RedHanded - The Lundy Family Murders: An Impossible Crime | #433

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

In 2000, Christine Lundy and her seven-year-old daughter Amber were brutally hacked to death in their New Zealand home. Their husband and father, Mark Lundy, had a seemingly watertight alibi: he was over 90 miles away.But that didn’t stop the New Zealand courts from convicting him. Twice.With a controversial case built on junk science, shifting timelines, and a microscopic speck of what prosecutors called ‘brain tissue’ (but might have just been lunch), the Lundy saga was New Zealand’s answer to Making a Murderer.Was an innocent man wrongfully convicted? Or did the police catch a killer who thought he’d pulled off the perfect crime?Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/kO84-yv9GCA--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / InstagramSources and more available on redhandedpodcast.com

I'm Anna. I'm Saruti. And welcome to red-handed, down under. Mm-hmm. Kind of. I can't remember if we decided that we could say that or not. I think yes. I think it counts.

I think it counts. Well, what definitely triple counts is that we came across this case because I was in the pub. Yes. As usual. And a listener, I cannot remember her name. And I feel awful. But it began with an S. I'm almost sure.

Good enough. And she was talking about how the show has a... helped her after moving here from New Zealand and feeling really lonely, etc, etc, etc. And then on her table were some other Kiwis and I do what I always do when I meet New Zealanders and I'm like, do you think David Bain did it? And the reaction is either straight onto a really interesting conversation or how the fuck do you know about David Bain? Anyway, then they said, oh, and the Lundy 3-Hundee. And I was like, I don't know what that is.

And now it's now. Yeah? So here it is. What is the Lundy 300? I'll tell you when we get to it. Okay, right, I'm ready. Today, we are taking you to the lush rolling green hills of New Zealand, somewhere that you're more likely to associate with hobbits than homicide.

But behind the tidy suburban streets of Palmerston North in August 2000, a dark story was waiting to unfold. Mark and Christine Lundy's modest home on Caramere Avenue was just like any other. And the Lundies? Well, they seemed like your ordinary wholesome family unit. That is until the morning of the 30th of August that year. When the bodies of 38-year-old Christine and her seven-year-old daughter Amber were found hacked to death in a vicious and bloody attack. Christine's husband Mark was away on a business trip, over 90 miles from home. But that didn't stop him from becoming the police's number one suspect. The authorities embarked on an ambival.

ambitious mental gymnastics routine to not only prove that Mark Lundy could have done it, but also to convince two separate juries, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he did do it. For the people of New Zealand, it's the case that refuses to die, littered with accusations of junk science, implausible timelines, and even a questionable psychic witness, my favourite. All culminating in the ultimate question, did an innerestown. man spend 20 years behind pass. You know how Italy is the science lab of Europe?

Everything starts there. It gets tested out in Italy first like fascism and then it spreads. Oh, okay. I think New Zealand is the maternity ward for the wrongful conviction lobby. They fucking love them. I think it's because there's so few murders that when someone does get convicted, they're like, surely not. It's a lot of like excitement about putting this guy.

die away, just by any means possible, as we will get to. And yeah, it's a pretty wild ride. I also had never heard of this case, but I'm thoroughly glad we're covering it, because there's a lot of theories. But before we get into spouting, said theories, let's start with the facts. Like the discovery of the bodies. Christine's younger brother, Glenn Weggery, popped over to the Lundy House at about 8.45 a.m. to check if Christine had done his tax return for him like she'd promised.

Entering through the open conservatory sliding door, Glenn went upstairs and walked straight into a nightmare. His niece, seven-year-old Amber, was lying in the hallway in her nighty, covered in blood. The back of her skull had been smashed open. In the master bedroom, Glenn found his sister Christine. She was lying naked in bed. Her face had been mutilated beyond all recognition, and blood and chunks of brain matter was flattened. all over the walls and ceiling. Investigators concluded that

mum and daughter had been attacked at some point the night before, with a small axe-like weapon in a frenzied onslaught. Christine had defensive wounds all over her arms indicating that she'd fought back against her attacker with everything she had. The position of Amber's body on the threshold of the bedroom suggested

that she'd likely been trying to flee down the hallway when she was struck from behind. There were no signs of sexual assault, with Christine or Amber. And the rest of the house, at first glance, didn't give away much either. Elsewhere in the property, Forensics officers found just a small smear of blood by a window next to the sliding door. That did show signs of being forced open, as if an intruder had maybe reached through to unlock the door using the key left in the lock. The rest of the house hadn't been ransacked, but Christine's jewelry box was missing.

And where was Christine's husband, Mark Lundy? Well, he'd been away on business in Patoni just north of the capital city of Wellington about 90 miles away. It was a trip he'd done several times before as a part of his job as a travelling salesman. Mark had checked into his usual hotel, the foreshore motor lodge, at 5pm the previous day, checking out just after 8 a.m. that morning. Whilst eating breakfast in his car, he tried calling Christine several times with no answer. sir, so he reached out to a few friends to ask if they'd heard from her. One of them was Amber's godfather, Stuart Durham,

who went over to the house only to find it sealed with police tape and troubling rumours of an unexplained death. He called Mark and told him that he'd better get his ass home. A panicked Mark drove as fast as he could back to Palmerston North, where he received the earth-shattering news, that his wife and child were dead. shockwaves rippled through the local community, as everyone grappled with who could have done this to Christine and Little Amber, and how Mark had seemingly had a lucky escape from the same grisly fate.

Naturally, the spotlight was firmly placed on the Lundy clan. Mark and Christine had been married for 17 years, having met through scouting and girl-guiding circles, which that's just the way that people met back in the 90s. Like, what an interesting meet cute. I've got a better one. Oh, hit me. So the judge who oversaw OJ's trial, his parents met in a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming. Oh, well, that's just heartwarming.

