Julia DeLuney is on trial at the High Court in Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother Helen Gregory (insert) in her Khandallah home.
Julia DeLuney is on trial at the High Court in Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother Helen Gregory (insert) in her Khandallah home.
WARNING: This story contains forensic details and an image of the scene that could be upsetting.
A woman killed in her Khandallah home was hit while she was standing, and again as she lay in a small spare bedroom where she died, a court has been told
Julia DeLuneyis accused of murdering her mother Helen Gregory, 79, on January 24, last year.
The Crown has suggested DeLuney, who dealt in cryptocurrency, was in financial difficulty and attacked her mother before leaving the house, driving to her own home and then returning later with her husband.
The court was shown images of blood stains on the carpet and walls in the bedroom of Helen Gregory's home. Photo / Supplied.
There was also blood on the walls, on the bedroom furniture and Gregory. It was a brutal scene and some photographs weren’t displayed on the screen in open court.
Knight explained the blood on Gregory’s face showed she was standing while her head was bleeding, and had continued to bleed while she lay face down on the floor.
She said some blood stains on the walls were unusual. One had been there for some time. Knight explained this could have come from blood-stained clothing touching the wall.
The court also heard about an entertainment unit and a speaker in the room. Blood was found on the front of the speaker box and the left side of the unit. There was a pool of blood at the bottom of the unit.
Knight said this was likely transfer staining because there were numerous grey hairs found in the blood, which meant they had likely been in contact with Gregory’s head.
Having been given information about the injuries to the back of Gregory’s head, Knight said, considering those injuries and the presence of hairs, it was likely Gregory received one or more blows to her head, when her head was near the floor in this area and had hit the left side of the unit.
Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Bloody rings on the kitchen bench
The Crown says that DeLuney violently attacked her mother, possibly with a vase, before staging the scene to make it look like she’d fallen from the attic. The vase has never been found.
During her evidence, Knight also told the court about three circular rings of blood on a white tile embedded on the kitchen bench. The rings were visible during luminol testing, which picks up blood staining. Testing showed three overlapping rings, measuring between 125-135mm, on the tile.
In an attempt to find the item responsible for the ring, other household items were tested, including a lampshade, jars, items from the kitchen cupboards, candlesticks and the bases of two bedside lamps from a bedroom. No blood was detected on any of these items.
Another area of interest was the kitchen sink. The court heard luminol testing showed numerous diluted blood stains on the front, back and left sides of the stainless steel sink.
Knight told the court these were most likely made by diluted blood being splashed or flicked up and then left to dry.
She said it would appear likely that someone had washed their blood-stained hands, or a blood-stained item, in the kitchen sink.
Blood was also found on the fridge door handle and on the handle of a mug on the kitchen table, as well as bloody footprints on the kitchen floor. Knight suggested these may have been made by a court shoe or slipper because of the lack of a pattern on the sole.
Earlier, the court heard from Inspector David Bealing, who was responsible for organising the search of the boundary and garden at the property.
The defence says someone else was responsible for Gregory’s death and had entered the house after DeLuney left to drive back to Kapiti and collect her husband.
DeLuney’s lawyer Quentin Duff read out a list of items Bealing’s “eagle-eyed” team had found during their extensive search of the Gregory’s property.
These included two glass bottles in agapanthus plants, a band-aid and chewing gum in the driveway gutter of a neighbour’s property. There was also a discarded piece of orange weed-eater string near the base of a punga tree, above the carport.
There was no sign of fake nails or discharged clothing, which they had been directed to look for, he said.
The house looked like it was in darkness
Earlier, the court heard from Peter Haw, a long-time friend of Gregory’s who spoke to her by phone on the morning of the day she died.
In a statement read to the court, Haw recalled that during the phone call, she’d mentioned some money or jewellery that had been taken by a family member or tradie.
She told Haw she was trying to sort it out, but had seemed reluctant to talk about it, so he hadn’t pressed her.
Earlier, the court heard Gregory had reported the theft of money from her house to the police in the weeks before her death.
A neighbour told the court her bedroom window looked up a steep bank to Gregory’s window.
She told the court she normally went to bed at 10.30pm to read, by which time Gregory’s light was off and the blind was down. Gregory’s house was normally in darkness when she got into bed, she said.
But on the night of Gregory’s death, when she went to bed, the neighbour told police the large blind was up, there were no lights on, and the window was still open.
”The house looked like it was in darkness and not shut up for the night.”
She was woken in the early hours by the light from Gregory’s place, which had been turned on.
The trial before Justice Peter Churchman is now in the second week, with the trial expected to last four to five weeks.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
