Murdered for money: Crown alleges daughter was after her inheritance

Lynne Maree Martin in the High Court trial that started yesterday in Gisborne. She is charged with murdering her father, Ronald Russell Allison, who died in a house fire at Whatatutu just after midnight on January 25, 2013.

The daughter of an elderly Whatatutu man on trial for his murder has a propensity to resort to arson when fuelled by anger and alcohol as an extreme response to relationship problems involving money.

That’s what Crown prosecutor Clayton Walker said in an opening address to a jury on the first day of a High Court trial in Gisborne for Lynne Maree Martin, 63, on Monday.

Martin is charged with murdering her father Ronald Russell Allison, who was 88, at his Whatatutu Road home on January 25, 2013.

The Crown revealed that Martin, who was living in Tauranga at the time of the murder, had been convicted in Australia during 1999 of setting fire to two vehicles at her partner’s house in New South Wales after he failed to give her some money and a new car battery that he’d said he would.

Prosecutor Clayton Walker said while the jury shouldn’t give that previous history too much weight, it did show Martin had a propensity for arson when intoxicated and angry.

Mr Allison died in a house fire that broke out after he was helped to bed — as he was every night — by son John, who lived nearby.

The Crown alleges Martin — broke at the time and an undischarged bankrupt — travelled from Tauranga to Whatatutu earlier that day to deliberately light the fire after a phone call to her father in which he refused to let her have a family boat and hung up on her. She'd taken a 1.25 litre bottle of cider with her. 

After travelling to Whatatutu, the Crown said Martin watched the house from a distance. She waited for her brother to leave, then entered the house through the front door and set a pot of oil to boil on an element, turned it on and left knowing it would ignite. It was a method designed to make the fire, which broke out about 20 minutes later, look accidental.

Her motive? To get a $150,000 inheritance pay-out she knew her father had earmarked for her in his will, the Crown said.

The arson was fuelled by alcohol and anger and happened against a backdrop of previous allegations by Martin that she had been sexually abused as a child by her father and her brother John, Mr Walker said.

Martin had tried unsuccessfully to blackmail them for money by threatening to take her allegations to police. She eventually had gone to police, but no charges were laid. 

Mr Walker said the Crown case was built on a combination of evidence, including the movements of Martin’s car the day before and after the fire, shop records of items she bought, including the bottle of cider and an abnormally large amount of gas, phone polling data, conversations recorded through listening devices police planted in her house, and her conversations with an undercover officer who'd been tasked with befriending her.

An ESR scientist, electrical engineer, metallurgist, fire experts, and a locksmith, were all involved in a scene examination. It was later established the fire had started in a pot on the stove. There was no trace of any accelerant having been used. It was suspicious from the outset as Mr Allison didn’t cook, wouldn’t have got out of bed to do anything in the kitchen and had earlier been given his dinner — as he routinely was — by a caregiver.

Suspecting foul play, police immediately turned their attention to the four most obvious potential suspects —John Allison, who was last to see his father, Martin, who had argued with him that day on the phone, and two men who had noticed the fire while driving past but didn't phone emergency services.

Police ruled out all suspects except for Martin. They discovered she wasn’t where she purported to people to have been on the night of the fire; that she had actually travelled to Whatatutu. She hadn’t visited her father or brother “so what was she doing there? That’s the crucial question”, Mr Walker said.

Martin’s desperation for money at the time was reflected in an odd message she sent her employer that morning after supposedly going home sick from work. Martin asked to borrow $400 saying she was taking her car - which they used for work - in for repairs. It was the same vehicle she allegedly drove that day to Te Kakaraka. 

Martin wasn't charged with her father's murder until November, last year. During 2019, police launched an undercover operation in which a policewoman was tasked with befriending Martin and her husband and managed to elicit information from Martin about how to get away with arson.

The Crown said Martin justified the killing in her mind because she maintained the sex abuse allegations against her father and brother, despite their denials. While those allegations weren't part of this trial, they were part of the underlying narrative.

While no one saw what Martin did, the Crown said the evidence would enable the jury to conclude Martin deliberately burned her father's house down, knowing her was in it and wouldn't be able to escape.  

That way she could get her inheritance, which eventually she did. In fact, she contested the will and got even more – more than $250,000, Mr Walker said.

In an opening statement outlining defence issues, counsel Rachael Adams said the Crown’s lengthy opening was only a theory. No evidence had been heard yet. 

This case was about doubt.

The death of Mr Allison was a tragedy and it was human instinct to try to find a reason for it, but there was no definitive evidence against Martin “despite secret phone tagging bugs in the bedroom”. 

The case against Martin was built on no more than suspicion and her past history. The massive resources poured into the case during the intervening 10 years was all to prove the police theory and to implicate Martin when a circumstantial case could equally have been constructed against a number of other people. Her list of candidates included Mr Allison’s son John, who Ms Adams said had benefited from the death by close on a million dollars because he had inherited his father's share of the farm, on which he'd worked - largely unpaid - for about 20 years.

Two young gang associates were also potential suspects as they were first to see the fire,but hadn't immediately reported it. They had relevant criminal histories.

Another potential candidate of course was Russell Allison himself, Ms Adams said. 

“And, what if it was just a terrible accident that Mr Allison was responsible for himself?”

There might have been other explanations never identified or explored because of the police’s "tunnel vision" from the outset and "fixation on Martin", Ms Adams said.