By Lauren Crimp of RNZ
A High Court jury has seen CCTV footage of the murder accused in the Loafers Lodge trial, which appears to show the fatal blaze being lit.
A 50-year-old man, who has name suppression, has denied killing five people by setting the boarding house alight in May 2023.
It’s understood the defence does not dispute he lit the fatal fire - or a couch fire about 90 minutes beforehand - but they intend to argue he was insane at the time.
As the second week of the trial got under way at the High Court in Wellington on Monday, the defendant intently watched the video showing him moving about the boarding house in the minutes before the fatal fire.
The footage showed him outside the building patting his pockets, seemingly looking for something, before another resident swiped his fob to let him into the building.
The resident then swiped the fob again in the lift, giving the defendant access to the third and fourth floor, including the mezzanine where his room was.
But the footage showed he couldn’t get into his room, and another resident Kenneth Barnard, who later died in the fire, tried to help him.
They’re seen walking through the lodge together.
“You need someone with a key, I’m looking for such a person,” Barnard said.
At one point they walked through the lounge where the burnt couch was upturned, and the defendant surveyed it for a few moments, rubbing his hands over his face.
Their search for someone with a key was unsuccessful, and the defendant told Barnard he would go and stay with a friend.
About 15 minutes later, the defendant grabbed some couch cushions and put them in a cupboard on the third floor.
Barnard popped his head out of his room as the defendant walked past.
“Do you want a sleeping bag or something?” he said. “I can give you a sleeping bag if you want to sleep in the lounge.”
The defendant initially declined, but eventually accepted.
Barnard took him to the couch he suggested the man sleep on.
“I don’t want to sleep here,” the defendant said.
“I’ll sleep outside.”
About five minutes later, Barnard is captured asking the defendant if he had a phone to call someone, and the man replied that he had tried, but there was no answer.
“All the best,” Barnard said, before going back to his room.
A few minutes later the defendant was seen with a blue blanket, which he put in the cupboard.
He went back and forth from that cupboard multiple times, but the open door and the distance from the camera prevented it from capturing the fire being set.
The accused then shut the door and walked away, giving a couple of backwards glances down the hallway.
Minutes later, he reappeared into the smoke which was beginning to billow down the hallway, before he got into the lift and left the building.
The court also heard from Loafers Lodge residents who interacted with the defendant just prior to the fire.
Robert Vercoe was in the lounge when Barnard was trying to help the accused and suggest he sleep there.
“Kenny [Kenneth Barnard] was trying to calm him down... they were trying to get him into his room,” said Vercoe.
But the defendant said he would sleep “on the street,” Vercoe said.
“I thought it was strange, but it was just the way he looked at me which weirded me out,” he said.
“He became agitated ... it was just a weird situation.”
The jury also saw footage of the defendant walking from Newtown into the central city in the early hours of the morning.
During the first week of the trial, Loafers Lodge residents told the court about escaping the building through thick black smoke and searing heat, and fearing they would die in the blaze.
Firefighters also recounted their experience that evening, including rescuing residents and their own narrow escape of a spontaneous combustion that would likely have killed them.
Many were emotional as they delivered their testimony.
The trial is expected to run for another four weeks.
-RNZ