Khandallah murder trial: Julia DeLuney’s cryptocurrency spending revealed in court

A woman accused of murdering her elderly mother and staging the scene to look as if she had suffered a fall spent more than $150,000 on cryptocurrency in the year leading up to the death.

Detailed analysis of Julia DeLuney’s bank accounts also showed she appeared to be unable to support her expenses without the help of tens of thousands of dollars worth of cash deposits.

The 53-year-old is on trial in the Wellington High Court for the murder of her mother, 79-year-old Helen Gregory, at her Baroda St, Khandallah home. The alleged murder happened on January 24 last year.

DeLuney’s defence will argue police had “tunnel vision” when focusing on her as the suspect, and that it was actually another person who killed Gregory.

She claims she drove from the Khandallah property back to the Kāpiti Coast to get help after her mother fell from the attic, and that her mother was murdered in the 90 minutes that she was gone.

Julia DeLuney, 53, is on trial in the Wellington High Court. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Crown prosecutor Nicole Jamieson earlier said at the time of the death, DeLuney was having financial difficulties. The former school teacher spent her time trading cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.

The court previously heard Gregory confided in friends in the months before her death that two large sums of money had gone missing from her house, including up to $85,000 her daughter later admitted to investing in cryptocurrency.

In court today, forensic accountant Eric Huang painstakingly traversed his report into DeLuney’s bank transactions.

He said from January 2023 to 2024, there was $156,555.30 worth of money transferred from DeLuney’s accounts to cryptocurrency platforms.

The report showed $88,173.03 was transferred back throughout the year, creating a deficit of $68,382.27. Huang acknowledged under cross-examination this did not reflect the success of the crypto investments, as his analysis did not look at the crypto accounts, only DeLuney’s bank transactions.

A section of the report focusing on income sources detailed the main places DeLuney received money from. Crypto withdrawals was the highest source, while $74,850 in cash deposits took the second spot. She also received $45,000 from Gregory in bank transfers.

Across seven months of the year, “[Ms DeLuney] did not have sufficient funds to support her spending without cash deposits,” Huang said.

Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop took him in detail through multiple transactions, including eight cash deposits on June 25, 2023 which showed a total of $29,800 was deposited into the account at smart ATMs. About $20,000 of that was deposited in four transactions, just minutes apart.

The court earlier heard from a friend of Gregory, Cheryl Thomson, who said Gregory told her some money she had stashed in her home was missing.

“She told me categorically, without any doubt, that the only person who knew that the money was there was Julia.”

Thomson said Gregory was upset because her daughter had taken the money without asking.

She told the court that when Gregory had asked DeLuney about it, the accused had said she’d taken and invested it in cryptocurrency.

“It’s all safe mum, don’t worry,” Thomson recalls Gregory had told her.

Another friend, Elizabeth Askin, told the court she thought the amount that DeLuney had taken to invest was about $75,000-$76,000.

The trial continues.

Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.