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Killer in the family podcast
A true crime podcast exploring men who kill their families.
Killer in the family podcast
Episode 51 - The Lundy Family
In August 2000 38 year old Christine Lundy and her 7 year old daughter Amber Lundy were brutally murdered in their New Zealand house. Their husband and father Mark Lundy was eventually arrested and convicted of the murders. But there are doubts about his guilt to this day.
This is the story of the Lundy Family.
Information and support
- Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans
- National Domestic Violence Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
- Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) Home - AAFDA
- Women’s Aid Home - Women's Aid
- National Domestic Abuse Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
- Mental health support USA Mental Health America | Homepage | Mental Health America
- Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline
References
MURDERED: The Lundys Part 1 | Crime Junkie Podcast
MURDERED: The Lundys Part 2 | Crime Junkie Podcast
Case 16: The Lundy Murders (INVESTIGATION) | True Crime New Zealand (NZ)
Mark Edward Lundy | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers
Call to scrutinise 60 suspects in Lundy case - NZ Herald
Credits
Hosted and created by Clare Laxton @ladylaxton
Produced by: Clare Laxton
Killer in the family podcast (buzzsprout.com)
Music from Pixabay.
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https://www.buymeacoffee.com/clarelaxton
Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Laxton. Welcome to episode 51 and the last episode before the podcast takes a bit of a festive break. I'll be back with a new episode on Friday, the 10th of January 2025, but in the meantime, enjoy this episode and before the end of the year, I'll be doing a bit of a Spotify Unwrapped type video of the highlights of the podcast from the whole year, so watch out for that on social media too. Now let's get into this episode.
Speaker 1:In August 2000, 38-year-old Christine Lundy and her seven-year-old daughter, amber Lundy, were brutally murdered in their New Zealand home. Their husband and father, mark Lundy, was eventually arrested and convicted of the murders, but there are doubts about his guilt to this day. This is the story of the Lundy family, so this episode the last one of 2024 is going to be a tough listen team, and it's going to be a slightly different one than usual, as there are still doubts about the guilt of mark lundy, who is still serving time for the murders of his wife and daughter. It's also our first case from New Zealand as well, but whoever did kill Christine and Amber? The fact remains that they were both brutally murdered and taken from their family and friends way too soon. Links to information and support, if you need it, are in the episode notes, as are links to all the sources I've used for this episode. Now, as well as news reports and articles, I've also listened to a two-part Crime Junkie podcast episode about the Lundy family, an episode of True Crime New Zealand podcast, and also read a book by Netta Newbound and Marcus Brown called Mark Lundy Br killer or bereaved family man. There are loads more podcasts and other sources out there about this case if you're interested in delving deeper as well.
Speaker 1:So let's start by talking about Christine. Christine Marie Lundy was just 38 years old when she was killed. She's been described as a devoted mother who was very active in her community. Now, I couldn't find out loads about Christine's childhood. I know she had a brother, but from what I've read and listened to, she was well liked and a really loved member of her local New Zealand community. She was also very active in the Girl Guides from a young age and it's something she continued as she had her own daughter and she was really involved in volunteering with them.
Speaker 1:In so many cases we talk about, it really feels like the women that we talk about. Just you know, wanted a happy family with kids and community events, and all of that was just ripped from them. It's just so heartbreaking, and it definitely feels like this for Christine and her family. According to the book about Mark Lundy that I mentioned, when Christine was just 17 years old in 1978, she met someone at a Boy Scouts and Girl Guides meetup Mark Lundy. They started dating and got married in May 1983. Now I couldn't again couldn't find loads about Lundy and his childhood, but according to the book that I read, mark Edward Lundy was 20 years old when he met Christine at that Girl Guides and Boy Scouts meet-up in 1978. As I said, they dated and married in 1983 and then apparently started trying for a baby almost straight away, because Christine really wanted a family. They had to wait 10 years, though, but then Amber Grace Lundy was born in 1993. Amber was just seven years old when she was killed, and she has been described by Murderpedia as a strong-willed child, a natural leader and a delight to teach.
