Firefighters battled a large blaze in the East Auckland house. Video / Michael Rowse
Five days after police announced a homicide investigation into the death of his flatmate, Gregory Hart read a book on lying by a military interrogator, a jury has heard.
Hart was arrested and charged with murder a couple of weeks later, alongside his childhood friend Sean Hayde.
Both men are on trial in the High Court at Auckland accused of murdering Wiremu Arapo, who was Hayde’s boxing coach and Hart’s flatmate, and burning down his house to destroy the evidence while his body remained inside.
Hayde is also accused of assaulting, strangling and threatening to kill his former partner in the weeks before Arapo’s death on October 20, 2020.
The pair deny all the charges. Each say the other was solely responsible for the killing.
Crown prosecutor Ned Fletcher called the story “over-scripted nonsense”.
Hart’s version has Hayde kicking his love rival Arapo to death before dousing the home in petrol and setting it alight.
The fact Hart had the book on lying was the subject of cross-examination by Hayde’s lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade KC on Friday, as the third week of the trial drew to a close.
Both the Crown and Hart and Hayde’s legal teams have closed their cases. Closing addresses will be delivered next week before the jury retires to consider their verdicts.
However, in an unusual move, new evidence was introduced after the cases had closed.
The jury had earlier heard how police found Hart’s passport and some of his medication, curiously unburned in a sink among the charred debris of Arapo’s home after the fire.
Gregory Hart, like Sean Hayde (not pictured), denies killing Wiremu Arapo. Photo / Jason Oxenham
That sparked suggestions Hayde could have planted them as part of a ham-fisted attempt to frame his friend.
But on Friday afternoon, Detective Karen Burgess told the court a member of Arapo’s family had that day informed her she had learned something about the passport and the pill bottles.
It emerged two other members of Arapo’s whānau - who had not been in court - had gone into the home a few days after the fire to try to understand what happened.
One had noticed the undamaged passport and pill bottles and grabbed them.
They became waylaid when Arapo’s fiancee told them Hart had arrived at the property, where he gave what he later admitted was an incomplete account of what happened on the day of the fire.
One of the family members then left Hart’s passport and pill bottles in a sink inside the home. The new evidence appeared to extinguish any value to the trial of the undamaged passport in the sink.
Sean Hayde on the first day of his trial. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Fletcher said both Hayde and Hart had clear motives for the kiling and it was a murder they committed together, the men having to fight hard to overpower the fit and strong Arapo, a skilled boxer and former soldier.
Hayde had a blossoming relationship that had begun as an affair with a female friend of Arapo’s, the jury has heard.
While Arapo had initially approved, he came to take a dim view of the romance, the prosecution says.
For his part, Hayde resented Arapo’s attempts to interfere in the relationship as well as his continuing closeness with his new flame, the jury has heard.
Fletcher has cast Hart as a useless, layabout flatmate during his time at Arapo’s Minerva Tce rental in East Auckland’s Cockle Bay.
He was frequently behind in rent and bills and often slept much of the day.
Arapo was not shy about giving Hart a piece of his mind about his approach to the flat and to life in general, the Crown says.
The Cockle Bay house was engulfed by a fire. Arapo's body was found in the lounge in his wing amid the charred wreckage of the collapsed roof. Photo / Michael Howse
The prosecution case is Hart went along with the killing as part of what Fletcher described as his “blind loyalty” to Hayde, his friend since the third form.
It was the same blind loyalty that led him to give a police statement in support of Hayde as part of the domestic violence case, the prosecution alleges.
How to Spot a Liar
One of the more colourful pieces of evidence adduced during the trial is an e-book “How To Spot A Liar” found on Hart’s phone.
A digital forensic examination of his phone revealed he had searched for the book on November 23, five days after police had gone public with the fact Arapo’s death amid the house fire was now the subject of a homicide inquiry.
Under cross-examination by Kincade, Hart said he had in fact bought the title in 2019.
He said he was only searching for it because he had been discussing it with a woman he briefly dated.
Kincade asked whether he had also accessed it three days later, and Hart said he was merely trying to find a passage for the woman.
The book is co-written by a former US military interrogator named, in a curious co-incidence not lost on Kincade, Gregory Hartley.
“He talks in the book how it feels to be a prisoner, how it feels to be interrogated, how your stress levels will rise?” Kincade said.
