Julia DeLuney in the High Court. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
A detective giving evidence in the DeLuney trial says inconsistencies in the accused's story led police to investigate the death as a manslaughter, rather than an accident.
Julia DeLuney is accused of murdering her 79-year-old mother, Helen Gregory, and the trial, expected to take at least four weeks, is in its fourth day.
The Crown's case is that DeLuney violently attacked her mother on the evening of 24 January 2024, at Gregory's home in Khandallah.
But the defence claims Gregory fell from the attic, and while DeLuney left her in a bedroom to drive back to her Kāpiti home to collect her husband Antonio DeLuney to help - as her mother didn't like hospitals - a third person caused those fatal injuries.
The defence's case is that the police investigation developed "tunnel vision" in its pursuit of DeLuney, and it failed to properly investigate other options.
Under cross examination by defence lawyer Quentin Duff, Detective Sergeant Giulia Boffa said police were told Gregory'd had a fall, but things didn't add up.
"And there was information that was important that was missing from the accounts that were being provided around changing clothing and a number of areas travelled to that we were picking up that we were not being told about."
Namely, she stopped at a petrol station and, the Crown asserts, changed clothes a number of times that evening.
Detective Constable Kristina O'Connor, under cross examination for the second time after previously guiding the jury through a virtual walk-through of the address, began telling the court about her methodical search of the property for disturbances in the greenery or objects out of place.
A sweep of the exterior didn't reveal anything suspicious, other than a mark on a doorknob, O'Connor said.
But inside, she saw the blood on the walls and floor, and clumps of hair in the hallway and bedroom.
The court was shown pictures of the broken-off tip of an orange fake nail next to the body along with the blood-stained walls and clumps of hair.
O'Connor said when she saw the blood, hair and nail she began thinking of the death as suspicious, rather than simply unexplained.
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