After his death, Martin contested the sum and got another $75,000. A further $24,000 she owed the estate for loans was written off.
Her brother John Allison, who had inherited the family farm and didn’t want to sell it, had to raise a mortgage to pay her the settlement.
Until 2019, the police investigation into the suspicious fire appeared to have gone cold.
However, that year police launched a three-year undercover operation targeting Martin. And the following year, police also planted listening devices in the house near Matamata property she and her partner Graeme bought in December 2014, ahead of their marriage a year later.
Evidence gleaned from those operations gave new momentum to the investigation, prompting police to apply for a restraining order over Martin’s interest in the property.
This week, Stuff news media reported that in June 2021, the Police Commissioner applied to the High Court in Hamilton for an order under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 to restrain an interest of up to $225,000 — the amount Martin had gained from her father’s estate.
She and husband Graeme Martin bought their 2.3-hectare lifestyle block in Buckland Road, Karapiro, for $415,000 the year after Lynne’s father died.
They used part of the land for a business, La Barn, providing tourists to nearby Hobbiton, with overnight parking for self-contained campervans.
Reviews of La Barn were mixed.
Many commented on Martin’s “lovely” and “welcoming” manner.
Others said the $40 per night rate was too much, given there were no services on offer — no shower or toilet and no dumping facility
The property is now valued at $810,000 although real estate sites estimate it could sell for more than a million.
The restraining order was to prevent any disposal or other dealings to do with the property should the Commissioner later seek to apply for a forfeiture order.
Such orders are commonplace after assets or profits have been proved to be proceeds of criminal activity.
The tainted property or profits are transferred to the Crown without compensation.
The order over the Martins’ property was extended twice and expires next month, Stuff reported.
Court documents list Graeme Martin and the couple’s Evo Steam Cleaning Ltd company as interested parties.
Police wouldn’t be drawn on the application other than to say it was still active.
Graeme Martin declined to comment.
A coroner has yet to release findings into the cause of Lynne Martin’s death.
• The court-ordered reparation Martin owed at the time of the fire was to reimburse an 82-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer she scammed while working as a diversional therapist at Summervale Residential Home.
Martin, a registered nurse and still using her previous married name Tweeddale, gained the woman’s trust then used her eftpos card to extract a total of $12,282 from the woman’s accounts.
Sentenced in the Tauranga District Court during June, 2010, Martin was ordered to do 300 hours community work and to make reparation immediately by bank cheque.
It was just one of many incidents in Lynne Martin’s troubled background, which also included offending in Australia, where she lived for about 20 years, having gone there - she said - to get an abortion when she was 16.
During the murder trial, the jury heard Martin maintained allegations of childhood sexual abuse by her father and brother John.
Police investigated but no charges were laid.
Neither was she charged when she attempted to use the allegations to blackmail her father for $150,000 not long after she was ordered to pay the reparation in Tauranga.
Martin and her brother John Allison were not related by blood. They were adopted at birth by Russell Allison and wife Maree.