Is it? Isn't it? Love flourishes in the strangest of places, like girl guiding circles and internment camps. So the pair get together, and they welcomed their daughter Amber in June 1993, whose teachers called her a bright and outgoing little girl, who was a pleasure to teach. The couple also had an active social life, taking part in amateur dramatics groups and even the local wine club. They also ran a kitchen parts business together,

with Mark taking on the role of travelling salesman while Christine managed the paperwork at home. Mark described his marriage as happy and said that he adored both Christine and Amber. He admitted that he and Christine didn't have sex often these days, but insisted that it didn't matter. They were a team. They argued occasionally, usually about money, but it was nothing out of the ordinary,

and there was also no recorded history of domestic violence. All in all, the Lundies just seem like your average family unit. But now, that picture-perfect image had been hacked apart, and soon enough, the finger would be pointing straight at Mark Lundy. So let's hear Mark's own account of what he was up to on the evening of the 29th. As we know, he'd checked into his Patoni hotel at about 5pm. He told police that then he spoke to Christine on the phone at about 5.30pm when she told him that Amber's Girl Guide session had been unexpectedly cancelled,

so they were planning to indulge in a cheeky McDonald's for dinner. On that note, Mark decided to treat himself as well. That evening he parked by the waterfront, with its view of the Wellington Harbour, and read a book as the light grew dim. Don't I believe that? I don't necessarily think Mark Lundy did it, as we'll go on to discover. But I don't know that I believe. He treated himself by pulling into the harbour and reading a book in the dimming evening light.

I do that when I'm travelling alone and I want to look mysterious. Okay, okay. Not if I'm trying to cover up a murder. No. He hasn't done it yet. Is he plotting the murder? I don't know. But I also think, I don't know.

I just think somebody's going to come up and shoot me. I just don't believe. or in particularly at harbours? What's the... Parked up, in a dark car. I don't know. Why isn't he worried about that? Is it because he's a murderer? New Zealand's very safe. This is true. But it doesn't ring true to me. But I'll withhold my thought.

Anyway, according to Mark, he went on to polish a third bottle of rum in his hotel room and then had a brief phone call with a business associate at 8.30pm. That I don't believe. If anyone's ringing me for business at a lot of. Half eight in the night time. No, thank you. Especially if I've had rum. I'm already all cozy. I've been reading my book in the dark. And I'm wasted. Anyway, after he'd wrapped up his business call, he rang up an escort agency at 11.30pm, that I believe.

That I believe, but it's a very confusing night. Who starts off? Just reading, business meeting. Maybe he gets all riled up. Maybe he closes a deal. And then he's all excited. So he has to call an escort agency. I'm convinced that every single traveling salesman does this. That's what motels and escort agencies are for.

A sex worker named Belinda arrived. shortly afterwards. Mark paid her $140.40. They did the deed and then he made pleasant small talk about his wife, daughter and business. After Blinda left at about 1 a.m., Mark went to bed. Tipsy, satisfied and utterly unaware. Just over 90 miles away, his entire world was falling apart. Ugh, I mean, if he didn't do it, you're never getting over that. You're fucking an escort while your daughter and your wife are getting murdered at home. Grim. But we don't know if you didn't do it. Let's hold on to our hats with that one.

Because from day one, the police were absolutely convinced that Mark Lundy was hiding something. And the rest of New Zealand weren't far behind. Sympathy quickly turned to suspicion as rumours spread about how Mark had slept with an escort the night his wife and child were killed. I'm also sure sex work is legal in New Zealand. I don't know whether it would have been in 2000.

Maybe. Don't know. But I still think it would be... frowned upon. Oh, I mean, it's not what I meant. So, yeah, people are not looking favourably upon Mr. Mark here. And his behaviour at Amber and Christine's joint funeral was ironically the nail in Mark Lundy's own coffin. Photos were plastered across every newspaper in the country, showing him wearing dark glasses, supported by friends as he wept dramatically. Some people saw a genuine display of grief, but most of the public, they smiled around.

Mark's reaction seemed over the top, even for a man who just lost everything. The media predictably ran with the story, and police sources fueled the flames by telling reporters how Mark's behavior allegedly shifted when he was away from the cameras on the day of the funeral. It's the classic. We see this all the time. People are just analyzing, picking apart behavior, and I guess projecting onto the people that are going through this, how they think they would behave in that scenario. And arguably there's nothing you can do that's right, because if he wasn't, crying, people would be saying that he looks guilty. He's crying too much and people think that he's guilty. There's really no winning with this. And we've said this before. As people, we are notoriously

bad at being able to tell when there is like deception in that form going on. So Mark attempted to defend himself in a single media interview with the Sunday Star Times in August 2000, insisting that he had absolutely nothing to hide. But even in that article, much was made of how he'd apparently smiled and laughed at the end of their chat. An irresistible story was forming of a man trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. And if there's one thing the public loves to do, it's take a faker down.

So, in the court of public opinion, Mark Lundy was already very guilty. The police just had to prove their own gut feeling about Mark. An early clue came from a bracelet found in his car which he identified as possibly belonging to Christine. Mark shrugged and said that it could have fallen off during a previous car journey, while Christine's friends suggested that it was too small and she didn't wear it. The authorities began to theorise that Mark had staged the scene to look like a robbery gone wrong

by taking the jewellery and planting blood by the window. But wait, hold on. Wasn't Mark in Patoni that night? Excellent question. To most people, the fact that Mark Lundy was supposed to be over 90, miles away that night would seem like a pretty solid alibi. But not if you're a detective on this case. They were so convinced that Mark was the one behind the murders that they began seeking explanations for how he could possibly have done it. It feels very like the spy in the back case, the

Gareth Williams case, right, where the focus is very much like you said on how could he have done this. How could he have done this? Not did he do it? Is there anybody else who was in much closer proximity with a motive or just like a random fucking crazy person who also could have done it? Let's maybe, you know, talk to all the neighbors, find out about that. Like, no, they're very, very blinkered from the start. And they are like, just because it seems impossible to believe, is it possible in some way, shape or form? And even when they're like, not really, they're like, doesn't matter.

Okay. Let's just keep. Cool, cool, cool. Let's just keep banging away at this particular. drum. It's fascinating, really. And it's the Lundy 300thi. Okay. Because from his house to Petonium back again is 300 kilometres. Yes, correct. Round trip. Correct. So is the Lundy 300 people trying to do that journey? It's like a car rally, sure, where they do it on the anniversary through the night. And that's exactly what the police are about to do. It's not uncontroversial, I will add.

