling the moment.
Roslyn Kindergarten head teacher Teresa Cottle, who taught Amber for 16 months, told the Herald at the time of the murders: "That child was everything to them. Their lives revolved around Amber."
When Amber went on to Roslyn School, a few blocks from home, either her mother or father would escort her to and from school every day.
Dave Gaynor, Rangitane area commissioner for the Scouts, told the Herald at the time: "You couldn't hope to meet a nicer pair. The family unit was paramount to both of them."
Shortly after Amber was born, the Lundys went into business together. The business was named Marchris, a combination of Mark and Chris.
Friends spoke of their home as a very sociable one. They had an interest in wine and helped set up a local wine club, Bacchus.
They had a lot of friends, and most people spoke highly of Lundy as friendly, and generally likeable. He would often invite people for dinner and he would do the cooking.
Christine, who weighed 112kg at her heaviest, sometimes blamed Lundy for her size. He was too good a cook, he told the court.
A regular gathering was Friday night football with Christine's brother Clive and his family. Lundy's father, Bill, who was widowed three years ago, was also a regular visitor.
Lundy's roots were Manawatu working class, but he liked the finer things in life. Better still, he wanted people to think he had the cash to pay for them.
He had cash-flow problems, getting in away over his head with an ambitious $2 million wine venture, but he liked to look the part.
Lundy mentioned his family in passing, but there were two things he really loved to talk about - money and booze - said a motelier who had known him for two years through his regular business trips.
He bragged about his cash, and getting drunk. For the last two years, he drove a powerful Ford Fairmont, which was leased. The home at 30 Karamea Cres, which they had owned for 15 years, was valued at $106,000 and still had two mortgages.
"I am hopeless with money," he admitted to police. "That was Christine's department."
He said the business was very successful and had an annual turnover of $600,000.
He also had the idea of posting a $100,000 reward for information on the killer with no real way of paying for it.
Despite his attitude to money, Lundy was often meticulous. A regular North Island travelling salesman for Reginox, he left his rooms clean and tidy.
Lundy told the court how, every summer, he would lay out the tools from his shed, and mark them in his trademark orange and blue paint for easy identification.
The day after the bodies of his wife and only child were found, he kept a 9am routine appointment with a podiatrist to check if he was developing any diabetic complications.
Even at that stage, he would tell the doctor he had an alibi. Despite the deaths, he bragged about expecting to close a $2 million deal with the wine business.
What had unfolded in the days before appeared meticulously planned.
On August 29, 2000, Lundy received a call on his cellphone from Christine and Amber about 5.30pm. He spoke to Christine about his day, then Amber asked if she could have McDonald's for dinner.
Police say he then drove his Fairmont fast to Palmerston North and parked around the corner from home.
He entered the house around 7pm - midway through a three-hour period in which he could not verify his whereabouts and did not answer any calls on his busy salesman's cellphone.
Carrying a tomahawk, he made his way to the bedroom he shared with his wife.
Christine was a night owl who would read or email into the night and often not retire until midnight or 1am. She slept naked except when it was freezing cold.
That midwinter's night she was naked on her side of their queen-size waterbed.
What, if anything, Lundy said to her when he walked into the room will never be known.
What is known is that he swung the tomahawk high above his 190cm (6ft 3in) frame and sent it crashing into his wife's face.
Then he hit her again. And again, and again.
In total, Christine received nine or 10 blows to the face and head. Blood, brains, tissue and bone sprayed for several metres on to the walls, curtains and ceiling. The wooden spoon she kept near her bedside was smeared in blood. One incision on her face was 8cm deep, another 12cm long.
According to Constable Jonathan Oram, the attack left her eyes and the top of her head "not clearly visible."
One of the first on the scene, ambulance officer Wayne Wellford, said: "Her face, in the middle, had been pushed in. That's the easiest way to describe it."
Despite the onslaught, Christine turned her wounded body to try and evade the blows. After she turned, she was hit again. Once on the back of her head and once between her shoulder blades. She received cuts and bruises to her arms and fingers trying to defend herself.
A wedding ring on her left hand was sliced in half.
At the end of the frenzied and brief attack, she was unrecognisable.
Some time during the attack on her mother, Amber left her soft toy in her bottom bunk across the hall and made a fatal trip into the master bedroom.
Lundy told police she was a heavy sleeper, but obviously not heavy enough.
