A forensic scientist says a particle found in the scalp of a Khandallah woman killed in her home doesn’t match a substitute of the Crown’s suggested murder weapon.
Helen Gregory, 79, was killed in January last year, and her daughter Julia DeLuney is on trial for her murder at the High Court in Wellington.
The Crown said DeLuney attacked her mother before staging it to look like she had fallen from the attic, but the defence said someone else caused those injuries in the 90 minutes in which DeLuney had gone to get help.
In opening its case, the Crown said later evidence would show the possibility that Gregory was attacked using a vase which normally stood on the bedside table.
The vase has never been found.
Today, ESR scientist Glenys Knight told the court that police thought a cream-coloured particle found in Gregory’s scalp could be a chip from the vase.
“There was a question about what the vase was made of, because when I was examining the plugs of scalp I had found this small particle within the scalp tissue and I’d sent that on for forensic analysis,” Knight said.
“And there was the thought – that the police had – that a chip from the vase could have been embedded in the scalp.”
However, she said her analysis of chips from a similar handmade vase, from the same potter, were terracotta in colour.
She said samples were taken from the base of the substitute vase and also from underneath the glaze.
“Both of them showed this bright orange material underneath – it looks like terracotta,” Knight said.
“It certainly looked nothing like the particle that I had collected [from the scalp] which was a bone colour, like a pale cream colour, so I didn’t examine it any further.”
The trial continues.
By Mary Argue of rnz.co.nz