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It was a crime that rocked a small country town.
A woman set on fire, seen running from her burning car towards a nearby stream while ripping off her clothes and screaming so loudly it was captured by nearby security cameras.
Neighbours ran from their homes to help, hosing her down, horrified by her injuries and feeling helpless as she cried out in pain.
What led to that moment on the Friday evening of June 2, 2023, was never fully explained until the man responsible went on trial in the WA District Court two weeks ago.
Kirsten Moiler on her way to court during her estranged husband’s trial.
In court, the jury was left horrified by the details of the attack. They were told how a woman, after enduring years of verbal and physical abuse, finally tried to leave and seek protection, enraging her husband, who later told his own mother that setting his wife on fire was the “comeuppance” she deserved.
Such crimes are rare in Mount Helena. The Hills suburb, 40 kilometres east of Perth, is home to just over 3000 people, and many know one another.
Visitors flock there for the popular country pub, an annual old-fashioned festival, and to drive through scenic rural back roads that weave through hobby farms.
That it was also home to drug dealers and chronic domestic abuse would likely be unknown to many who lived there.
Kirsten Moiler’s car after she was set on fire while sitting inside.Credit: Nine News/WA Police
The night Peter Moiler set his wife on fire
Peter Moiler, a long-time meth user, had been verbally and physically assaulting his wife for years. Kirsten Moiler was on and off the drug herself.
After 11 years of marriage and 16 spent together, the pair decided to separate. Kirsten moved to a nearby suburb and the couple began to navigate a co-parenting arrangement for their children.
But Moiler was getting more and more erratic and unpredictable, and there was “tension” between the pair.
He began turning up to Kirsten’s new residence uninvited. She told the court he would sit in his car outside of her house and watch with the lights off.
He was also sending her “increasingly hostile” text messages and pressuring her for sex.
In the past, during arguments, he had threatened to kill her.
Kirsten was getting nervous. She wanted things to remain peaceful between them as they began to navigate the journey of co-parenting their children together.
It was her dad who suggested the restraining order after she voiced concerns, but it was Friday afternoon before she got to Midland Magistrates Court, and the start of a long weekend. Court staff told her to come back on Tuesday to have her request processed.
Kirsten told the jury during the trial she felt she needed to “take matters into her own hands”, because she “needed to make sure we were still friends for co-parenting”.
She called Moiler and asked if he wanted to go for a drive to a nearby gravel pit to do some burn-outs. It was something they had often done together.
She drove to the Honey Street property just after 6pm, but before she could get out of the car, Moiler threw a star picket into the passenger’s seat and asked her, “You good? You strapped in?” before spraying her with an accelerant and setting her alight.
“I could feel the flames,” she told the court.
“I can’t really describe it for you – it felt like my skin was being ripped off my body. It was burning, it was singeing. I couldn’t stop it.”
Kirsten and Peter Moiler
Her husband looked on as she burned.
“What the f— happened? What are you doing?” he could be heard on CCTV saying. A ruse, prosecutors said, to later cover his tracks.
Kirsten was screaming at him: “What the f— Pete?”
She also begged him to help her as she peeled off her clothes and ran to the nearby stream.
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About 20 minutes later, moiler called triple zero, but then he went back to the house, got his car and drove off, leaving Kirsten in agony with a group of neighbours.
Moiler drove to the homes of three separate neighbours, giving them each a version of events in which he claimed Kirsten had set herself on fire.
Kirsten was treated by paramedics at the scene and then airlifted to Fiona Stanley Hospital, where she underwent surgery to treat partial and full thickness burns to 38 per cent of her body.
She spent six weeks in hospital, underwent multiple painful operations, and has been left with significant scarring she will live with for the rest of her life.
“The mental toll is quite actually difficult; I don’t go shopping by myself, I don’t go anywhere by myself, I have a hard time being around men,” she later told 9News Perth after Moiler had been found guilty.
For two years, as Kirsten recovered from her horrific injuries, there was also a looming criminal trial she was key witness in, after Moiler pleaded not guilty to the charge of aggravated grievous bodily harm.
But after two weeks of evidence, a jury found him guilty and on Friday he was sentenced to 11 years behind bars.
Kirsten said she didn’t know if relief was the right word. “It’s just good that justice is being done after all this time,” she told 9News Perth.
Of her future, Kirsten said she was “the most excited I’ve been in my life” as she worked to move on after the horrific attack, and hoped her story would encourage others to speak up.
Whether her story has also changed the way Mount Helena locals now perceive the town in another question.
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