Speaker 1:So the Lundy family lived in Palmerston North in New Zealand, or Palmy as I think it's called. It's a city on the North Island of New Zealand and it's about 80 miles north of the capital, wellington. It's got a population of around 90,000 so pretty sizable city in New Zealand and Christine and Lundy also had their own business at this time. It sold kitchen stuff like sinks, taps and worktops, and Lundy was a salesman for the business so would travel quite often, including regular trips to a place called Petone which was a suburb of Wellington. Now, at the time of the murders, the Lundy's business was actually in debt to the tune of millions of New Zealand dollars to their suppliers and in a seemingly random move to me, even though they were in debt, in 1999 Lundy bought some land near a wine region with a vision of opening a vineyard, and by the time of the murders Lundy still hadn't paid for that land and he owed two million New Zealand dollars. The deadline for that payment was the 30th of August 2000, the day that Christine and Amber were found to have been murdered. The other notable thing that happened just before the murders was that Christine and Lundy increased their life insurance payouts from $200,000 to $500,000. Though actually the paperwork wasn't finalised before Christine was murdered and it's actually not known if Lundy knew that or not and if he had assumed that it had gone through. So here we have a sort of relatively normal suburban family in New Zealand just living their lives until a fateful day in August 2000 when everything would change.
Speaker 1:On the morning of the 30th of August 2000, christine Lundy's brother, glenn, had gone around to her house as he was worried because he couldn't get hold of her. According to the book on Lundy, glenn didn't get an answer when he called at the front door, so he went around the back to the conservatory and went in that way. As he walked into the house, he saw seven-year-old Amber lying in the hallway covered in blood. He then discovered a sister on her bed, also covered in blood. Immediately calling the police to come to the house, glenn was joined by one of christine's friends, karen, who arrived to go on their normal morning walk together with christine. Apparently you know that that was their sort of normal routine. Now, police arrived at the house and confirmed that both Amber and Christine were dead and that they had been murdered.
Speaker 1:Now, the day before this, christine's husband, mark Lundy, had left for one of his regular business trips to Petone, which was near Wellington, about 80 miles away. He spoke to Christine about 5.30 the night before as her and Amber were going to McDonald's for dinner. As her and Amber were going to McDonald's for dinner. Now, around 9.30 on the morning of the 30th of August, when Christine and Amber had been found dead, lundy actually phoned the home to talk to Christine. Karen answered and, on instructions from the police, who were still there, told Lundy that Christine couldn't come to the phone Around 11.40am.
Speaker 1:Lundy was again getting really concerned that he hadn't heard from her. She hadn't called back. So he called a friend called Stuart and asked him to go to the house and check on her. Stuart called Lundy back and said that his house had been cordoned off by the police and that he needed to get home ASAP. Lundy immediately got into his car and made it back from Petone in one hour and 23 minutes. He was stopped by the police before he got to the house and was told what happened, and here's what police think happened to Christine and Amber that night. After their investigation. This is going to be a tough listen team.
Speaker 1:So at a point in the night or early morning when they were both in bed, christine was attacked viciously with a small hammer or an axe type tool viciously with a small hammer or an axe type tool. The police actually think it was something called a tomahawk axe. Christine was hit multiple times in the head and face area. Some sources say around nine or ten times, but some sources say as much as 18 times. However many times she was hit, she was brutally murdered and the intention was clearly to kill. Christine also had many, many defensive wounds and, according to the Crime Junkie episode, the headboard of the bed had met so many cuts and gashes in it as well, so it's clearly a really violent murder, but one that she was trying to defend herself against.
