The vineyard cottage in Fairhall, Marlborough, before it was destroyed by arson in July 2023. Jack Norris, who had been staying there, is in prison for the fire he started after being asked to leave. Image / Supplied
A man asked to leave the vineyard home where he was staying got so angry, he burned it down.
Jack Norris was on electronic bail when his girlfriend, a tenant at the property, arranged for him to stay while he waited for a space at an addiction rehab facility.
The cottage in Fairhall on the outskirts of Blenheim, beneath the Wither Hills, was a secondary dwelling on a Marlborough vineyard occupied at the time by the owner’s son and his girlfriend, the tenant and then Norris.
The owner and her son didn’t know him, never knew he was on bail, or that he had a criminal past, including a conviction in 2003 for wilfully setting fire to property and endangering life.
If they had known, he would never have been allowed to stay.
The owner told NZME outside court she was away at the time and the tenant had not asked her son if Norris could move in, but stay only occasionally.
They later learned at trial that he was an “imposter who had lied and manipulated” his way into the property via his girlfriend.
At Norris’ sentencing in the Blenheim District Court this week, they described what happened in the winter of 2023 as an “extremely traumatic, life-changing event”.
“I lost my beautiful cottage with my furnishings and possessions,” the owner said.
Her son lost everything he owned, including irreplaceable items gathered during his time overseas as a sportsman.
He said in his statement, read on his behalf, it was terrifying afterwards to learn he and his girlfriend had unknowingly shared a space with someone capable of such action.
The cost of the damage and losses came to almost $739,000 which left the owner out of pocket by $114,274 after insurance was paid out.
“The loss we have suffered was not just financial. The safety of my family and property was completely violated by you,” the owner told Norris at sentencing.
Judge Jo Rielly said in sending Norris to prison for causing the blaze on July 10, 2023, the situation by which he came to be there should never have happened, and that his conduct after being given notice to leave was “unusual, bizarre and very criminal”.
Norris, 39, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years for the arson he had denied, but for which Judge Rielly found him guilty at a judge-alone trial in August this year.
He did, however, admit at the start of the trial to spitting in a police officer’s face while being driven to the Blenheim Police Station afterwards.
Through his lawyer, Andrew McCormick, Norris continued at sentencing to deny culpability for the fire, but, puzzlingly to Judge Rielly, he apologised in court for the harm caused to the family.
“The biggest elephant in the room is, what is he apologising for?” Judge Rielly asked.
McCormick said Norris was “human enough” to see the harm caused through the financial costs and loss of personal belongings.
Norris interrupted from the dock and said that while he caused the fire, it wasn’t intentional.
“I’m sorry,” he told the property owner.
The owner described Norris at sentencing as a person who was “flawed, destructive and unhinged”.
McCormick said the conduct amounted to revenge built up over a lifetime of extreme trauma and abuse, which had led to him developing harmful anti-social tendencies.
Crown prosecutor Jeremy Cameron said Norris’ capacity for deception was evident at trial, and there had to come a point where someone’s background could not be seen as impacting their decision to commit arson.
“We say that’s the case here,” Cameron said.
Norris had been living at the property for about six weeks and was meant to have been gone by July 9.
He had been asked to leave because of increasingly erratic behaviour. On July 10, his birthday, he was alone in the house after his partner had gone to work.
A condition of his bail was that he was not to drink alcohol, but that morning, he got drunk on wine and vodka.
Norris videoed himself drinking, smashing a birthday gift, smashing items in the home, and throwing soft furnishings outside into the mud before setting fire to the house around 1pm.
The Crown argued there were two areas where it started - one in a bedroom, and one near a couch in the living room.
The fire investigator’s opinion was that the fire was deliberately lit by a person using an incendiary ignition source, such as a lighter.
The blaze was well involved when Fire and Emergency crews arrived.
Judge Rielly said it became clear at trial that Norris and his partner had been trying to organise somewhere else to go after being told to leave, but it was not working out well.
Judge Rielly said Norris’ increasing concern about the likelihood he would have to return to custody was “bubbling away in the background”.
“This property, I know now, was a beautiful property - a beautiful home that belonged to someone else and which was lived in by other people,” Judge Rielly said.
“You deliberately set the home alight and watched it burn to the ground.”
Judge Rielly said the owner and her son’s sense of anger, frustration and loss was palpable at trial.
“They lost invaluable items that meant a lot to them. It has impacted on their sense of safety.”
Some who rushed there on seeing the smoke were struck on arrival by Norris’ demeanour.
Judge Rielly accepted that he had damaged an irrigation control panel at the property and had broken glass in the front door of the main house to get some form of assistance.
But overall, he displayed a “sense of delight” at the damage caused to property owned by people he considered had let him down by evicting him, Judge Rielly said.
In sentencing Norris, she acknowledged factors in his childhood which had contributed to the way he perceived the world and the ways he reacted.
She said the Crown had articulated well the difficulties in awarding credits for Norris’ background.
Judge Rielly said background factors did not reduce his moral culpability, and therefore, he was entitled to no more than a 5% credit.
His five-and-a-half-year prison term included a six-month sentence for aggravated assault on a police officer, after he was spat on in the car.
Judge Rielly said spitting at police officers was disgusting, and that day after day, they were abused and assaulted while doing their job.
Norris was found not guilty on further charges of intentional damage to the irrigation control panel that had been attached to a post at the front of the cottage, and glass in the front door of the main dwelling.
He was also ordered to pay $11,427 in reparation, being 10% of the total amount the owner remained out of pocket for the damage.
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.