Oh, New Zealand, you know, I'd say they have a very similar sense of humour. who else? New Zealand is a great crack. Yes, but like even more irreverent than our sense of humour. And I think, because there's just fewer people there, they're like, they can just get away with them. So yes. Do you want to drive through the night? Let's do it. And let's wear our green David Bain jumpers while we do it. The first major clue for the police was in Mark Lundy's petrol tank. When he arrived in Palmerston North on the morning that Christine and Amber's bodies were discovered, police noted that Mark only had about 10. gallons left in his Ford Fairmont car. A receipt proved, however, that he'd filled up the 58-gallon tank the previous day on his way to Potoni. The police didn't believe that Mark's sales calls around the Wellington area, plus the frantic drive down to Palmerston that morning,

would have guzzled up basically 48 gallons. Instead, they theorized that he'd made a secret trip in the night to murder Christine and Amber in Palmerston North, before racing back to Potoni to order himself an escort and establish an alibi. The result of all of this, getting away with the so-called perfect crime. That might sound like a stretch, quite literally, but the police also reckoned they had pretty good reason to believe that Mark Lundy was just the sort of man who would resort to such desperate measures. They uncovered some serious financial trouble bubbling away beneath the surface.

The Lundy's kitchen business was floundering, and Mark's most recent get-rich quick scheme appeared to be going disastrously wrong. Fulfilling a lifelong passion for wine, he's signed up to buy land for a vineyard with money he doesn't actually have. It's also very difficult to make money off vineyards. I've checked.

Yeah, bad moves here by Mark. Let me enter an entirely saturated market that's really competitive and hard. Yeah, with money I don't have. Yes. But don't listen to us, we know nothing. Eternal optimist Mark insisted that he was raising funds from investors to pay for this wine project. But he'd only managed to raise just over $100,000-dollary dues.

And at the time of the murders, he was said to owe over $2 million New Zealand dollar-dos, which is more than $100,000. I checked. The vineyard seller gave Mark until the 30th of August, the day after Christine and Amber were came. if you needed a reminder and you're not paying attention, to either cough up the money or lose the land, along with $100,000 penalty fee. Mark reportedly fretted that he would be forced to declare bankruptcy if that happened, and he was under immense stress about the looming deadline.

Mark later admitted that he was rubbish with money, which I think is putting it mildly, and that usually it was Christine who handled the financial stuff. But Christine had confided in a few friends that money was putting a massive strain on their marriage. And her close friend actually said that she knew their financial situation as a family was pretty grim. And then came a jackpot discovery for investigators. It emerged that just days before the murders, the Lundies, had increased wife Christine's life insurance policy from $200,000 to half a million.

If he didn't do it, that is very inconvenient for him. Yeah. I read that and I was like, Mark, but there's twists even to this, so bear with us. But at the time when the police are made aware of this piece of information, suddenly it looked like Mark Lundy had a very compelling motive. Had Mark, desperate to cling on to his vineyard dream, callously plotted to murder his own wife for the payout? To prove their theory, police needed to establish.

when Christine and Amber were killed. A McDonald's takeaway receipt showed Christine had picked up dinner at 5.45 p.m. She spoke to a pal on the phone at 6.56pm, so they knew that she was alive up until then. Let's talk about usual bedtime routines. According to relatives, lights out for Amber was usually at about 8pm after she and Christine watched their favourite soap, Shortland Street, together at 7. I believe that is like neighbours, but Kiwi. Yeah, I agree.

let's have a little look at the picture. Oh, it's like doctors. Oh. It's like doctors. They're all wearing scrubs, but it looks very like it's on Channel 5. So, and there's somebody in it who looks a lot like Tom Daly's like ugly brother. No offense, Nick Harrison. You could have left his name out.

You didn't have the name and shame it. Sorry. I'm sure you're fine. I'm sure you're a gay actor. After Shortland Street, Christine. tended to retire a bit later, especially when Mark was away on business. She liked to browse online or read in bed. The family computer showed a switch-off time at 10.52 p.m.

Christine was found naked while Amber was in her nighty, which is how both of them were said to sleep, and Christine's strong prescription glasses were put away in their case. A neighbour told police that he'd noticed that the Lundy's lights were on and the conservatory door was open at 11pm, and that he heard a sound like breaking glass at about the night. midnight. So why are we telling you all this? Well, because all the evidence seemed to point to the murders taking place around midnight after both Lundy girls had gone to bed. But this,

annoyingly for the police, didn't fit with it being their prime suspect. They knew without a doubt that Mark was in his Patoni hotel room with Belinda the escort between 11.30pm and 1am. But then came a bombshell that changed everything. Forensic pathologist Dr James Pang had analysed the victim's stomach contents and claimed that he could pinpoint the time of death to an incredibly narrow window. He noted that both Christine and Amber's stomachs appear to be full,

and since he couldn't smell the strong vomit-like smell of gastric juices, this meant digestion hadn't really begun. In other words, they must have been killed within an hour of finishing their McDonald's feast. So, at around 7pm or 7.15 at the latest. Conveniently, the exact time that Mark Lundy couldn't verify his whereabouts. By November 2000, authorities were confident that they knew who killed Christine and Amber. They even told the press that they had one main suspect.

The trouble was everything they had against Mark were circumstantial. That is, until police found their smoking gun. Teeny tiny speck of forensic evidence that would turn the entire case against Mark Lundy on its head. Or rather, Christine's head. Almost two months after the murders, a forensic technician was making his way through the backlog of small evidentiary pieces in the Lundy case, including a T-shirt taken from the backseat of the car that Mark said he was wearing on that day. Shining a bright light on the shirt, he noticed two faint stains. one on the sleeve and another on the left-hand chest pocket.

The pocket stain contained tiny microscopic flakes of dry blood matching Amber's DNA. And he didn't think that the blood came from a fresh source. It was more likely to have come from a scab, which Amber, as an ordinary seven-year-old or a 35-year-old Hannah Maguire, happened to have all the time. The sleeve stain was a bit different. Smaller than a grain of rice. The technician had to moisten the sleeve to transfer it onto a slide for analysis.

