A high court jury has seen footage of murder-accused Julia DeLuney’s video interview with police the day after her mother’s death, where her story is first put under the microscope.
Police questioned why she changed her clothes on two different occasions, and as they begin to interrogate the details, she asks: “Do you think I could do something like that? It’s just, what are you suggesting? You’re making me out to be a f***ing monster.”
DeLuney is on trial at the High Court in Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother, Helen Gregory, which she denies.
The Crown says DeLuney attacked her mother before staging it to look like she had fallen from the attic, but the defence says someone else caused those injuries in the 90 minutes in which she had gone to get help.
This week the jury has seen CCTV footage captured by Gregory’s neighbour of DeLuney arriving at her mother’s address and going up the steps to the house.
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including a homicide arrest after a Hamilton manhunt, concern over a new Covid variant, and Red Bull sacks its Formula 1 team boss. (Source: 1News)
She leaves again three and a half hours later, before briefly ascending the steps for a second time for only a few minutes, coming down again, and then getting in her car and driving away at 9.47pm.
There has also been footage of DeLuney disposing of a black rubbish bag in a passing rubbish truck the morning after her mother’s death.
On Wednesday afternoon, a video interview with detective constable Christopher Clarke was played to the court. The interview lasts two hours and 40 minutes, recorded from about 8.40pm on January 25, 2024, at the Porirua police station.
The interviewer, detective constable Chris Clarke, asks DeLuney to go through her version of events multiple times, in increasing detail, and then begins to question it.
DeLuney is dressed in a bright red shirt and pants and, in the interview, she wraps herself in a green patterned dressing gown, which another officer has brought to her from her apartment, which was at that point being searched.
Clarke describes Gregory’s injuries to DeLuney.
“She had a black eye and bruising on the right-hand side of her jaw. Part of her scalp was found in the hallway and the bedroom.
“What? Say that again.”
“The scalp.” Clarke gestures to his own head.
“Oh my god, no.”
“There was an open wound on the right-hand side, I believe, of her head and a cut to her arm,” Clarke tells her. “They’re significant injuries. Right now we have CCTV showing you changing your outfits, significant injuries to your mum-“
“I didn’t do those injuries to my mother.”
Clarke also asks about a discrepancy in timing. He said there was a 25-minute gap between when she should have arrived back at her mother’s and calling the ambulance.
In the interview, DeLuney denied there had been a delay, and CCTV footage would later confirm her version of events.
A neighbour’s security camera, the footage of which was played to the court on Tuesday, showed there was a gap of just 10 minutes between DeLuney arriving at Gregory’s address, and the first ambulance arriving. But at the time of the video interview, police believed there to be a larger gap.
Clarke explained this was due to a delay in ambulance staff passing on the call to police.
While DeLuney was being interviewed at the police station, officers and a forensic photographer were going through her Paraparaumu apartment.
They were, among other things, searching for the various clothing items DeLuney had been pictured in the night before.
CCTV footage showed she arrived at her mother’s wearing a bright green shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers.
Then, she changed her clothes before leaving her mother’s to fetch her husband Antonion DeLuney to help.
She explained this was because she did not want to go out in public with blood on her clothes, which had happened while helping her mother, who she said had cut her head falling from the attic.
So she was pictured at the Mobil station in Johnsonville, where she stopped to buy a lighter, wearing items of her mothers — a pink long-sleeved top, black pants and black slippers.
She said she and her mother shared clothing all the time.
“I didn’t want to be in public with blood [on me],” she told the detective. “If I was going straight back to see Antonio, then I wouldn’t have changed.”
She changed her clothes again when she got back to her apartment, explaining she just felt more comfortable in her own clothes.
The prosecution confirmed all clothing she was pictured in had later been accounted for.
But Clarke questioned her priotrities.
“You’ve gone to your mum’s address, she’s fallen, you were saying by accident, you get blood on your top, you don’t call an ambulance but you change your outfit, put your green top in your handbag, that’s what you just said, and then left wearing your mum’s clothing.”
He said three outfit changes was not something you would expect in this situation.
DeLuney denied being capable of killing her mother. “I have never been a violent person, particularly to my mother, ever, ever,” she says, vehement. “I never even hit my kids.”
She admitted she did consider calling an ambulance at the house when her mother first fell, but decided against it, as her mother hated hospitals and was protesting.
She told Clarke: “I made a mistake, I should have called the ambulance straight away… I shouldn’t have let her go up in the f***ing attic and I should have rung 111. I get that.”
The trial continues.
rnz.co.nz
