Pathologist Loses Complaint Against The Investigator

Bryan Bruce -- The writer and presenter of The Investigator TVONE has just made the following comments on the failed BSA complaint by Dr James Pang against the episode on The Mark Lundy Case.

"The BSA's decision on Dr Pang's complaint against my programme on the Mark Lundy case is a decision in favour of investigative journalism and the right to express a well argued opinion.

As I said in my programme Dr Pang's evidence to the effect that Christine and Amber Lundy died about an hour after eating their last meal -- based on his analysis of the stomach contents, flies in the face of international pathological opinion that time of death cannot be accurately determined from the condition of stomach contents.

I contacted a number of international medical experts including Dr Nicolas Diament who gave evidence in the Steven Truscott Case in Canada, Dr Michael Horowitz, who co authored the seminal paper "The Stomach as a Forensic Clock" and British pathologist Dr Bernard Knight - veteran of over 25,000 post mortems and author of several Pathology text books.

I learned that not only does rates of digestion and stomach emptying vary from individual to individual , it also varies between individual and can be prolonged by a great many factors.

The great puzzle for many people interested in the Lundy case is how Mark Lundy could have murdered his wife and child in the narrow three hour time window available as this would have meant traveling from Wellington to Palmerston North and back in that restricted time frame.

I argued that if Dr Pang was wrong and the time of death was in the early hours of the morning - then Lundy could have traveled back to his house in the dead of night and murder his wife and child.

I think that's what he did. End of puzzle. "