It was the third suspicious fire at the Hanson Grove flats within four weeks.
Now, Mangu Kaha gang members Arden Neho, Reardon Kamaru and Henare Barber are defending charges of arson and murder at a trial in the High Court at Wellington.
Neho also faces two additional charges relating to the earlier fires.
The Crown says the fires were lit at the direction of the gang.
It alleges Neho, 41, and Kamaru, 34, lit the fires to earn their gang patches under the direction of Barber, 27, who was already a patched member.
But the trio deny the charges, with their lawyers urging the jury to keep an open mind.
The court heard a Molotov cocktail was found at the scene of the first fire, on a landing outside Moller’s front door. The fire had charred the stairwell walls.
As a result of that fire, Moller had suffered smoke inhalation and had to be helped to an ambulance, his skin and pyjamas blackened with soot.
Firefighters had gone to his flat that night to open the windows, trying to rid it of the smell of smoke.
Against police advice, the pensioner refused to leave, later telling a friend he feared Kāinga Ora would use the fire as an excuse to move him from the flat where he’d lived for 23 years.
Four days later, there was a second arson attempt. This time, three Molotov cocktails fashioned from a jerry can and two beer bottles were thrown at the back of the building.
Only wet weather prevented the devices from causing damage.
A month later, firefighters were called back to the flats again. Like the earlier incidents, a fire had been lit in the dead of night and started in an external storage cupboard below Moller’s flat.
Neighbour Amanda Kinzett told the court she didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it was pitch black outside when she heard a “crack” as she lay on her bed watching television or listening to music.
Looking out her bedroom window, she’d seen the fire on the ground floor of the two-storey block.
She called 111 before running across the road to raise the alarm, yelling “fire, fire”.
The stairwell outside Ian Moller’s flat at Hanson Grove after a fire in October 2024. Photo / NZ Police.
As the flames spread up the side of the building, she hoped Moller wasn’t home because he had not responded to her shouting.
“It was awful,” she said.
Her mother, Suzanne Kinzett, who was living with her daughter, told the court the fire spread quickly to the top flat, sending up flames and thick smoke.
“The flames were very intense,” she said.
Mayday call
Minutes after entering the flat, firefighters Daniel Mapp and Kevin Frank found Moller, standing in a hallway, calling out for help.
Frank said the smoke was so thick they couldn’t see Moller, identifying him only by touch. The pensioner collapsed and became semi-conscious shortly after they found him.
As they tried to leave, they realised they were trapped and radioed a mayday call.
The flats at Hanson Grove, where Ian Moller, 82, lived until a fatal fire in November 2024. Photo / NZ Police.
Mapp told the court that when another crew came to their rescue, he only briefly glimpsed their backs, but the firefighters followed the rescue crew’s hose out to the landing before taking turns carrying Moller down the stairs.
Once out of the flat, Moller was placed unresponsive in an ambulance and taken to Wellington Hospital, where he died on November 10, 2024.
His death was later attributed to complications of carbon monoxide toxicity caused by smoke inhalation.
A churchgoer, hard of hearing
Earlier at the trial, two of Moller’s friends described him as a committed churchgoer who was passionate about his faith and the subjects that interested him.
Michael Krausse, pastor at the Epuni Baptist Church, which Moller attended for 30 years, said if anyone was going to have him on or question him about his sermon, it was Moller.
The two also attended a fortnightly Bible study group. Aside from that, the court heard Moller joined a weekly coffee group and attended Grey Power meetings.
Krausse recalled Moller as a “small, wiry guy” who was “really fit” and regularly used public transport after losing his driver’s licence.
Another friend, Kevin Lun, who had known Moller for 30 years, drove him to and from church every Sunday.
Lun told the court that sometimes Moller would hardly say anything during the drive, but if the conversation turned to a topic that interested him, such as history, he would talk at length.
Lun estimated he had visited Moller’s flat only about three times over the years, usually to help tune his television.
He told the court there were large numbers of papers and books inside, leaving little room to move around.
“He really liked books, but he was a bit of a hoarder,” Lun said.
Stokes Valley man Ian David Moller, 82, died after a fire at his Stokes Valley home in November 2024.
Photographs shown to the court depict boxes, books and papers stacked on overflowing bookcases in a corridor.
In Moller’s bedroom, home gym equipment can be seen alongside clothes hanging from wardrobe doors and other personal belongings scattered around the room.
Krausse also recalled that Moller was partially deaf. While he had hearing aids, he would sometimes forget to charge them or arrive at church and meetings without them.
When that happened, his fellow parishioners would have to talk loudly, or Moller would sit beside a speaker, he said.
Both men said Moller had mentioned the first fire but had not seemed overly concerned, except that he feared being moved from his flat.
‘I’m going to come and f*** you up’
Meanwhile, another neighbour, Mataniu Saipani, told the court that on the night of the third and fatal fire she heard a man yelling when she arrived home from a night shift about 2am.
As she got out of her car, she heard a man say: “F*** you, I’m going to come and f*** you up”.
She said the comment, from a Māori or Pasifika man, came from the direction of the Hanson Grove flats.
After hearing it, she ran inside her house.
About an hour later, she noticed the fire across the road.
Defence lawyers Val Nisbet and Shane Robinson, representing Neho and Barber respectively, questioned Saipani about what she had heard.
It wasn’t unusual to hear noises coming from the bottom flat of Hanson Grove, Nisbet suggested, adding there was often yelling and arguing there.
“Not argument, just yelling,” Saipani responded.
Under questioning from Robinson, Saipani confirmed she had heard the apparent threat but had not seen who made it.
Lawyer Jason Owers, representing Kamaru, asked the Kinzetts about a former tenant who had previously lived at the flats and rode a bicycle barefoot, matching a description police had been given on the night of the fire.
The trial before Justice David Boldt is estimated to take up to five weeks.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
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