The jury in the murder trial of Julia DeLuney has heard she questioned her uncle at the funeral about whether any money was hidden in the kitchen.
DeLuney is accused of murdering her 79-year-old mother Helen Gregory at her home in Khandallah, Wellington, in January 2024, a crime which she denies.
Giving evidence this morning, the victim’s brother Peter Wilson, who lives in Australia, told the court about a conversation he had with DeLuney, his niece, at the funeral.
“What do you know about the kitchen?” she asked. “Is any money hidden in the kitchen?”
Wilson said he told her he knew nothing — which he explained to the court was a deliberate withholding of information, as months earlier, he had helped his sister hide money in a kitchen drawer.
The court has already heard from witnesses that Gregory mistrusted banks, and hid thousands of dollars around the house — including $50,000 in the freezer, or wedged between salad bowls.
In the months before her death, she had spoken to friends and family about money going missing. The Crown’s case is that on one occasion, DeLuney took a large amount of cash and invested it on behalf of her mother.
Wilson said the conversation at the funeral was “really bizarre”, and DeLuney then asked: “What do you know about Helen’s diaries?”
He said he did not know anything about them.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he told the court. “I was stunned.” He said, at that moment, more people joined the conversation, and he took the opportunity to slip away and go inside the chapel.
The court was also told earlier today that DeLuney lied about calling for help after her mother had a fall in September 2023, months before her death.
This also came as part of Wilson’s evidence.
He said described his sister was the head of the family, the eldest child of seven, and explained they talked about one a month on the phone — though he said he usually did more listening than talking.
He told the court about an occasion in 2023, in which he was in New Zealand with his wife for a family gathering. The day after the gathering they dropped in on his sister, as she hadn’t been answering her phone.
But the house was shut up, curtains closed, despite it being only 4.30pm. He said DeLuney answered the door, telling them her mother had hit her head and “taken a turn”.
Wilson said she let them in, and when he saw his sister in bed, he was “shocked”.
He told the court Gregory’s skin was grey, she was cold and clammy, and her eyes sunken. “I thought she was dead,” Wilson said. “Blew me away.”
He says he said to DeLuney, “You have to ring an ambulance,” and at first she didn’t answer — but then, she said she had already called a relative to come and help.
But Wilson said about 40 minutes passed, with DeLuney tending to her mother, feeding her lemonade through a straw, so Wilson said he went outside and called the relative himself.
“I said [relative’s name], um, [Helen’s] not very well, and Julia’s rung you?”
“And [they] said, ‘No she hasn’t, nobody’s rung me today.'”
The relative told Wilson they would come right away, and Wilson said he then arranged for an ambulance to be called. That eventually arrived at Gregory’s Baroda St address, and she was taken to hospital.
Wilson recalled the somewhat treacherous trip down Gregory’s outdoor stairs in a wheelchair, as she was taken to the ambulance. “I think Edmund Hillary did his apprenticeship there.”
The Crown’s case is that months after this incident, in January 2024, DeLuney attacked her mother at her Khandallah home before staging it to look like she had fallen from the attic.
But the defence’s case is that someone else caused those injuries in the 90-minute window in which DeLuney returned home to fetch her husband to help.
The defence did not cross examine Wilson.
Another witness, detective Thomas Newby, told the court about the police search of Spicer Landfill.
They were looking for a black bin bag DeLuney was seen carrying down the street the morning after her mother’s death, before intercepting a rubbish truck, as well as the clothing she had been captured wearing in CCTV footage on the night.
Newby said they went through between 300 and 550 tonnes of rubbish, and found nothing of consequence.
rnz.co.nz