It tested positive for Christine's DNA and seemed to come from a more mucousy slimy source. A forensic scientist suggested that it could be a tiny chunk of brain matter, a remark that set off a chain of events that would ultimately seal Mark Lundy's fate. Police sent the sample halfway across the world to a Texas-based pathologist named Dr. Rodney T. Miller, an expert in a field called immunohistochemistry. Now, we won't go into all of the. the sciencey details here, but basically it's a lab technique that's usually applied in cancer diagnoses rather than criminal investigations. It works by introducing antibodies that react to specific

cell types in the body. In this case, proteins that are only found in brain tissue. Dr Miller ran the tests and his findings were crystal clear. The sample that had come from Mark's shirt, that tiny smaller than a grain of rice, that sample contained brain or central nervous system tissue. Bang. Suddenly, suddenly, wasn't just a mystery stain on Mark's shirt. It was a confirmed, tiny glob of his wife's actual brain. In February 2001, Mark Lundy was finally charged with the murders of his wife Christine and his daughter Amber. His trial kicked off a year later at Palmerston North's High Court, where the Crown put forth its case for what Mark had allegedly done on that fateful night. They painted a lurid picture of a man with a murderous plan. With the motive of

killing Christine for the life insurance money, Mark must have prepared ahead of time with protective coveralls and a step-by-step itinerary designed to give him an airtight alibi 90 whole miles away. It kicked off with Mark's call to Christine at 5.30 p.m. where the prosecution insisted that he must have told her to send Amber to bed early and wait for him naked in bed. Now, When Christine spoke to her friend on the phone at 6.56 p.m., she didn't mention that Mark was on his way back for a spontaneous sex session. But let's put that to one side. Also, like, fair enough that you might not tell your friend that your husband is racing back for that. But also, if there's been a call at 5.30, that's the plan.

Why at nearly 7 o'clock are you on the phone to your friend? Would you not be getting ready for this spontaneous sex session that you've just ordered with your husband? Just having a little catch-up. According to Dr Pang's time of death testimony, the murders must have occurred within 20 minutes of the phone call ending. The Crown alleged that Mark drove the 90-mile journey from Pitone, strode straight into Christine's bedroom and hacked her to death with a tomahawk. He must have been interrupted by a confused and PJ-clad Amber entering the room, so he killed her too to avoid leaving any witnesses.

Next came the staging of the break-in, with Mark smearing blood by the conservatory window and making it look like. it had been tampered with. And then he nabbed Christine's jewellery box for good measure. Then came a potential snag for the prosecution theory. The inconvenient fact of the family computer being switched off at 10.52 p.m. But never fear. The prosecution had a possible, if implausible, explanation for this.

Before fleeing the scene, Mark must have not only hacked at his wife and daughter, but also hacked the computer to make it look like it shut down later than it really did. He's a kitchen part salesman. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a vineyard, money that he didn't have, but he can hack into a computer. And look, I'm being this like disbelieving about this

because this would have been an incredibly complex process that involved, at the time, some like matrix level hacking for the millennium. When most suburban dads could probably just, about handle a game of MindSweep. But a forensic computer analyst testified that some of the computer's registry files were out of order,

which apparently indicated that someone had tampered with the device's date settings in the past. Presumably this was Mark practicing. Confused yet? Yeah, us too. But stay with us. Because this is what Mark allegedly did next. After his nifty bit of computer wizardry,

Mark fled the scene and rushed back to his car. The Crown brought in their prize eyewitness in the form of neighbourer Margaret Dance, a self-professed psychic who swore that she saw, a fat man in a blonde girly wig, legging it down the street at about 7.15pm. Casting off his dubious disguise, Mark then drove all the way back to Potoni disposing of his blood-soaked clothing and the murder weapon en route and presumably the curly wig. And then he arrived back to his hotel in time to make the call at 8,000. 30 p.m. that pinged off a local phone tower.

Later, he ordered Belinda's sexy services to solidify his alibi. And once he'd done all of that, Mark Lundy lay his, thankfully unwigged, head on the pillow, believing that he had just got away with the perfect double homicide. Oh, dear. But here comes one of the biggest sticking points of the trial. Could Mark have physically done the journey he was accused of in such a tight, window. Let's break it down. Mobile phone records place Mark at his hotel at 5.30pm when he spoke to Christine. If he left immediately after that eight-minute call, he would have had about an hour and 20

minutes to get home, requiring an average speed of nearly 73 miles per hour. Since we also know that he made a call to a work associate from his hotel room at 8.30 p.m., his return trip had to be done in under an hour and 15 minutes, based on Margaret Dantz's sighting of him at 7.15 p.m. requiring an average speed of at least 75 miles an hour. The police insisted it could be done, just not by them, because they got officers to replicate this trip multiple times. But even their fastest run between Potoni and Palmerston North still took an hour and 33 minutes. Any, any, Lundy, three-hundi, partakers listening, watching. What was your best time?

Because the police couldn't beat that. And how many speeding tickets on average per year do people get on that particular night? Yeah. This time, one hour 33 minutes gives them nowhere near the window they need Mark to have been able to do this in. And they even did this at about 9pm on much quieter roads than the early evening rush hour that Mark was supposed to have faced. so they didn't even try recreate the exact settings. Very awkward. Still, the Crown continued to allege that Mark had driven south,

murdered his family, staged the scene, tampered with the computer disposed of his weapon and clothing, and made it back to his Potoni hotel room in less than three hours, even though they couldn't even just do that round trip in under three hours. The defence, naturally, fought back that this was bonkers. Mark Lundy was a kitchen sink salesman, not a superhero. They also pointed out that nobody had witnessed anybody driving erratically on the roads between Potoni and Palmerston North that evening, which surely they would have if Mark had been going at the breakneck speed that he had to for the police's way of things to make sense.