Speaker 1:The police think that Amber, the little seven-year-old girl who was probably awoken from her sleep, then came into Christine's room to find out what the noise was about, what was happening. She saw her mum being attacked and tried to run. Where her body was found was in the doorway of Christine's room, facing away as though she was running when she was struck. Now, amber wasn't hit as many times as Christine, but the intention was clearly still to kill and she was also struck in the sort of head and face area with the small axe. Police didn't think that Amber was an intended target, but that she was killed because she saw what was happening to her mum, and this just makes me so, so sad. Here you have Christine woken from sleep, being attacked, clearly fighting so hard to save herself and her daughter, and then Amber walking in and being killed as well. My heart just breaks here. So that is what police say, actually they think happened to Christine and Amber that night.
Speaker 1:But let's rewind a little bit and talk about the evening they had the night before. So, as we've said, lundy was away on a business trip in Petone and he spoke to Christine for about eight minutes at 5.30pm. She told him that her and Amber were on their way to get McDonald's for dinner, which was about 10 minutes away from the house. And it seems that they did that, as the police later found a receipt for a McDonald's takeaway ordered at 5.45pm, for a McDonald's takeaway ordered at 5.45, for a chicken burger, a filet-o-fish burger, nine chicken McNuggets, one large fries, one medium fries and two apple pies, and the wrappers for the meal were found in the Lundy's kitchen as well. So we know that Christine and Amber probably had dinner around six o'clock and then settled down to their evening. At 6.56pm Christine took a phone call from a friend about a local wine club. It wasn't a long phone call, but it proved that she was still alive then. The other thing we know is that Mark called a business partner about the vineyard land around 8.30pm from his motel in Pitone.
Speaker 1:Back at the Lundy's house in Palmy we know that the family computer was shut down around 10.50pm and that a neighbour saw lights on in the house around 11pm. And this seems to fit with Christine's usual routine. She's quite the night owl apparently, and it seemed her and Amber would always watch the soap Shortland Street at 7pm Now I imagine this to be like neighbours or home anyway and then Amber would go to bed at 7.30pm, after the soap had finished, and Christine would sort of get on with like reading or business stuff until she decided to go to bed. So it seemed reasonable to assume that this night Christine followed her usual night time routine and went to bed around 11pm. Now, remember that she was found in her bedroom and her glasses were on the nightstand when she was found, so it sort of tracks that she had, you know, got ready for bed, put her glasses on her nightstand and was in bed, maybe asleep, when she was killed. The other thing that we know about that night is that around 11pm Lundy, from his hotel room in Pitone called a sex worker to pay for some sex. She came to his motel room and reportedly left around 1am. The motel reception then saw him the next morning, the 30th of August, around 7am. So keep in mind all of these timings and goings on, as they'll be important later on. And it's also really important to know that on initial sort of questioning and discussions with the police, lundy said that his and Christine's marriage was very happy, very loving, and they had no issues. But him calling a sex worker something that he did more than once when he was away on business at the motel indicates that maybe not all was well in this marriage. So now we know how Christine and Amber spent their final hours.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the evidence that the police found on their initial investigation. There were five important pieces of evidence that came out here. Firstly, the police found that there was a window at the back of the house that had a sort of latch unhooked and a smear of blood on it. After tests were carried out, the blood was found to be Christine's, so they deduced that it sort of must have been left by the killer. Next, when Mark came into the house after it had been released as a crime scene and the bodies of Christine and Amber had been removed. He said there was a jewellery box of Christine's missing. It wasn't thought that she had lots of expensive jewellery, but that box has never been found. Then there were flakes of blue and orange paint found in Christine and Amber's head wounds, which actually matched paints that Lundy used to mark his tools, though all of his tools were under lock and key and, interestingly, the Tomahawk axe that the police think was the murder weapon has never been found either.
