Gisborne cold case: Daughter Lynne Maree Martin on trial for Ronald Russell Allison’s murder

Ten years after the death of 88-year-old Ronald Russell Allison in a house fire at Te Karaka, his daughter Lynne Maree Martin has gone on trial charged with his murder. The trial began today in the High Court at Gisborne. Photo / S Curtis, Gisborne Herald

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, a court heard on Monday.

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

Martin is charged with murdering her father Ronald Russell Allison, who was 88, at his Whatatutu Rd 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 in 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 said he would.

Prosecutor Clayton Walker said that 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.

290 Whatatutu Rd, Te Karaka, where Ronald Russell Allison (inset) died in a suspicious fire in 2013. Photo / NZ Police

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

The Crown alleges Martin — broke at the time and facing bankruptcy — travelled from Tauranga to Whatatutu earlier that day to deliberately light the fire after a phone conversation with her father in which he had refused to let her have a family boat.

After travelling to Whatatutu, the Crown said Martin watched the house from a distance. She waited for her brother to leave, then used a key she had to access the house and set a pot of oil to boil on a stovetop so the fire, which broke out about 20 minutes later, would look accidental.

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

The arson was fuelled by her 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, 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 was told no charges could be laid because she had admitted trying to blackmail the men.

In his opening address to jurors, Walker explained the Crown’s theory of the case, which largely relies 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 a large bottle of cider and an abnormally large amount of gas, phone polling data, conversations recorded through bugs police planted in her house, and what she told an undercover officer tasked with befriending her.

A scene examination by police, an ESR scientist, an electrical engineer, a metallurgist and a locksmith established the fire at Allison’s house 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 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 most obvious four people - 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 did not phone emergency services.

Police ruled out all suspects except for Martin. They discovered she wasn’t where she purported 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”, Walker said.

Martin’s desperation for money at the time was reflected in an odd message she sent her employer that morning after going home sick early from work.

However, there was insufficient evidence to charge her until more recently, including a 2019 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. Walker, however, reminded the jury this trial was not about those allegations but they were inextricably part of the narrative to this case.

While no one saw what Martin did, the Crown invited the jury to draw a conclusion that she watched her father’s house from a distance that night, waited for her brother to leave, then went inside intending to burn the place down with her father in it.

That way she could get her inheritance, which eventually she did. In fact, she got more – $250,000, Walker said.

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

This case was about doubt.

The death of 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”. Much of the physical evidence was destroyed by the fire itself.

The case against Martin was built on no more than suspicion. The massive resources poured into the case during the intervening 10 years were 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, including Allison’s son, who had benefited from his death by close on a million dollars (he inherited the farm, which he had worked on with his father).

Two young men who were first to see the fire were gang associates with relevant criminal histories who could also just as easily have been viable suspects.

“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, Adams said.