The defence also called independent experts who argued that Mark could easily have used up 58 gallons on his sales calls and the trip back to Palmerston North the next morning. And if there was a secret murder trip, then according to the police's own replica tests, it would have required at least 12 more gallons than his car's fuel tank could even hold. The Crown got round this by vaguely claiming that Mark must have filled up at some point, but no evidence of that was ever found. He must have. Must have filled up at some point. Meanwhile, the prosecution still had their ace card to play.

The forensic evidence. They claimed that flakes of blue and orange paint in Amber and Christine's hair were a visual match for Mark Lundy's tools, which he kept meticulously marked with paint. An expert testified that some of these flecks were chemically identical to Mark's tools and the paint that he kept at the house, while others said that it couldn't be matched at all. And although the actual murder weapon was never found,

the prosecution claimed that an unpainted tomahawk at the house must be a replacement one for the one that Mark had used to commit the killings. Why would you replace your own murder weapon? They're basically saying he had paint on the one that he used because that's how he marks all his tools. That one's now covered in blood and maybe he knows that some of the paint is in his daughter and wife's fucking wounds. So he gets rid of it somehow, they don't know where, they don't know when, they don't know how. And then he buys a new one, again, at some point. also don't like nobody in 2000 knew about microscopic paint flex like no and so yeah they're like

the reason that tomahawk is still here and we can't match it with blood to this one is because it was a replacement one it is so just like we don't care what the evidence says this is our guy and we're just going to say whatever the fuck we need to to make that fit that is very much the attitude here and then came the real clincher the tiny blob of brain too issue. This was the Crown's true jewel. Because how the hell could any self-respecting jury sit there and explain how else a bit of Christine's brain got on to Mark's t-shirt if it was not when he killed her? Even Mark's defence team were stumped by that one. And whilst they didn't dispute that it was Christine's brain on the t-shirt, they insisted that it must have got there after

the crime, either by accidental cross-contamination or deliberate planting of evidence on the part of the investigators. They also pointed out just how bizarre it was that the only trace of DNA that could be linked to Mark Glundee was a tiny microscopic speck on his shirt. The crime scene was like a still from a horror film there was so much blood sprayed around that it had left a grisily silhouette on the wall behind where the killer had stood. So if Mark had hacked his wife and child to death, he would have been soaked in it. But Mark's clothes, watch, glasses, and car didn't test positive for anything. Just a singular stain, smaller than a grain of brain rice. Mark's lawyers also did their best to fight back against this alleged motive, pointing out that it was

actually the insurance broker's idea to raise Christine's life insurance policy. He even suggested pushing it up to a million, but the Lundy's declined because they couldn't afford to pay the monthly premiums. Mark had also asked to boost his policy, but he couldn't due to previous health issues. And crucially, the Lundies were told that Christine's new policy wouldn't come into effect until the paperwork went through, which it hadn't yet. In other words, Mark knew that he would not get the full $500,000 sum if Christine died before then.

So if he was going to bump her off, could he not just as? have hung on for like one more week. Mark's team also insisted the picture of a financial crisis was grossly exaggerated since Mark was still optimistic about finding investors for his wine venture. Although we kind of call bullshit on this one, things were looking pretty dire financially. But the idea that Mark murdered his wife for the insurance payout just doesn't make loads of sense. Nor did the Crown's claim that Mark had hired an escort to establish his alibi. If you wanted to look innocent Surely you'd just order

a pizza or go sit in a church or something not order yourself a fucking hooker to your house or your motel Go to confession, confess to a murder There's so many other things you could do that would make you look better But in the jury's eyes

None of the Defence's arguments could compete with what seemed like Damning physical evidence Brain plus T-Shire equals guilty. After a six-week trial, the jury returned their verdict in less than six hours, finding Mark Glundee guilty of killing his wife and child. In April 2002, Mark Lundy was sentenced to life in prison,

with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. But Mark Lundy wasn't going to go down without a fight. Just four months into his sentence in August 2002, he lodged an appeal claiming, bad science had been used to convict him. The appeal court disagreed, upholding the use of IHC testing and rejecting his appeal. And to add insult to injury,

they increased his sentence to 20 years. That's bonkers. Saying that the original judge had been too lenient given the brutality of seven-year-old Amber's murder. So while Mark Lundy sat in prison, questions began to mount over whether justice had actually been served. His supporters launched an advocacy group that they called Factual,

which is the best name for such an advocacy group that I have ever come across. And it's perfect because it stands for for Amber and Christine Truth Uncovered about Lundy. Bravo. All right, take it. And of course, Factual's aim was to push for a review of the case. In 2009, journalist Mike White re-ignited public debate with an explosion. of article for North South magazine entitled What the Jury Didn't Hear. It feels very like making a merger.

Oh, yeah. Because that one too. Like, I actually have never watched Making a Murderer. I refuse. So, yeah, maybe we're not the best people to talk on that case, but I am aware of all of the stuff that the jury wasn't told. I am also aware of a lot of the stuff that they left out of the documentary. So let's just be clear about that

because there are many articles about what the documentary didn't include that I have read. So yeah, mixed back. Now this article tore into the Crown's case, especially the shaky time of death estimate, the impossible travel timeline

and the questionable brain tissue evidence. White spoke to leading forensic experts who dismantled Dr. James Pang's claims that Amber and Christine had to have died within an hour of eating their McDonald's. The world-leading expert Professor Bernard Knight called Pang's methods of determination, quote, so unreliable as to be of little value,

and little short of ludicrous. Another expert called it sheer quackery. Fighting words. And there was more to come. White exposed that Pang hadn't conducted other key tests at the crime scene, such as taking the body's temperatures or checking for rigamortis. Wow.

