An ‘orange flicker’
Crown lawyer Kim McCoy told the jury Williams’ former partner Anthony Buckton spent a lot of time in his “beloved” workshop.
The workshop was at the back of Buckton’s mother’s home in Weymouth, South Auckland, and he spent hours in there working on cars with his friends.
At the time, Buckton and Williams had been in a relationship for about six years and lived together in a caravan on the property.
On the day of February 11, 2022, McCoy said the couple argued and Buckton punched Williams in the face, with the police then being called.
Buckton cut off his ankle monitor and fled.
Around midnight, Buckton’s mother Sharon Pawa was awoken to phone calls from her son, telling her to check that his belongings hadn’t been set alight.
He had forwarded three voice messages to his mother that he claimed were from Williams.
“All your s***’s already f***in’ burnt so don’t even bother trying to get it,” one of the messages said.
Pawa looked outside and saw an “orange flicker” in the distance, before the workshop erupted in flames.
The court was told she then saw Williams walking away from the fire and heard her saying something along the lines of “your son’s stuff is burning”.
The pair allegedly got into a scuffle, before Williams was able to get away.
McCoy claimed Williams had doused the workshop with petrol before setting it on fire with her own lighter.
Police later found empty petrol cans and a lighter, the latter of which McCoy said had fallen out of Williams’ pocket.
The mother
The Crown’s first witness was Sharon Pawa, Buckton’s mother.
She said she had begun the day of the fire by working on her “quite big” back yard, which often took all day.
At first, she had heard the couple arguing but it started off as their normal day-to-day bickering.
Later, in the afternoon, she heard them yelling and screaming and Williams came out to say Buckton had hit her.
Pawa said she grabbed her son, who claimed Williams was trying to “cut herself”, and Williams went inside to call the police.
Her “really angry” son cut off his ankle bracelet, which monitored his 24-hour curfew, and disappeared down the driveway, Pawa said.
She carried on with the garden work until about 8.30pm, when she went inside for a cup of tea, to relax before bed.
The explosion
Pawa said her son was repeatedly calling her and asking her to check if his partner was okay, so she went out and saw Williams asleep in the caravan next to a bottle of vodka and her dog.
Annoyed with her son’s constant calls and messages, Pawa ignored them and went to sleep, until she was awoken to a call from him around midnight.
She said she went outside and saw a “little bit of orange light”, followed by her son’s partner walking by with her dog.
“All of a sudden there was a great big explosion in the back yard,” Pawa said.
She said she vaguely remembered Williams saying “it’s all on fire now” or “lit up” or something like that and yelling abuse about her son.
“To me she seemed a bit like she was still intoxicated,” Pawa said. “… Slurring her words and screaming.”
Pawa ‘lost it’
Disoriented by the explosion, Pawa said she “lost it” and lunged at the woman, grabbing her by her hair.
In the scuffle, Pawa fell into the woodshed and when she got up, Williams was gone.
The next day she found that a petrol can she used for the mower had moved and was empty, as well as finding a black lighter in the area where she and Williams had fought.
Pawa smokes but when asked if the lighter was hers, she said it wasn’t and hadn’t been there before the fire.
‘Tunnel vision’
Tava said the trial was a case of “tunnel vision” by the police, who had “almost immediately” believed Pawa’s version of events.
“Ms Williams had nothing to do with this fire.”
There was a lack of evidence of his client setting the blaze, and the man cave was “packed” with “all kinds of flammable substances”.
The woman had been assaulted by her partner nine hours earlier but that was not a motive to start a fire, he said.
“Most people don’t respond with being punched in the face by setting fire to a house.”
He said she instead fled an abusive relationship and, four years later, the Crown were going with Pawa’s version of events that were “not grounded in reality”.
The trial continues.
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She’s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.