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Lundy 2
By Steven | February 12, 2009
Here’s one thing the prosecutors could have said to White about the Lundy case: Lundy filled his gas tank in Wellington. The fuel warning was flashing when he got back to Palmerston North. How did Lundy manage to empty the tank in one normal-speed trip back to Palmerston North plus a bit of driving in Wellington? Wasn’t Lundy’s initial explanation that some of it might have been siphoned off a bit implausible? He didn’t pursue that theory at trial, and has never been able to explain where that petrol went.
White’s article does note that the Crown also faced a petrol problem. How does Lundy hoon up to Palmerston North and back to Wellington, then back to Palmy again the next morning on one tank? Speeding burns more fuel.
Of course, if Lundy wasn’t hooning back and forth, then three trips between PN and Wellington, plus a bit of driving in Wellington, would almost exactly empty his tank. But that would mean that he couldn’t have committed the murders around 7pm, making that miraculous return trip. He would have had to do it, say, in the middle of the night, when he could drive sensibly and no-one would notice him. And he would have arrived after the neighbour saw the light and after the computer had been switched off, so he wouldn’t have needed Joe-90-like expertise to jiggle the timing mechanism…
This was not the case presented by the Crown. But it does potentially explain away almost all the problems raised in White’s article… except the problems White identifies with the fraction of brain matter from Amber on Lundy’s clothes. Its presence there doesn’t make much sense. It seems extremely improbable that it was preserved the way it was. It seems highly unlikely that it would have got there in the first place. It doesn’t seem clear that it was necessarily brain DNA.
I admit, I haven’t seen all the evidence in the case either. I’m not sure how far some DNA on a speck of dubious provinance, some missing petrol, and some odd behaviour by Lundy get you toward “beyond reasonable doubt”. But this scenario now strikes me as more plausible than the one presented by the Crown.
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