Fucking basic proven things that would have pointed to a time of death. And it's like Pang forgets to do those, which seems unbelievable. And then he's like, fuck, I can't give an accurate estimate as to time of death. Better make up some fucking shit about the contents of their stomach and then use that. Because I've got nothing else. And chuck a brain at a t-shirt. Quite. So yeah, he basically, instead of using these very time-tested methods,

instead just relied solely on his interpretation of what the victim's stomach contents looked and smiled like, which quackery, I would agree. Another casualty of the North and South article was Star Witness Margaret Dance. I love this. Oh, Margaret. We're of course talking about her bizarre description of seeing a fat man in a curly blonde wig running down street. Not only did Mike White find a message that she had posted online thanking an eye clinic for transforming her life after a surgery in 2007, joking that she was as blind as a bat before

that. It's her now that her timing was way off as well. Margaret claimed that she witnessed this jiggly jogger during a visit from friends at 7.15 p.m. But Mike White uncovered that this visit actually took place at least an hour earlier. This is just like the perfect case of an example of how so many things can go wrong and how unreliable eyewitness testimony is. It's just another little sprinkle, a little brain rice grain sprinkle on top of this horrible Sunday of shit. And the hacked computer turned out to be not hacked after all. Multiple digital forensic experts examined the computer and discovered that it was infected with the

CAC virus, K-A-K, a common malware, spread through spam emails and internet pop-ups. The virus had scrambled registry files, creating the anomalies the prosecution claimed, were signs of tampering. And once the virus was removed, everything went back to normal. And Mike White reported that another laptop in the kitchen was bafflingly never examined by police, even though it could have potentially held crucial clues to Christine's movements that evening. By 2012, cracks in Mark Lundy's conviction were impossible to ignore. In November that year, his legal team, led by high-profile barrister David Hislop Casey, filed an appeal with the UK-based Privy Council.

The appeal was actually heard in June 2013 in London. Its key focus was questioning the strength of the so-called brain tissue evidence, which relied on experimental IHC testing, applied for the very first time in a forensic context. His Lop dismissed it as nothing more than a scientific experiment, while Mark's supporters said he was being treated like an international guinea pig, trapped behind bars for science gone wrong. It emerged during the appeal process that there had been doubts

around the strength of the so-called brain tissue from the very start. The material was, quote, scanty, shriveled up and suboptimally preserved, having gone through a chaotic journey. Discovered 58 days after the murders, wet tested, rinsed for DNA, stored in a police safe for months, and then only officially tested five months later. My God. Even the fact that there was so little of it on the shirt, it was wet tested. They had to like wet the spot and then just like rub a slide over. it. It's just so, so, so weak. It's unbelievable.

Experts testified that brain cells are notoriously fragile. Tell me about it. My brain cells fucking shatter every second. And they often start breaking down just seconds after death. And even the FBI and the UK Home Office considered the sample to be too degraded to be subjected to testing. It came out that a leading New Zealand neuropathologist, Dr. Hengtow, refused to testify at the 2002 trial, noting that the cells had degenerated badly and advising that Lundy should be absolutely not tried on the basis of such dubious evidence. But all of that was swept under the rug and kept from the jury at trial. In the end, only one immunohistochemist, Dr. Rodney T. Miller would even test the sample, and he happened to have zero experience on

forensic cases. But still, Miller insisted that the tissue was from Christine's brain with 100% certainty. I don't think there is ever a way to get me to disbelieve you quicker than telling me you are 100% certain. The problem with these kind of things is you've just got loads of experts that want to make a name for themselves, that want to be at the cutting edge of forensic science, who have discovered this new form of testing, who have put this man in prison for, you know, by finding this little tiny piece of grain-sized stain

that they've been able to connect or whatever. It's just so hard to not feel like it's an eco-trip. And these people aren't necessarily interested in discovering the truth. They are just interested in writing their next paper and gaining infamy for themselves. Other experts slammed this as reckless overconfidence, with at least three internationally renowned professors testifying that Miller's work in this case amounted to an uncontrolled experiment

that was incapable of producing a reliable result. And they say that you should dress for the job you want, but it seemed like Dr Miller had given himself an unfair promotion to forensic scientist, and New Zealand's Crown Court had just let him do it. In October 2013, the Privy Council officially quashed Mark Lundy's convictions, stating that the expert disagreements was so profound and central to the case that only a new trial could resolve them. Mark was released on bail for 18 months before facing a second trial.

So here we go again. So like we said, that appeal took place in London. His conviction was quashed. They order a second trial. This second trial kicked off back in New Zealand. in Wellington in February 2015. But this time, the Crown presented a whole new timeline. Remember how the 7pm time frame was everything in the first trial?

Well, not anymore. Dr. James Pang, yep, the same pathologist, quietly backtracked on his earlier certainty and now claimed that he could only narrow the time of death to sometime between 6pm and when the bodies were found the next morning. And with that, the prosecution unveiled a shiny new theory. Mark didn't kill his family before his late night rendezvous with his hired babe Belinda. He did it afterwards.

And that meant no computer tampering or boy racer driving needed. Just a leisurely cruise in the dead of night and a return to his hotel room by sunrise. You'd be a bit annoyed that you didn't come up with that the first time round, wouldn't you? Seriously. It's all Pang's fault. He's like, nah, I've got nothing else because I didn't record anything else. It's the stomach content. And he is the one that gives them that bonkers window of it had to have been an hour after they'd eaten the McDonald's.

That they have to tie themselves up in all of these like weird, happy raging. Like contortionist moves to make it fit. So yeah, now they're like, nah, he did it afterwards. Forget the Lundy Threehundee. Like none of that matters. He did it. And so this new version gave Mark a much broader window of time to have murdered Christine and Ambrin, somewhere between 1am and 5am. So this took the heat off the impossible timeline problem

that had plagued the first trial. Lundy supporters, however, were furious, calling it an abuse of process for the Crown to completely rewrite their own story. But the court allowed it. The new theory stood and the retrial was on. This time around, the Crown rolled out another fresh bombshell, a supposed confession that Mark Lundy had made in prison. According to a fellow inmate, Mark said that he, quote, wouldn't be in prison if it wasn't for Amber seeing what he was doing to Christine, and that might sound amming until you find out who said it. The defence dismissed the prison informant as a thoroughly dishonest individual whose long rap sheet included multiple frauds. And not only that, but he had tried to trade this confession

for a shot at early parole. So he was making it up to get his release date move forward. And somehow, despite all the controversy, the brain tissue evidence was still allowed in. Despite the appeal court in London saying this is totally bunk science, they still allowed it in. I cannot believe that. And this is in 2015.