Speaker 1:The pathologist that attended the scene seven hours after the murders had been reported, by the way, dr James Pang, also looked at the stomach contents of Christine and Amber and deduced by the fact that he couldn't smell any gastric juices that they had died around 7 or 7.15 pm. Now we're going to come back to this, because it is said that there are many, many different ways of deducing time of death and including, you know, taking temperature, looking at something called rigor mortis, and the fact that the pathologist just looked at their stomach contents and deduced time of death and didn't carry out any other tests is really important here. Also, even when you're looking at stomach contents, there are lots of different factors that influence how long it takes someone to digest food, so you can't just look and decide that that's when they died because their food had been undigested. So there's lots of discussion around this. But it's really important that initially the police thought that Christine and Amber died around 7, 7.15. The final piece of evidence that police had was a neighbour of Christine's who said that she saw a man in a sort of jogging suit and a blonde wig running from Christine's house around 7.15. We'll come back to this later as well While the police were investigating and the community was reeling this was the biggest news in New Zealand by far and don't forget it was early 2000,.
Speaker 1:So sort of rolling news coverage had sort of just started as well. The funerals of Christine and Amber were held in early September. So many mourners came to pay their respects to the loving mother and beautiful daughter so brutally murdered. There is actually an image from the funeral that was captured by TV cameras of Lundy being so overcome with grief as he walked out of the funerals that he had to be held up by two friends. I'll put the image on my socials as it is something that caused a lot of debate. Some said he was putting it on and that it was too much, and some saw the image of a murderer when they looked at it. It was definitely an image that was seen around the world.
Speaker 1:As the whole country of New Zealand reeled from the murders of Christine and Amber, the police continued on with their investigations. A couple of months in, they actually insisted that Mark Lundy wasn't a suspect. I mean, the husband or partner or ex-husband should always be a suspect, but anyway, in February 2001, mark was actually arrested for the murders of his wife and daughter, and the evidence that pointed to this arrest was not only the paint flakes in Christina and Amber's wounds and it matched the paint that he used to mark his tools but they also found another piece of what they thought was damning evidence. Testing on a polo shirt found in the backseat of Lundy's car found that it had Christine's DNA on it. Probably not that unusual, you'd think, as they were married, but further testing found that the DNA didn't come from blood but that it came from brain matter or the spinal cord of Christine. Therefore, the police deduced that it could only be on the polo shirt if Lundy committed the murders. So Lundy was arrested and faced trial in February 2002 in Palmerston North High Court he maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty.
Speaker 1:The prosecutors in the trial called over 100 witnesses and the police set out their case for what they think happened. They asserted that Lundy planned to kill Christine for the life insurance money. As we've talked about. The family were in a load of debt and the Crime Junkie episode actually said that the interest alone was $600 a day. I mean that is a lot of debt. They must have been on the brink of bankruptcy and that Lundy needed money to get creditors off his back. Now, as we talked about, he actually owed millions of dollars and even if he thought the paperwork for the insurance had gone through, that's $500,000. So actually it wouldn't have been enough to even clear his debts. But maybe police think he was thinking he just needed something to get those creditors sort of off his back.
Speaker 1:And with that motive in mind, police assert that Lundy established an alibi for himself with the eight-minute phone call to Christine and Amber at 5.30pm. They say that after this phone call he got in his car from his motel in Petone and drove back to Parmy to kill Christine. They claimed that she was already in bed by 7pm. So remember, the pathologist said that Christine and Amber were killed around 7, 7.15pm because of their stomach contents. But we also know that Christine's usual routine was to not go to bed till later. So police had to sort of find an explanation for why she was in bed, her glasses on the nightstand, at 7 pm and they said it's because lundy had called her and said that he was driving home because he wanted to have sex. Now I'm really not sure about this one from the police because you know, lundy was only away for one night. We've already sort of established that their marriage wasn't great because he was using us, he was, you know, paying for sex from a sex worker and it does just seem not that believable that, um, that that would happen and that's that's why she would be in bed. But they persisted with this and they say that he killed Christine around 7, 7.15 and then Amber. They say that he cleaned himself up, got rid of the murder weapon, took the jewellery box, broke the window latch to make it look like a robbery and then drove back to Pitone, presumably at the speed of light, to make that 8.30 phone call from the motel to a business associate. During the trial police claimed that they'd recreated the journey that Lundy did and said it was totally possible in the time. The defence maintained that that journey was not possible in that time frame.
