Estes awaiting trial when Lunz nabbed, killed him, Lunz wrote
Staff Writer
Macon County Sheriff Robbie Holland confirmed details surrounding some bizarre twists in the case of a convicted murderer who apparently killed himself a few weeks ago after allegedly committing additional murders in a Florida prison.
Christopher Lunz was living here when sheriff’s deputies arrested him in the murder of his father in Florida in 2003. He had claimed his father had sexually abused him when he was a child. Lunz was extradited to Florida and was convicted in 2006 and was serving a life term there when he allegedly killed one inmate, stabbed another and left him for dead, then killed himself the next day, Holland said. At least one of his latest alleged victims was a convicted sex molester.
Before the recent slayings and his own death, Lunz sent local authorities a letter in which he claimed also to have killed Gerald Estes, who was awaiting trial here on charges of sex crimes against a minor. Holland said he believed the Estes proceedings dated to 2006.
“He’s still listed as missing, we’re still trying to locate him,” Holland said, though, “We don’t have an investigator working on it full-time.
“There’s still an outstanding warrant for [Estes’] arrest and failure to appear,” Holland said. “Until we find definite evidence [of his demise], he’ll remain that way.”
Holland confirmed that an accomplice in the murder of Lunz’s father, who is also serving a life term in Florida, took and passed a polygraph test in which he claimed he assisted Lunz in Estes’ murder, which supposedly took place after they picked Estes up from the Franklin hotel where he’d been staying.
Reports said Lunz wrote his recent letter restating his claim to have killed Estes and offering to help locate the body in order to make a deal to be executed, but Holland said that wouldn’t have been possible.
Estes’ belongings were left behind at the hotel where he was last seen and were never claimed by him, the sheriff said.