Like, we knew what DNA was now. It is unbelievable. And just like the first time, round the crown leaned hard on it, as you would. With prosecutor Philip Morgan Casey telling the jury put all the other evidence aside, and Mark Lundy has Christine Lundy's brain on his shirt. There is no other rational explanation for this other than he is the killer. Unbelievable. But also, other than the fact that it had been totally discredited, there was another big issue. because the defense has experts had also tested this little grain of rice-sized stain,

and they had found traces of pig, cow, and sheep DNA in that one tiny sample. Spawning what became known as the notorious meat pie theory. And while it sounds utterly grim and a little bit absurd, it wasn't impossible. Around the year 2000, meat plants were using advanced meat recovery. machines that squeezed every last bit of meat out of the animal, leading to a higher rate of spinal cord material being found in people's snacks. Yum. No man, white pudding is a thing that people eat. It truly is.

So could the so-called brain chunk have been nothing more than a grim food stain? We may never know. And that's because the prosecution had used MRNA testing to supposedly prove that the tissue was human rather than animal. The results claim that the rice grain-sized stain was more likely to be from a human brain than from the eight animal species that they tested. But the defense argued that once again,

these tests were unproven, unreliable and essentially just science experiments in the context of a murder trial. And I have to agree. They also had such a small sample to begin with. They're all testing it multiple times. It just feels so unbelievable. It hardly feels like a smoking gun piece of evidence worthy of a homicide.

Sorry, a double homicide conviction. Of his own wife and kid. Like, I just... Like, literally, Christine's DNA could just have been on the shirt. He could have eaten a fucking sneaky pork pie when he's away from his wife in the motel while he's... It's the only time you're allowed to do it legally. Exactly. Exactly.

While he's, you know, finishing off his rum. And he wipes it on himself. But Christine's DNA is already on the shirt because she's his fucking wife and she's, fucking wife and she's probably handled his clothing. And they're just like, yeah, it's got to be her brain. Hmm. At retrial, Mark Lundy's lawyers honed in on what they called the three impossibilities. The fuel, the door and the stomachs.

The prosecution had sidestepped the speed debate by stretching the timeline, but Mark's fuel consumption remained a thorny issue that the Crown couldn't adequately answer. The sliding conservatory door was observed by neighbours to be open at around 11 p.m. am suggesting the presence of an intruder, but at that time, Mark was undeniably with Belinda, the escort in his Potoni hotel room. Finally, Dr. Pang's original testimony, based on the victim's stomach contents, pinned the times of death close to the McDonald's meal. And if the murders happened over six hours after that, as the Crown was now claiming, how could Amber and Christine's stomachs be described as full? Together, the defence said,

these three factors killed the prosecution's case stone dead and I have to agree. In 2015, the defence didn't just try to claim Mark Lundy's innocence. They also asked the question that had loomed over the whole case from the start. If not Mark Lundy, then who? Oh, no, bad, bad, bad. Terrible idea. Yeah, I'm... Yeah. But that's the way they go.

So they reminded the court that several other potential suspects from early in the investigation were never officially eliminated before focus shifted purely to Mark. Four of them had alibis, but only for the original 7pm timeline. Shift the murders to the early hours, as the Crown now claimed, and those alibis started to unravel. One of these suspects, an estate agent, took his own life just five days after the killings. A coincidence? Perhaps. But the defence argued that in their dogged pursuit of Mark Lundy,

vital leads were left to go cold. And that is a very good point to make. Like, we see this all the time in cases where we're like, now that guy definitely did it. But if the police do not, in their initial investigation, make a point of looking at other potential suspects, that can absolutely come back to bite them in the ass when it comes to trial. Especially when you have fucked about with the timeline this much.

Then there was Christine's brother, Glenn. The defence went for him hard. on cross-examination, picking holes in his story about finding Amber's body. He allegedly saw Amber in the hall, but didn't approach her before he called the emergency services. On that call, he described her as having gaping head wounds. But how could he have known that in the dark without getting quite close? And why did he not think to check on Christine at all? Glenn insisted that he was just focused on his niece and panicking in the heat of the moment.

But the defence argued that these were exactly. the kind of details worth digging into. They also raised murky rumours about abuse involving Glenn and a younger relative when he was an adolescent, insinuating that he could potentially have been molesting Amber and the murder was an attempt to cover it up. Had he chose that night to carry out the kills, with Dad out of town?

In testimony, Glenn's flatmate reported seeing a bloody towel in their bathroom on the morning the bodies were found. Glenn also had a fresh scratch on his. face, which he blamed on a run-in with a cat. While traces of blood, with a strong match to both Amber and Christine, were found in the boot of his car and his bathroom. And look, I'm not saying that Glenn Wegerie did it, but why was he not investigated in the same way that Mark Lundy was? After a grueling trial, the defence hoped that they'd done enough to sway the jury. But instead, history repeated itself.

On the 1st of April, 2015, Mark Glundee was once again found guilty after 16 hours of deliberation. I can't believe that. How? I can't believe that. The thing is, I'm assuming that at trial, if they allowed the whole like brain matter situation to be included again, even though at the appeal, it had been thoroughly debunked. Were the defence not allowed to bring up the fact that it had been debunked at appeal? Like, were they not allowed to undermine this piece of information? because if they weren't, then yeah, the prosecution casey standing up there and just being like, her brain on his shirt, no further points.

Like, is that just enough? I don't know. And I think the insurance policies, they wouldn't have helped. Mark Lundy's life sentence of 20 years was reimposed and he returned to prison to serve it. Mark Lundy lodged another appeal in October 2017, but it was thrown out a year later. He took it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2020. 2019, but in December that year, that also hit a dead end. While the Supreme Court did accept that the MRNA from the retrial was basically junk science and shouldn't have been admissible in court,

they still reckoned that it wasn't enough for a significant miscarriage of justice. They relied on a proviso, which means that the other evidence used to convict Mark was solid enough to justify his conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. So the ruling stood. What? Yeah. Literally what? Yeah. This is mad.

