The man who deliberately lit a Wellington hostel fire that claimed five lives has been sentenced to life imprisonment and won’t be eligible for parole for at least 22 years.
Esarona Lologa appeared in the High Court at Wellington today on five counts of murder and one of arson for lighting the deadly blaze at Loafers Lodge in Newtown in May 2023.
He unsuccessfully claimed a defence of insanity at trial, saying voices commanded him to light two fires at the boarding house.
The public gallery in the High Court at Wellington was full today with friends and family of the men killed in the hostel: Mike Wahrlich, Liam Hockings, Peter O’Sullivan, Melvin Parun and Kenneth Barnard.
In a powerful victim impact statement, Parun’s brother, Louis Parun, acknowledged the men who died, those who were injured, and everyone involved in fighting the fire and bringing the case to court.
“For us, the loss is profound,” he said. “The long shadow of that night will always remain with us.”
He said his brother was a man of “quiet strength and gentle humour”, and that his sudden, violent death had left the family brokenhearted.
“I wish to say to the man who lit those fires, I am 81 years old, I’ve lived long enough to see much of life. There’s moments of beauty and there’s depths of sorrow. What you did brought unimaginable pain to many, and the loss of five good men whose lives will never return.”
Parun said he took a “solemn satisfaction” in knowing that “long after I have departed this earth, you will still be behind bars”.
Melvin Parun’s daughter, Sophia Parun, also gave an emotional statement, looking angrily at Lologa as he sat in the dock.
“To ‘your name’ ... You don’t deserve a single word in my vocabulary or a single letter in my alphabet.”
Margaret Wahrlich cried as she gave her statement about her brother, affectionately known as Mike the Juggler. She carried a framed photo of him, as she did throughout the trial.
“I want you to see my brother’s face and to ensure he is remembered as a person and not a name,” she told Lolonga. “Can you look at his photo?
“How could you take his life from him that he loved so much?”
She described how she hadn’t known where Mike was living at the time of the fire, but that she had walked past Loafers Lodge the next morning and hoped that wasn’t where he was staying.
“This day, it plays on my mind that I stood there looking at that very building where my brother’s body was still inside,” she sobbed.
She eventually received the call that Mike had died in the fire, and her heart broke.
“It has been broken since.
“To know that you selfishly cut his life short is incredibly difficult to accept. ... What you did was inhumane, and no one deserves to go through that.”
Barnard’s nephew, Nathaniel Johnstone, said he had grown up knowing his uncle and had lived with him as a young adult.
He described him as “strikingly open-hearted and genuine”, but someone who faced challenges in life that left him unable to be housed safely.
Johnstone said it was unsettling to know that “someone of that character, a really kind and true person and someone who was able to respond to some significant challenges and cruelty in life without becoming malicious and resentful, should come to an end in that way.”
In sentence, Justice Peter Churchman described the various impacts of the fires, from loss of life, injuries, trauma, and financial hardships.
“The depth and the breadth of loss caused by your actions is immense,” the judge told Lologa.
He noted legislation required him to set a minimum non-parole period of at least 17 years if the offending met certain criteria.
He said Lologa’s offending met multiple criteria, including that it was premeditated and “calculated”, the victims were “particularly vulnerable”, and that the murders happened in the course of another serious offence, that being arson.
In deciding what the non-parole period should be, Justice Churchman referred to the recent cases of the Auckland suitcase murders and Lauren Dickason’s sentencing for murdering her three children.
He said a significant difference was that Lologa had killed five people.
“You lit both of the fires with a callous indifference to the fate [of the building’s occupants],” he said.
Lologa also poses a high risk to the safety of the public and is considered to have a high risk of reoffending.
He had provided a letter to the judge expressing his remorse for the fire, but a pre-sentence report writer noted he showed no remorse or insight into his offending, instead using his mental health to deflect accountability.
He set the non-parole period at 22 years, which included a three year discount for the effect of Lologa’s mental health disorders.
Lologa will also be held as a special patient until he can safely be transitioned to prison.
Lologa had been living at the Loafers Lodge on Adelaide Rd for about a week before lighting a fire in an unused wardrobe, starting the fatal inferno.
He had started another fire under a couch in the building earlier in the evening, but that had been discovered and extinguished by other residents before it could get out of control.
The 50-year-old did not dispute lighting the fires, but argued he was not guilty by way of insanity, with his lawyers saying he was suffering a serious psychotic relapse due to his diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.
He had absconded from a mental health facility just weeks before the fire.
The jury of seven women and four men spent four and a half weeks listening to evidence in the trial, including first-hand accounts from firefighters who tackled the blaze, residents who survived it, police who arrested and interviewed Lologa, and psychiatrists who assessed his mental health.
Of the six mental health experts who gave their opinions, only one, giving evidence for the defence, held the opinion that Lologa was insane at the time of lighting the fires.
Dr Krishna Pillai, for the defence, said he primarily based his opinion on the defendant’s own account of his mental state that night, in which he said voices commanded him to light the fires.
He agreed, on cross-examination, that the objective evidence, including CCTV footage of Lologa’s actions and behaviours, did not support this opinion.
Other psychiatrists said they did not believe he had a defence of insanity available and that he showed signs of having antisocial personality disorder.
Dr Justin Barry-Walsh said Lologa’s behaviour when he was seriously unwell was more obvious, and that it would have been clear to those around him if he was having a serious relapse.
The Crown proposed that Lologa’s motive was that he did not like living at Loafers Lodge and burnt it down as a way to be put into different accommodation.
Defence lawyer Louise Sziranyi rejected this claim, saying the jury would have to involve themselves in “massive guesswork and speculation” to agree with it.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.