The Crown said the little girl was probably pursued and killed from behind after seeing the attack on Christine. She was a witness who had to be silenced.
She suffered one blow from the tomahawk from behind as she was fleeing the room. More rained down when her head was 70cm from the floor, perhaps when she was on her hands and knees.
She was left face-down in the doorway, her feet in her parents' room, in her ankle socks, singlet and flower and teddy bear print nightie, which was stained with her blood, and her mother's.
Both bodies carried fine traces of blue paint matching Lundy's tools.
The Crown says Lundy then fled the scene, breaking a window latch on the way out to make the attacks look like a failed burglary.
Police knew it was no burglary - he left a sticky handprint on the inside of the window with Christine's blood on it.
Margaret Dance was running late for choir practice about 7.20 when she saw a very big, fat man running to his car, disguised in a blond corkscrew woman's wig. No one else saw him and her evidence was scrutinised in court after she told it she had psychic powers.
Lundy then sped back to the Foreshore Motor Lodge in Petone, apparently disposing of the weapon and clothing along the way.
At 8.29pm he took a business call on his cellphone which was logged in the Lower Hutt area.
The Crown says he tampered with Christine's computer. Investigations showed it had been fiddled with at least five times so it shut down at 10.52 that night.
That was a normal time for her to sign off and gave Lundy what he thought was an alibi.
He added to it by paying $140 for sex with a young blond prostitute from Quarry Inn in Petone.
His story to police that night was that he completed his calls in the Wellington area, picked up a bottle of rum, Coke and dinner and retired to room 10 at the Foreshore. He left the motel to go to the waterfront, where he read his Robert Ludlum book The Icarus Agenda, about a murderous band of terrorist fanatics who seize an American embassy in an Arab city.
No one noticed a fat man in a Fairmont reading under a streetlight that night.
He said he returned to the motel and watched Spanish Prisoner and Enemy of the State on Sky television.
At 11.30pm he rang the Quarry Inn. A prostitute - one of 10 he had seen in the past six years - told the court he arrived at 11.45pm and stayed for about an hour. The woman, known only as Belinda has since left the Quarry Inn.
The next morning, Lundy checked out of the motel, ate a bacon and egg sandwich on the foreshore, and after a few work calls, made his way back to Palmerston North.
By 1.15pm, he was intercepted by police and told the news. He collapsed in tears.
Lundy's behaviour in the six months before his arrest was bizarre. He was overly co-operative with police and would often ring to ask after the inquiry. He was highly emotional at the funeral, and with his supportive band of friends and family.
But early on, he was the main suspect.
The day the bodies were found, police did a credit check to find out about his finances. In the following months, he made several slip-ups to police.
It took him some time to tell them his story about his car having petrol stolen from it. Police wanted to examine the discrepancy in his fuel consumption to match it to petrol used to make it to Palmerston North and back.
He claimed his large hands bumped the flap and the fuel was stolen from the Foreshore amid a spate of thefts. The owner of the motel dismissed this as nonsense.
Obviously emotional when police took him to the house, he was overly quick to point out that a jewellery box was missing, and commented how he was glad it had been a robbery.
Early in the inquiry he talked about the log-off time of Christine's computer and about cellphone sites.
Police suspected he was acting.
In a telling piece of evidence, a policeman described taking Lundy to where he was staying, two days after the killings. Lundy was stooped and upset when he got out of the police car, but when he thought the officer was out of sight, he changed position. Put his head up and shoulders back. Relaxed.
John Douglas, a former FBI criminal profiler whose work was the basis for crime novels like Silence of the Lambs, and who worked on high-profile cases like the O.J. Simpson murder trial , told the Herald from Washington soon after the killings that Lundy was likely to be responsible.
"An overkill where more blows are delivered than necessary to kill and especially to a face or head is often a trademark of a domestic killing," he said.
Such rage was usually directed at people known to the killer.
It was common for the killer to stage the crime to look like an intruder attack, robbery or sexual attack.
The Herald spoke to Lundy in the days before his arrest in February 2001.
He said he did not like driving past Karamea Cres and would take alternative routes across town.
"I don't go out much now," he said at the time.
He said he had no idea who would kill his family. He was aware of the rumours - that it could have been him.
"You couldn't tell me something I haven't already heard. But I try to keep away from it."
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