It feels so corrupt. Every experiment had been questioned, every sample had been scrutinized, and now Mark Lundy had nowhere else to turn. The reluctant labrat was now stuck in his very own cage, and it looked like he was going to have to just suck it up. Forever. But in 2020, something came to light. Detective Inspector Mark Hercock

The police's lead investigator during the 2015 retrial admitted to the press that 21 strands of hair found clutched in Christine's dead hands were not a match to Mark Lundy or a curly blonde wig. But they had never actually tested them to find out who they did belong to. And to make matters worse, the hair samples had been destroyed in 2003, despite Mark Lundy repeatedly requesting for all articles of evidence. to be preserved. It also turned out that unknown male DNA was found under both Christina and Amber's fingernails plus fibres that didn't match any of Mark's clothing. And to top this off, seven unmatched fingerprints and a palm print were found at the house but never revealed in either of the trials.

My God. hairs were found clutched in her hand and the same unknown male DNA is found under both their fingernails wow we talk all the time on this show about how like everybody is obsessed with wrongful convictions and a lot of people most people who are in prison are there because they did it

this is diabolical yeah truly diabolical but it's exactly what mark needed armed with this fresh ammunition Mark Lundy submitted his case the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2021. Yeah, good fucking luck. The case remains under review,

but in the meantime, he has already embarked on his next chapter. In May this year, the year of Our Lord 2025, Mark Lundy was granted parole and released from prison after serving his full sentence. As a part of his release,

he's not allowed to use online dating apps or go on social media or talk to the press or listen to podcasts about himself. A single slip-up could see him thrown straight back in the slammer. Some see these strict conditions as a bit of a problem, if not a full-blown violation of Mark Lundy's right to freedom of speech. Private investigator Tim McKinnell told the New Zealand Herald that in most wrongful conviction cases in New Zealand,

the media has been, quote, fundamentally important in exposing miscarriages of justice. And he argues that gag order parole conditions, like the ones imposed on Mark Lundy, could prevent the truth from coming to light in future cases. I know what he's saying. I just think it's a really dangerous thing to fuck with when it comes to like, I don't know, it's tricky. Because, yes, media does expose stuff about cases all the time. But then loads of other people's lives get ruined, you know?

Like, I don't know. I don't know. I think here it feels... Oh, in this specific case, I agree that it's way too harsh. It feels so Kafka-esque that you would be put through the ringer by, the justice system. And then they had all the power in this scenario. They just did whatever the fuck they wanted.

And then he's released on parole. And then they're like, but you're not allowed to fucking talk about anything that we did. You're not allowed to talk about anything that we fucked about with. All of the evidence that we destroyed, everything. You are not allowed to talk about it or you're going back to prison. And it's just like the hope that, well, you're out now. So just go live your life and keep your mouth shut.

I do not like that for one single second. And the criminal cases review commission. Yeah, good fucking luck. There is literally no way he will get a review. He will just be out on parole until he's dead and he just won't be able to talk about this. And this whole thing will just fade into obscurity because the only people that can fight for him now are everyone but him. But when you're not the face of your own campaign, why would other people believe it? It's so despicable.

in the most villainous way possible. So after all that, where do we stand on this controversial case? The Crown story is a neat one. Mark Lundy planned the murders down to the very last detail, crafted what he thought was an airtight alibi, and did it all for the life insurance payout, because he was drowning in debt. But there's something not quite meshing

between Mark's alleged motive and his method. Let's say that he did want to get rid of Christine for the money. assuming that he's okay with not even waiting a week to submit the paperwork so he could get the full 500,000. He's like, no, I've got to do it now. Got to get rid of her now. Let's just put that aside. Would he really go about the murders in such an over-the-top messy, gruesome way? I'm not saying it proves that he didn't do it, but the sheer overkill in the murders, like the brutality of them, does scream, I don't know, quite a lot of anger,

quite a lot of hatred, quite a lot of rage. But then you could also argue that it feels quite personal. I don't know. It doesn't feel like a clear-cut, cold-blooded financial motivation for the murders. And what we know about family annihilators, because some people will point to that because of the financial element of this case. What we know about family annihilators also doesn't really fit with this case. Research shows that, yes, financial stress can motivate men to murder their families. psychologists categorize these offenders into the anomic type

where economic failure triggers the urge to eliminate the family unit with the men usually rationalizing it as a sort of moral killing even though it's typically based on their own egotistical need to preserve their own image but here's the thing in these cases the offender almost always kills themselves as well not mark though who instead seems to have been going for some sort of weird black widower schick We're not saying it's impossible, but it doesn't seem totally typical. And if you strip away the brain tissue evidence, the so-called smoking glob, what is there left? Quite. What is there?

Nothing, apart from circumstantial scraps and a timeline that the police themselves can't even agree on. Yes, because their own story doesn't make sense, because if it was closer to what Pang said originally, then the timeline doesn't fit because he can't drive their own time. If it's closer to what he says later that it actually took place after 1am, then the description he gives of the stomachs being full doesn't make sense. So it must have been in a time that the police just can't place Mark Lundy there because he was with Belinda the escort. It doesn't really seem like enough. No.

So despite its Lord of the Rings landscape, the Lundy story isn't a fantasy epic with clear-cut heroes and villains. It's actually a cautionary tale of how a blinked police department and a single controversial piece of science can tip the scales of justice and how an innocent man might just pay the price for it. Yeah. Yeah, there's literally nothing conditional in my mind he's an innocent man. Yes.

And if by some miracle Mark Lundee managed to have actually done this and be guilty, the way in which the police went about this, the way in which the prosecution went about this, they did not deserve the double conviction that they go. No. I hope he's having a nice time. Oh, you're just... Doing something.

There's just no way. You can be because you'd be like, I can't speak about all the injustice is done to me. And everybody thinks I murdered my wife and child. Fucking hell. Okay, so that's it, guys. That is the case of the Lundy murders. Diabolical, really.

So give us your best times for the Lundy 3-Hundee. That's the only thing we've really got on this one. Do people do it wearing curly blonde wigs? Oh, I bet. Have a costume, the Kiwis. And if you have done it, I don't know, send us your best pictures. That would be fun. And yeah, that's it, guys.

We will see you next week for another episode of Red Handed. Goodbye. Bye.