Julia DeLuney is on trial in the High Court at Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother, Helen Gregory (inset), in her Khandallah home.
Julia DeLuney is on trial in the High Court at Wellington for the murder of her 79-year-old mother, Helen Gregory (inset), in her Khandallah home.
A woman killed in her home confided in friends in the months before her death that two large sums of money had gone missing from her house, including up to $85,000 her daughter later admitted to investing in cryptocurrency.
Helen Gregory, 79, was killed in her Khandallah home inJanuary last year. Her daughter Julia DeLuney is charged with her murder but claims someone else was responsible.
The Crown has suggested DeLuney, who dealt in cryptocurrency, was in financial difficulty and attacked her mother before leaving the house, driving to her own home and then returning later with her husband.
But DeLuney maintains she’d left her mother with minor injuries after her mother had fallen from the attic. She had driven back to her house on the Kāpiti Coast, only to return to what she described as a “warzone”.
The view looking up to the attic at Helen Gregory's Khandallah home.
The High Court at Wellington has already heard that Gregory distrusted banks, preferring instead to keep plastic packets of cash hidden around her Baroda St house.
In September 2023, Gregory was hospitalised after a fall and during that time, DeLuney and her husband stayed at Gregory’s house.
Gregory’s friends have told the court that upon being discharged from hospital, she came home to find her house in disarray.
Alcohol bottles were strewn throughout the house and DeLuney’s dogs had defecated throughout the house.
A friend, Cheryl Thomson, recalled a conversation where Gregory had told her about putting $85,000 into a pocket of her dressing gown and folding it in a certain way, so she’d know if someone had touched it.
After her release from the hospital, Gregory noticed the money was missing and mentioned it to Thomson during a phone call.
Asked if Gregory had disclosed who’d taken the money, Thomson told the court:
“She told me categorically, without any doubt, that the only person who knew that the money was there was Julia.”
She said Gregory had told her daughter in case anything happened to her.
Thomson said Gregory was upset because her daughter had taken the money without asking.
She told the court that when Gregory had asked DeLuney about it, the accused had said she’d taken and invested it in cryptocurrency.
“It’s all safe mum, don’t worry,” Thomson recalls Gregory had told her.
Another friend, Elizabeth Askin, told the court she thought the amount that DeLuney had taken to invest was about $75,000-$76,000.
She recalled Gregory telling her that DeLuney had promised her mother she’d return the money by November 2023, only to then change her mind and say she wouldn’t be repaying the money until April the following year.
The court also heard Gregory had noticed $13,000 she’d left inside a salad bowl had gone missing at the end of 2023. The phone call of Gregory reporting the theft to the police on New Year’s Day was played to the jury.
During the call, Gregory also tells the police she’d been receiving phone calls, almost every day for the past month. When she answered the phone, no one was there.
Gregory had also mentioned the calls to her friend Jennifer Patterson, who told the court that Gregory said she was receiving these calls at all hours of the day and night.
Patterson said Gregory was worried that someone was trying to case the joint and it was “freaking her out”.
When questioned by DeLuney’s lawyer, Quentin Duff, her friends confirmed that Gregory was a lovely person, who was strong both mentally and spiritually and regularly attended church and prayer meetings.
She was very generous and always keen to help those in need, but was discreet about her generosity and didn’t like to blow her own trumpet.
The jury trial before Justice Peter Churchman has now finished its second week and is expected to run for a further two.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
