Key moments in the month-long murder trial of Julia DeLuney

An outburst from the dock, a "bizarre" conversation with a relative about her dead mother's money at her funeral, and a murdered woman who was "not planning to die tomorrow" — these are some of the pivotal moments during the month-long trial of Julia DeLuney.

The trial at the High Court in Wellington lasted four and a half weeks, and the jury took just over a day to reach its verdict.

The court heard evidence from forensic experts to accountants and, in the end, the jurors sided with the Crown, finding DeLuney guilty of murdering her 79-year-old mother, Helen Gregory, in her Baroda St home in the Wellington suburb of Khandallah on January 24, 2024.

Here are some of the trial's notable moments.

In the trial's early stages, the jury heard from police officers about how their investigation shifted from unexplained death to murder.

Detective Luke Hensley said that when he arrived in the hours following the 111 call, the death was not being treated as suspicious.

But he said the blood around the house struck him as strange — as did the fact DeLuney had left her mother on the bedroom floor after her alleged fall from the attic, to drive back to Kāpiti to pick up her husband, rather than calling an ambulance.

The jury had by then seen photos of blood smeared on the walls in the hallway and in and around the utility cupboard through which the attic was accessed by way of a ladder built into the back wall.

DeLuney told police her mother had climbed into the attic to put away a stack of toilet roll, and fallen, causing a small wound on the back of her head.

She said she left her mother in the bedroom lying down and, at that stage, there was not a lot of blood. When she returned to the house with her husband, it looked, in her own words, "like a warzone".

Forensic scientist Glenys Knight said she knew quickly she was dealing with a homicide.

She said the blood smeared on the hallway walls looked like it had been applied with fabric.

Defence lawyer Quentin Duff asked whether it could have been applied by someone staggering around the house. "I've never seen it in my experience," Knight replied.

Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop asked the jury: Why would a burglar stage the scene? And how would they know to stage it as a fall from the attic, the same story DeLuney would later tell the police? She said the only person who would benefit from staging the scene was DeLuney herself.

In trial week three, the court heard from Gregory's brother Peter Wilson, who lives in Australia, who told the court about a conversation he'd had with DeLuney, his niece, at the funeral.

"What do you know about the kitchen?" she had asked him. "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 underneath a kitchen drawer.

The court had already heard from witnesses about Gregory's mistrust of banks, and the way she hid thousands of dollars around the house — including $50,000 in the freezer, and various amounts wedged between salad bowls.

Wilson said the conversation at the funeral was "really bizarre", and then DeLuney asked: "What do you know about Helen's diaries?" to which he also replied, nothing.

That wasn't the only shocking piece of evidence to come out of Wilson's testimony.

The court heard Gregory had had a fall in September 2023, which Wilson and his wife learned when they dropped in on her the day after a family gathering.

DeLuney answered the door and showed them in, and Wilson said that when he saw his sister lying in bed, he was shocked.

"I thought she was dead," he told the court. "Blew me away."

He said to DeLuney, "You have to ring an ambulance," and she said she had already called a relative, who would be there "soon".

But Wilson said about 40 minutes passed, with DeLuney tending to her mother, feeding her lemonade through a straw, so 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.'"

On July 14 — the beginning of trial week four — the court heard audio from a phone call Gregory made to her bank on the evening of January 23, 2024.

The purpose of the call was to take out money to pay withdrawal fees on cryptocurrency profits, which DeLuney had invested in on her behalf.

The court would later hear evidence that those fees were "false", and that the profit DeLuney had told her mother about did not exist — she had in fact sent her a screenshot of someone else's cryptocurrency account, which had made a large profit, as though it was her own.

DeLuney also asked her mother not to reveal to the bank that she needed the money for anything to do with cryptocurrency.

Gregory told the bank employee on the phone: "We're pre-paying a funeral thing. Not that I'm thinking of dying tomorrow or anything."

It was met by a collective intake of breath from the public gallery.

The Crown later argued this was Gregory handing over the last of her money to her daughter — a potential flash point in their relationship that led to an altercation, and ultimately her death, the next day.

The Crown was the first to close its case, with prosecutor Stephanie Bishop running the members of the jury through their version of what happened that night.

DeLuney had remained mostly silent for the duration of the trial. The court had heard her statements to police and watched the video interviews, but had not heard from DeLuney herself.

She sat in the dock, flanked by two security guards — normal procedure, the justice explained to the jury at the beginning of the trial, and not to be taken as a sign DeLuney was dangerous or presumed guilty.

But her outburst came after a CCTV footage was played to the court, showing someone checking the communal skip in the carpark of the DeLuneys' apartment complex in Paraparaumu in the early hours of the morning following the death, after her first interview with police.

The jury had seen this footage before when it was played as evidence but, this time, Bishop told the jury what she wanted them to take from it.

"In the morning, having been to the police station to provide a statement, one of them [the DeLuneys] then exits their vehicle and then walks immediately to the skip bin," she said.

"Again, members of the jury, what plausible explanation could there be for this?"

At that point, DeLuney called out harshly: "Our dogs!"

The court had already heard evidence that the DeLuneys owned two dearly loved dogs, which, according to police, they expressed concern about leaving alone on more than one occasion.

A short time later, DeLuney kicked the wall of the dock in front of her, causing a loud thud in the quiet of the courtroom.

At the close of the Crown's case, the defence declined to call witnesses, and DeLuney did not give evidence herself.

The Justice reminded the jury during his summing up that no guilt should be read into this.

Antonio DeLuney, her husband, did not give evidence either. The court had already heard the pair lived together in an apartment in Paraparaumu. On the night of her mother's death, DeLuney sent a photo to Antonio of herself and her mother in her mother's wardrobe, telling him they were trying on clothes.

Then, she missed a handful of calls and messages from him later in the evening, and had a conversation lasting only 17 seconds before she returned to Paraparaumu to pick him up.

The court heard he was asleep when she arrived but returned to her mother's Baroda St address with her, where they found Gregory badly injured.

Both DeLuneys gave statements to the police that night, but Antonio's was not read in court, and he did not give evidence.

While he previously sought name suppression alongside his wife's before the case went to trial — both were declined — he does not face charges relating to this event.

The jury was sent out to deliberate about 1pm on Tuesday and they reached their verdict just before 5pm on Wednesday.

rnz.co.nz