Lynne Maree Martin has been found guilty for the murder of her elderly father. Photo: Social media image
The woman on trial for murdering her elderly father by setting his house alight has been found guilty.
The jury in the trial of Lynne Maree Martin at the High Court in Gisborne reached their verdict after about two-and-a-half hours of deliberations. It was delivered at 3.20pm on Wednesday.
Martin, who had displayed little emotion throughout the trial, burst into loud sobs at hearing the verdict.
Justice Helen Cull remanded Martin in custody until sentencing, which will take place at a date yet to be set.
Martin was on trial for the murder of her father Ronald Russell Allison, 88, by setting fire to his house near Te Karaka, about 30km from Gisborne, in the early hours of 25 January 2013.
The jury heard evidence over 12 days in Gisborne's courtroom number 1, before what was often a full public gallery.
The defence didn't call evidence and the jury didn't hear from Martin, though they did hear her voice in hours of conversations recorded on hidden devices. But they heard from about 50 witnesses, including Martin's brother John and her husband Graeme.
They also heard about a conviction she had for arson in Australia in 1999 - a conviction that was allowed to be mentioned because the Crown, in a pre-trial application, successfully argued that it showed she had a propensity to behave a certain way under certain circumstances.
The jurors also heard that in 2010 Martin was ordered by a court to pay someone $11,298.90. They weren't told that it was ordered after a judge convicted her of "low-down, deceitful, deliberate and premeditated" offending that involved her stealing from an 82-year-old Alzheimer sufferer in a rest home.
Known at the time by her first married name, Lynne Tweeddale, Martin was employed as a diversional therapist at a residential home in 2009 when she cared for the woman, who was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's.
According to a court news report, Martin took the woman's eftpos card, obtained her PIN number and withdrew $12,282 from various ATMs. She also attempted to change the address on the woman's bank statements, so her family wouldn't notice what she was doing.
But the victim's family became aware of the withdrawals and contacted police. Martin, then aged 49, admitted 22 charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage, and was sentenced to 300 hours' community work and ordered to pay $11,298.90 reparation. She had already paid $1000 in reparation at a restorative justice meeting between her and the victim's representative.
Martin said she stole the money because she had a gambling addiction. Judge Louis Bidois told Martin her offending was "low-down, deceitful, deliberate and premeditated" and he considered sending her to jail to teach her a lesson. He told her a jail sentence was inevitable if she offended in the same way again.
Earlier in 2009, Martin, then going by the name Lynne Allison, had been in the same court for her third drink-driving conviction. She was stopped on Maranui Street, Mt Maunganui on 7 April, and recorded a excess breath alcohol of 936 micrograms, more than twice the legal limit of 400mcg.
She told the officer who pulled her up that she didn't care that she'd been stopped because she had terminal cancer and was "going out with a big bang". In court, she said she had no memory of what she'd said and said she was having trouble coming to terms with her cancer and had stopped drinking. She was sentenced to nine months' supervision, fined $500 and lost her licence for 15 months.
John told the court Lynne left the family home when she was 16 and moved to Australia in the late-seventies, before returning to New Zealand in 2006. Stuff understands she has numerous convictions from her years in Australia.
The arson (which in Australia is known as 'maliciously damaging property by fire) that the jury heard about took place on 1 May 1999.
Martin was living in the city of Orange, about 250km inland from Sydney. She had been in an on-off relationship with a man who lived in Dubbo, a city 150km to the north.
Martin was low on money and on the evening of 30 April she travelled by motorbike to see the man, from whom she was expecting to get a modest sum of cash and a car battery.
When she arrived at the man's house, he wasn't there, so she went to a nearby pub, the Commercial Hotel to see if he was there. He wasn't there, so she waited there for about an hour, leaving at about 1am.
As she left the pub she got into an argument with another patron and security staff. She told them the man she was looking for would "get his" and "I will get him don't you worry".
She then rode to a petrol station, bought a can of petrol and returned to the man's address, where she set fire to a vehicle in the man's carport. The fire service came and put the fire out.
After the fire service left, Martin returned to the property and set fire to a second vehicle. The fire service returned and put the fire out and Martin was arrested a short distance away at 4am.
Before setting fire to the vehicles, she'd scratched abusive messages to the man on them.
When spoken to by police later, she denied the offending, saying "I've got a temper on me, believe me I have got a temper. I've got a mouth and I can use it and legally I can get a person back, which I have done over the years. I don't need to go and vandalise somebody's car and burn it out".
Disclosing a defendant's previous conviction in a trial can be prejudicial and this can only be done in certain circumstances and only with the judge's permission. One of the circumstances is when the conviction goes to show a defendant has a propensity to behave in a certain manner.
The Crown applied to have the Australia conviction produced in the trial, arguing that it showed that Martin had resorted to committing arson as an extreme response to relationship problems involving financial difficulties, anger and alcohol.
Martin's defence opposed the Crown's application, but following a hearing in the High Court in August, Justice Peter Churchman granted the application.
Churchman said there was an "element of commonality in that after an interaction with someone with whom she had a relationship which did not result in the outcome she wanted, she consumed alcohol and after the consumption of alcohol she obtained materials to assist in starting a fire and then proceeded to do so".
He acknowledged there were dissimilarities between the cases but said "the similarities between the Australian offending and the facts of the present offending show a propensity to act in a certain way".
*This story was originally published on Stuff.