Maya Moore denies lighting the fires on Wards Lane near Greytown in October 2022. Inset / NZ Police
The woman accused of starting fires on two Wairarapa properties lived a transient life and was described as having a volatile temper that made people wary of her.
Today, the Wellington District Court heard from three people who’d lived with Maya Moore in the years before the fires at two properties in October 2022.
While the homeowners escaped the fires, four buildings were destroyed on Wards Line, just outside of Greytown.
The witnesses described how Moore left one house after being questioned about a missing knife, poured beer over the head of another man who’d let her lodge for free, and refused to leave a third household.
Moore is on trial facing nine charges, including five of arson and one of attempted arson.
The 50-year-old denies lighting a fire at a house and a sleepout at one property and setting alight a house, an implement shed, a hayshed, and attempting to burn a sleepout at a second.
She also denies a charge of resisting arrest and possession of a rifle and 133 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition.
The Crown’s case is that the fires were lit after Moore fell out with the couples who lived at the two properties. Before the fires, Moore had been living and working on one of the farms and was grazing her small herd of cows at the other.
Moore is not present in court, and lawyer Janine Bonifant has been appointed by Judge Peter Hobbs to help the court because Moore isn’t represented.
Today, the court heard from several people who knew Moore before the fires.
Carterton resident Deborah Aston told the court she first met Moore in 2018, not long after she’d moved into the town. Moore had been staying with her neighbour after she’d injured her leg as a result of being kicked by a horse and thus couldn’t work.
They shared an interest in horses, and Moore left the neighbour’s place to move in with Aston, where she’d stayed for about four months, during which time she never had any visitors.
Asked about Moore’s temper, Aston described it as volatile.
“I was very wary of her once I got to know her, not to antagonise her,” she said.
Aston said Moore didn’t like certain things, like using the Wi-Fi, but it was a discussion about a knife missing from the kitchen drawer that prompted her to move out.
At that time, Moore was sleeping in her box truck, which was parked out front of her house, and Aston thought the knife might have been taken out there by mistake.
“She thought I was accusing her of stealing the silverware, which I wasn’t, and she got grumpy with me.”
After Moore left, Aston didn’t really see her again for several years, although her mail continued to be delivered.
She’d told Moore many times about her mail in the letterbox, but Moore had been reluctant to collect it and hadn’t opened her mail during her stay.
Aston said she didn’t see Moore again until early in 2022. She knew Moore had found the job in Wards Lane because she’d helped her move into the sleepout.
While Moore was initially happy with the job, Aston said, she rapidly grew frustrated with her employers’ farming practices and claimed the people whose land she leased for her small herd of cows were reneging on the lease agreement.
Aston even went out to the farm at Wards Lane after Moore claimed her physical welfare was under threat.
She saw Moore several days before the fires and told the court Moore was agitated and upset.
Moore told her she’d had enough, felt alone and wanted to do something to get her put in prison.
Aston told Moore she was being ridiculous and asked how she would look after her cows, whom Moore visited every day.
During cross-examination, Aston agreed with Bonifant that when Moore made her comment, she was feeling despondent, and Aston hadn’t been concerned to alert anyone in the area about it.
Aston also told the court that while she was aware Moore had a firearm, she’d never seen it.
Martin Haywood told the court he’d offered Moore his spare room after meeting her at the Carterton pub in 2019, where she told him she was sleeping in her truck.
Asked how she’d left his house, Haywood agreed it wasn’t on the best of terms, but there was no hatred between them.
“But after getting beer thrown on your head, I wasn’t that pleased about it,” he said, adding that Moore had moved out the following week.
During her four-week stay, Haywood said, he fed her, but Moore never contributed financially. But he said she was cranky in the morning after drinking beer every night.
“You had to walk on eggshells,” he said.
Her only visitor during her stay was a man from Featherston with whom she’d go cycling.
Carterton resident Joanne Seddon told the court Moore had looked after their farm while they were away overseas for two months in 2018, but ended up staying four to five months.
Asked by prosecutor Anselm Williams how the relationship had ended, Seddon said: “It ended quite badly because she didn’t want to move on, and in the end we had to evict her.”
Seddon told the court she’d seen Moore very angry at times, to the point she felt unsafe in her company. She said Moore threw things around and had driven in and out of their driveway recklessly.
Asked whether she knew Moore owned a firearm, Seddon said Moore was interested in being self-sufficient, and they had talked about hunting, with Moore even taking a hunting trip with Seddon’s husband. She said Moore had a firearm, but she’d never seen it.
During cross-examination, Seddon rejected a suggestion made by Bonifant that there had been no issues with the property or stock while they were away. She also confirmed that although she’d never seen Moore’s firearm, she knew she kept it in the truck.
The trial is expected to continue into next week.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently, she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.