The jury in murder trial of Helen Gregory has heard how police searched the apartment of her daughter, Julia DeLuney, for clothing and evidence of cryptocurrency trading.
The search of the Paraparaumu address took place nearly three weeks after 79-year-old Gregory was killed in her Khandallah home.
A number of items were seized, including two green Michael Kors handbags, one with blood on it, a pink MacBook, white Mi Piaci shoes, four SD cards, two diaries, her car — a Citroen — and a waste management bin.
Detective constable Mary Smith told the court they were partly guided in their search by a CCTV image of DeLuney putting petrol in a car, wearing light blue jeans and a neon green shirt, which had also been shown to the jury.
Smith said a full itemised list of women’s clothing was made during the search, and their task of identifying women’s items from men’s was made easier by a clear distinction between the apartment’s two bedrooms — one containing men’s items, and the other, women’s.
By the time her apartment was searched, police had already been analysing data from DeLuney’s cellphone. More information on this was expected later in the trial.
The Crown’s case held that DeLuney murdered her mother in a violent attack, before staging it to look like a fall from the attic, on the evening of 24 January 2024.
But the defence’s case contended that another person caused those fatal injuries in a 90-minute window in which DeLuney said she left her mother — at this point only minorly injured from that fall — on the floor of a bedroom, to fetch her husband from their Paraparaumu home to help.
The trial was in its third week, and expected to go on for a further two at least.
rnz.co.nz