Speaker 1:The jury didn't deliberate for too long in this trial before Lundy was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum term of 17 years in prison. Almost immediately Lundy's defence team put in an appeal, as did the prosecutors, as they wanted his minimum term increased to 20 years. Later on that year, lundy lost his appeal and the prosecutors won theirs, so his sentence was increased to 20 years. Now, after the trial and appeal, there was a Time article, an article in a magazine called North and South and a documentary called the Investigator, all through doubt on the conviction of Lundy and the evidence that the police presented. Now there were a few things that these sort of articles and documentaries talked about that they used to cast doubt.
Speaker 1:The first thing, as I'm sure you guys are thinking as well, was the ridiculously tight timeline in which police claim Lundy drove a 180 mile round trip as well as carried out the murders and cleaned up. So according to the police timeline presented at trial, lundy had around two hours and 40 minutes. So from that 5.38 finishing phone call with Christine and Amber to that 8.30 call with his business associate from the motel, and that just seems very, very tight, particularly as he would be driving in Petone at rush hour. Normally, generally it'd take about three and a half hours to do this type of distance and although the police claimed at trial that they had done the journey Lundy did in a shorter time than he needed, it actually took them an hour and a half each way. So no one has managed to complete that trip in the time needed for Lundy to commit the murders at 7pm. And this is a really, really important consideration because although it was claimed that it was, you know that drive was eminently doable no one has actually done it. The other thing that came out was the neighbour who claimed she saw a man running from the Lundy's house at 7.15pm. Turned out she got the time wrong. According to the Crime Junkie podcast, she claims that some friends were visiting sort of at the same time or just before before they went to choir practice, but the friends insisted that they were at her house no later than 6.30pm that day. So the timings of that sighting again just don't work.
Speaker 1:The last thing and this is a pretty big one is that when Lundy was arrested there were apparently still four other suspects that were outstanding with the police. So the police had five suspects in total who, you know, still hadn't cleared their alibis. They were still active suspects when they arrested Lundy. So I really feel like they should have closed the other suspects down before arresting just one. And you might be wondering who these other suspects were, so not all of them have been named, but one of them was actually Christine's brother, glenn, who some say was sexually abusing Amber and therefore, if he was been found out, maybe Christine had found him out. That would have been a motive for murder. Now, alongside this, police found trace amounts of blood in his bathroom, on a hanky and on his underwear. That was found to be an 83% match for Christine and an 88% match for Amber. Now it seems this evidence was never closed down, it was never explained, or if they did do it, then it hasn't been explained publicly. So it's unclear whether Glenn still is a suspect or not.
Speaker 1:Now another suspect was a local estate agent, a guy called Sheridan Murphy, who some thought was having a relationship with Christine test in sort of Christine's rubbish. But considering her and Lundy didn't have a great relationship, he was seeking sex outside the marriage. They wondered whether she, christine, was having an affair, but I apparently haven't found any evidence of that. But some people thought it might have been Sheridan Murphy, and Murphy actually took his own life a few days after the murders. Now again, I don't know if police have closed down this suspect, if they're still open, if there's still questions, but if they have, it's not been made public. And you know, it just seems there's still a lot of questions here around potential other suspects. And you know what, despite this evidence that seemed to cast doubt on lundy's conviction and led to a second trial, a retrial, in 2015, lundy again was found guilty, but this time the prosecutors no longer claimed that christ and Amber died at 7pm, but actually in the early hours of 30th of August, after the sex worker had left Lundy at 1am. So, as we said, lundy was found guilty again and another appeal was dismissed in 2019. Although he was eligible for parole and he has been eligible for parole since 2022, lundy remains in prison to this day.
