Lundy’s murders: business partner visited and threatened by angry creditors hours before murders

A friend and business associate of Mark Lundy visited and threatened by angry creditors just hours before the infamous double murder will keep his name a secret, a judge ruled.

The associate was so concerned by the presence of the two creditors at his North Island rural home on August 29, 2000 that they called the police.

The men urgently wanted a $ 16,000 deposit to supply $ 70,000 of vine root cuttings, which were planned to be treated and sold for $ 550,000 to Lundy for his company at the Hawkes Bay vineyard.

The mystery man later admitted under oath that he felt “intimidated” by one of the men who was “considerably taller and heavier than me.”

“They got a little meandering” and tried to get the root stock out of a cooling unit, he said.
Official police records show that they were called at 10:43 am on August 29 “to attend the theft of grape cuttings.”

Two local police officers visited the property.

But they were satisfied that it was a civil and commercial matter that did not require the involvement of the police. They did not take any personal data.

A worksheet entry for one of the police officers, seen by the Herald, reads: “Both parties seemed friendly and there was no suggestion that any violence was threatened or used. It seemed to me that the owner / manager just wanted to advice on what the seller could or couldn’t do. “

The creditors reportedly received a check for $ 16,000 and left.

Hours later, Lundy’s wife, Christine, 38, and her daughter Amber, 7, were slaughtered with an ax or tomahawk inside their home in Karamea Crescent, Palmerston North.
The staggering revelations come 20 years after the murders.

The business partner, who died five years ago, was granted name suppression in Lundy’s original double murder trial in 2002.

This year, the Herald petitioned the Palmerston North Superior Court to lift the name suppression, arguing that the original reasons the judge granted the decision were no longer relevant.

The request was rejected by the man’s surviving family. Palmerston North Crown Attorney Ben Vanderkolk took a neutral position on the Herald’s request. Lundy’s attorney supported the request.

Last month, Judge Rebecca Edwards heard the matter.

After a hearing in Wellington Superior Court, his decision was reserved and published today.

Judge Edwards rejected the Herald’s request and concluded: “The public interest in the publication of [the man’s] name and evidence does not weigh more than the public and private interests of maintaining orders in these circumstances. “

Auckland businessman Geoff Levick, a longtime Lundy supporter, says police failed to adequately investigate the fact that creditors turned up at a close Lundy’s business associate on the day of the killings.

Levick says it was a remarkable “coincidence” that was surprisingly overlooked by police.
The afternoon the creditors showed up, the man called Christine, who was overseeing the paperwork for Lundy’s business affairs, “to put her in the picture” of what had just happened.

And later that night, he also called Lundy, who said he was in Wellington on business, and they talked for 27 minutes.

“The issues we discussed would have been the events that took place on our property on that particular day …” the man said during the 2002 trial.

When asked if the conversation was related to a plan to cover up the murders, he replied, “No, definitely not.”

Christine and Amber Lundy were murdered that night.

The two creditors were later questioned by police to investigate the double murder, the Herald understands, but the line of investigation did not proceed.

However, the business partner was formally interviewed several times by the homicide police investigating the Lundy murders.

He was also treated as a suspect in the murders.

During a police video interview, the man noticed his name was written on a document titled “Murder Suspect” and “wondered what was going on.”

He told the original Lundy trial that on November 26, 2000, he was visited at his home by two high-ranking police officers, including Detective Sergeant Ross Grantham, the man in charge of Operation Winter, as the Lundy case was dubbed. .

They were “quite angry, maybe not angry, but very upset,” he said, because he had not returned to the police station for another video interview.

“And at that stage they accused me of not telling anything but lies to the police, so I got a little nervous and asked them not to leave too politely,” he told the court.

The man claimed that the police offered him a deal for his cooperation in the case.
“Mr. Grantham offered me immunity from prosecution,” he said.

“He was only going to offer it to me once because he believed that I was involved in some way, shape or form, with the Christine and Amber murders.

“I told him I did not want immunity from prosecution, because I was not in any way, shape or form, time, place, or anything related to their murders.”

During the 2002 trial, it was suggested that someone clean up the bloody scene after the murders and turn off the Lundy’s computer.

The man claimed that the police accused him of the cleaning job.

He also gave a statement for Lundy’s retrial in Wellington High Court in 2015, ordered by London’s Privy Council, which had concerns about Lundy’s first trial, where he was convicted and imprisoned for life in prison with a minimum period. without parole for 17 years. years, then raised to a minimum of 20 years.

He again alleged that Grantham had offered him “immunity from prosecution” even though he was charged with “cleaning up the scene and turning off the computer after the murders.”

Lundy, now 63, has always professed his innocence and will be eligible for parole in 2022.