Mark Lundy retrial: DNA on shirt matched to victim

Mark Lundy in discussion with defence lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Key evidence
• ESR tests showed DNA likely to have come from Mrs Lundy was found on her husband's stained polo shirt
• Tests also showed DNA in blood specks found on the top were likely to have come from Amber
• Blood on a window frame in the Lundy house was likely to have come from Mrs Lundy
• Blood found at the home of Glenn Weggery, Mrs Lundy's brother, did not match with Mrs Lundy or Amber's DNA profile
• A defence witness says the substance was not necessarily human
• The manner in which the tests were conducted were flawed
• An American pathologist said tests performed 14 years after the killing found central nervous system cells

Mark Lundy's polo shirt had DNA likely to have come from his wife and blood likely to have come from his daughter stained on it, a court has been told today.

ESR forensic scientist Susan Vintiner said when tests were performed in late 2000 the ratio was 450,000 million:1 that the DNA found in marks on the shirt belonged to Christine Lundy "rather than from someone else unrelated to her and chosen at random from the New Zealand population".

The quality was good and there was no evidence of degradation and of the DNA breaking down, she told the jury in the High Court at Wellington.

Tests on DNA in blood specks lifted from the shirt found the ratio was 19,000,000:1 that they belonged to Amber Lundy, she said.

Lundy, 56, has denied murdering his wife and 7-year-old daughter in their Palmerston North home on August 30, 2000.

Further ESR tests of the crime scene found a smear of blood on a window frame was 450,000 million times more likely to have come from Mrs Lundy than anyone else, she said.

Mrs Lundy's brother Glenn Weggery's DNA was not excluded, she said.

The blood was 30 times more likely to have come from him than a randomly chosen member of the public.

"So this is a much lower strength evidence."

Blood samples taken from Mr Weggery's home were also tested by ESR staff.

Blood from an unknown female was found and none of the samples corresponded with either Mrs Lundy or Amber, Ms Vintiner said.

Also giving evidence today was a defence expert who challenged testing techniques that found the marks on Lundy's shirt contained human brain cells.

Professor of molecular medicine Stephen Bustin from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge in the United Kingdom said that tests performed by scientists at the Netherlands Forensic Institute were flawed.

He said he was not convinced the matter was human, or that it did not get there by contamination.

He maintained there were "significant problems" with the way the tests performed by the institute.

Also giving evidence today was American pathologist Allen Gown who undertook tests on the shirt stains 14 years after the killings.

Dr Gown gave evidence via audio-visual link from his office in Seattle and said he performed immunohistochemistry tests on the shirt in February last year that showed tissue in the marks on the shirt came from the central nervous system (CNS).

The jury trial in front of Justice Simon France continues.

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