Speaker 1:Now, as I said right at the beginning of this episode, this one's a little bit different as, although he is in prison, the guilt of father and husband, mark Lundy, has been questioned and questioned and you know, one of the things I can't get over is is some of the other suspects that there may have been. Now you've listened to this case and the final episode of 2024, I'd be really interested to know what you think. Let me know on insta at killer in the family pod, or drop me a text message via the link in the episode notes before that. You might be interested to know what I think. So here we go. I was genuinely properly on the fence on this case, but going through the research for this episode has helped me decide what I think and obviously do not take my opinion as gospel Challenge it. Read about the case and tell me what you think. So here goes.
Speaker 1:On the one hand, I can totally see the motives for murder here. There was the life insurance money, although the paperwork hadn't still gone through, but there were still hundreds of thousands of dollars of life insurance to be awarded. There were the huge financial issues the family were in, the huge debts they were in, and we have talked about before how deep financial pressures have led some men to take their final act of control over their family. So we have financial pressures, we have a potential payout on life insurance, and we also have infidelity on Lundy's part. The business trip to Petone was one that he took regularly, and it seemed that calling a sex worker was a regular part of this business trip too. So there was regular infidelity on the part of Lundy, and this situation feels very similar to that of Robert Mockery that we talked about way back in episode three, who was facing huge financial pressures as well and was regularly seeing a sex worker behind his wife's back. That is a whole heap of motive for murder, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I also think that the police's assumption that if he did it he planned the murder of Christine he probably didn't plan on killing Amber, but did so after she saw him kill her mother. Now, as well as the motives, there is some of the evidence that feels pretty convincing the brain matter or spinal cord matter on his polo shirt, the paint chips found in Christine and Amber's wounds that were from the paint he used to mark his tools, and those are all the reasons that I can think of where Lundy probably did kill his wife and daughter, and actually talking through them like this on this episode is pretty convincing. Now, on the other hand and you won't hear me talk like this on this episode is pretty convincing. Now, on the other hand and you won't hear me talk like this very often there are still a few niggling doubts there. Firstly, as far as I've read, there wasn't any evidence of domestic abuse or control in the Lundy's relationship. This doesn't mean that Lundy wasn't guilty or that there wasn't abuse or coercive control, just that it was never reported or that Christine didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1:The other thing that makes me question his guilt is the time of the murders and the journey that Lundy had to make. If police were sure that Christine and Amber died around 7pm because of their stomach contents, that is a super tight window for Lundy to drive back from Petone in rush hour traffic, commit the murders, clean up and then get back to his motel in time to call his colleague at 8.30. It's just so tight. There is also the fact that there are other suspects that have might have had a motive to kill Christine that we've discussed. So, having gone through all of this and you know, on writing and talking about this case for this episode, I think probably on reflection that Lundy did kill his wife and daughter, but I don't think he killed them at 7 pm police believed I think he killed them in the early morning of the 30th of August, after the sex worker had left his motel room at 1am and he got back to the motel before 7am when he was seen there. That not only gives him plenty of time to drive there and back, but also makes much more sense with Christine's normal routine, and that she went to bed around 11pm rather than 7pm. I think Lundy did it for the financial gain and that he killed Amber only because she saw him and he didn't want her to identify him to police. And, as I said before at the start of this episode, whatever we all think, the reality is that a loving mother and her brilliant daughter lost their lives in a brutal and unnecessary attack that took them away too soon. This episode is dedicated to Christine and Amber Lundy, to who they were and what they brought to their family, friends and communities, and to their lives that were taken way too soon. We remember you, christine and Amber.
Speaker 1:This has been Killer in the Family podcast written and produced by me, claire Laxton. It's now time for a festive break, so I'll be back with a new episode next year on Friday, the 10th of January 2025, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you all for your support. Subscribes and downloads this year and have a great festive season yourselves. Don't forget to send me any comments or questions to my insta at killerinthefamilypod or through a text via a link in the episode notes. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Also, don't forget that you can buy me a coffee if you like the podcast and help support it's running. The link is in the episode notes and thank you so much to everyone for your support so far. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton, this killer in the family podcast. Until next time, take care, thank you, thank you.
