Julia DeLuney is on trial at the High Court at Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother Helen Gregory (inset) in her Khandallah home.
Julia DeLuney is on trial at the High Court at Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother Helen Gregory (inset) in her Khandallah home.
WARNING: This story contains images of crime scene images
The woman accused of murdering her mother angrily told police they were making her out to be a “f***** monster” and she’d never hurt her mother or hit her kids.
A jury in the High Court at Wellington was yesterdayshown a two-hour, 40-minute video interview Julia DeLuney gave police voluntarily, the night after her mother Helen Gregory died.
DeLuney, 53, denies murdering her mother at the 79-year-old’s Baroda St, Khandallah, property on January 24 last year. She claims someone else was responsible for the attack while she drove back to the Kāpiti Coast to get help after her mother fell from the attic.
But the Crown says DeLuney was the killer and staged the scene to make it look like her elderly mother had fallen.
Julia DeLuney in the dock during her trial for the murder of her mother, Helen Gregory. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Wearing a white and green dressing gown over her clothes for warmth, the softly spoken DeLuney’s words were inaudible at times because she was upset and crying.
In the interview, DeLuney said she didn’t call for help as she was scared she’d be blamed for allowing her mother to climb up to the attic.
Relaying her version of the evening’s events to Detective Christopher Clarke, she said she’d arranged the visit so they could book ballet tickets for Gregory’s upcoming 80th birthday.
During the visit, her mother had mentioned a top that went with an outfit she’d had since she was 21 years old. Gregory was obsessed with finding it, she said.
The pair spent 40 minutes searching the house from top to bottom for the “sheer black overlay” worn over a dress.
That included a cupboard up the top of the walk-in wardrobe where DeLuney found a “big thing” of toilet paper.
“She goes, ‘Oh, bring that down I’ll, I’ll put it up in the roof so I don’t forget it’,” DeLuney said in the interview.
In hindsight, she said she should have stopped her mother.
“She still thinks she’s you know 25 [years old and] can do that. And um I heard a scream and a crash kind of, so ran to her, and, she was shocked and s-scared.”
She said she was trying to pick her mother up but she was sore on the back of her head and there were items, such as a vacuum cleaner, broom and ironing board on the floor around her.
Items at the bottom of the utlility cupboard in Helen Gregory's Khandallah home. Photo / Supplied
She described helping her mother down the hallway to the spare room, because it had more space than the narrow hallway and the dining room, which had a large table in it.
“It just felt [gesturing with arms] more, more space, yeah,” she said in the interview.
She’d laid her mother on the carpet, her feet facing the window, because she didn’t want to put blood on the nice duvets.
And her mother asked her not to call an ambulance.
“I was about to ring 111 but, I know I didn’t because I was scared ... scared I was gonna get blamed for letting her go up to the roof and, and so, I said, ‘Mum just, just stay here, stay there. Oh, you’ll be fine. I’m just going to get Antonio [her husband], I’ll be straight back and I locked the door’.”
Asked how much blood there was, DeLuney said “it didn’t seem like a huge amount, like gushing you know ... I thought it might be trickling”.
“I think I put a cap or something underneath so under her head, so it wouldn’t, you know, soak into the carpet. I said, ‘Don’t worry, don’t panic’, but she, she was a bit fidgety and agitated like she wanted to move.”
DeLuney locked the door and left the house, putting the key in a jar outside the back door and telling the detective she couldn’t remember where her mother’s phone or emergency alarm was.
She said she drove to get a lighter at a petrol station and then returned home, waking Antionio before the couple drove back to Wellington.
Arriving back at the house, she found the hallway lights were on but the bedroom light was off. And her mother wasn’t where she’d left her.
Blood on the walls outside the utility cupboard in Helen Gregory's house. Julia Deluney says this is what the house looked like when she returned. Photo / Supplied
“It was a mess, there was blood, different spots, the light was off so it’s like, um. There’s, there’s I just know I just kind of remembered the big different spots, as if she’d tried to move, move, move around or something,” she told the detective.
Her husband called 111 and began chest compressions.
During the interview, DeLuney was also accused of waiting 25 minutes before calling emergency services, a claim that has subsequently been proved wrong after a neighbour’s CCTV footage confirmed her version of events.
Three changes of clothes
Clarke also asked DeLuney about the three changes of clothes she was seen wearing on CCTV in the hours before and after her mother’s death.
She explained she’d borrowed some of her mother’s clothes and slippers before leaving to get help, because her clothes had blood on them and she didn’t want to be seen in public like that.
“First of all, I wear the slippers whenever I get there, just for comfort, and there was some blood, so I changed it and put the sweatshirt on because I knew I was gonna go and get the lighter.”
She said she changed again when she got home because the clothes weren’t hers and didn’t fit her.
“There was nothing sinister, I just felt more comfortable in those, in my own clothes.”
She told the detective all the clothes were at her house and explained where police could find them. The Crown confirmed all the clothing she was pictured in was subsequently accounted for.
‘I have never been a violent person’
Clarke described Gregory’s injuries, including a black eye, bruising, a cut to the arm and a piece of scalp on the bedroom floor. At the suggestion that DeLuney might be responsible, she got emotional and denied it was her.
“I have never been a violent person, particularly to my mother, ever, ever. I never even hit my kids.
“Do you think I could do something like that? It’s just, what are you suggesting, you’re making me out to be a f***** monster.
“I made a mistake, I should have called an ambulance ... I shouldn’t have let her go up to the f***** attic and I should have rung 111. I get that.”
The jury trial before Justice Peter Churchman is not sitting today but resumes tomorrow.
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.
