woken by a strange noise<\/a>, which he realised was a fire alarm. He woke his wife, Jenny, and, unsure what was going on, opened the front door to have the flames come flying in, singeing his eyebrows.<\/p>\nThe couple escaped through the French doors on to the deck. <\/p>\n
Once outside, Van Dalen realised that his implement shed and haybarn were also alight. A 750-litre fuel tank was also destroyed that night. <\/p>\n
He\u2019d checked the sleepout, but Moore wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
Keen to move his car away from the house, he\u2019d realised his car keys were inside and had to get his tractor to move it. <\/p>\n
His wife couldn\u2019t get the phone to work, so she flagged down a passing motorist to call the fire brigade, before walking up to make sure Morrison and Rynhart were okay. <\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The second Wards Line home which was also damaged in October 2022. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Firefighters with decades of experience earlier told the court the fires they were called to at 3.44am were unprecedented in their size and scale. One told the court: \u201cIt was nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
As daylight broke, it became clear that four buildings had been destroyed and one was partially destroyed. Two tyres, stuffed with fabric, were found on the deck outside the sleepout but weren\u2019t lit. A bucket of accelerant sat nearby. <\/p>\n
The two couples gave evidence at Moore\u2019s jury trial. Moore denies nine charges, including five of arson and one of attempted arson. She also denies a charge of resisting arrest and possession of a rifle and 133 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition.<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old is accused of taking tyres from the silage pit at the Van Dalen\u2019s farm, stuffing fabric inside them, placing a flammable liquid onto the fabric, then leaving them outside buildings at the two properties and lighting them. <\/p>\n
![\"Two]()
Two vehicle tyres with fabric and potentially a flammable liquid found at Wards Line near Greytown in October 2022. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Moore isn\u2019t present in the courtroom, but lawyer Janine Bonifant is helping the court, addressing the jury and cross-examining witnesses. <\/p>\n
The court heard Moore, an American, told Morrison she\u2019d arrived in New Zealand to work as a civil engineer during the Christchurch rebuild. <\/p>\n
By mid-2022, Moore was living and working at the Van Dalen\u2019s farm and leasing land from Morrison and Rynhart to graze her small herd of cattle. <\/p>\n
The Crown\u2019s case is that Moore lit the fires because she was upset at losing her job at the Van Dalen\u2019s and unhappy with the lease arrangement for her cattle. <\/p>\n
Both couples told the court they got on well and hadn\u2019t had problems with anyone in the area other than Moore. <\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The fuel tank stand at the Van Dalen’s property on Wards Line, near Greytown after the fires in October 2022. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Refusal to provide invoices<\/p>\n
Gerry Van Dalen told the court a falling out occurred because Moore refused to sign an employment contract, agreeing instead to invoice them for the part-time work she did, which included odd jobs and milking.<\/p>\n
The couple agreed, even providing Moore with an invoice book. <\/p>\n
But the court heard, despite repeated requests, Moore refused to submit her invoices. <\/p>\n
By the end of August, Van Dalen had lost patience and told Moore that, from the next day, September 1, she was no longer working for them. <\/p>\n
He said he thought Moore was disappointed, but she didn\u2019t show up to work again. But Moore continued to stay at their sleepout until the fires, during which time there was tension. <\/p>\n
Asked by prosecutor Anslem Williams to give an example of the tension, Jenny Van Dalen said if she walked outside, Moore would close the curtains of the sleepout and lock the door, saying it was hard to have contact with her. <\/p>\n
Jenny Van Dalen said she\u2019d increasingly felt intimidated and unsafe around Moore; they told her she could no longer come into the house to use the bathroom and laundry facilities.<\/p>\n
The day before the fire, Gerry Van Dalen told the court, he had spoken to Moore telling her that the arrangement wasn\u2019t working, the relationship wasn\u2019t great, there was no future, and she should move on. <\/p>\n
The night Moore\u2019s car wasn\u2019t outside the sleepout, which was unusual. <\/p>\n
![\"Maya]()
Maya Moore. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Cutting locks <\/p>\n
Asked to describe the grazing arrangement Morrison and Moore had agreed on for her small herd of cattle, Morrison said initially it had worked well. Moore leased two fenced paddocks on their property, paying $3500 in cash for a year. <\/p>\n
But he said it soured after about four months when Moore refused to stop grazing her stock on land she wasn\u2019t leasing and took up space in the hayshed she wasn\u2019t supposed to be using. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s also padlocked the gate to stop beekeepers from walking across her land to check their hives. <\/p>\n
The court heard efforts to resolve matters amicably had failed, and lawyers had been called in. When Morrison padlocked gates to stop Moore from putting stock on his land, Moore removed them and put up electric fencing. <\/p>\n
In turn, Morrison cut the padlocks Moore had put on the gates of the paddocks she leased to allow beekeepers access to the bee hives. <\/p>\n
Under cross-examination from Bonifant, the four accepted that Moore had never made direct threats against them, and they hadn\u2019t seen her on their properties on the night of the fire.<\/p>\n
Gerry Van Dalen agreed he\u2019d had no problems with her work, other than her refusal to invoice him. <\/p>\n
The court also heard that the following morning, Moore\u2019s stock was still in the paddocks. <\/p>\n
Crown closes its case<\/p>\n
At the end of the Crown case on Tuesday, Judge Peter Hobbs told the jury there would be no defence evidence. <\/p>\n
He reiterated, again, to the jury, that there was no obligation on the defendant to give or call evidence, explaining that the burden of proof lay with the Crown. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the jury will begin to hear closing addresses. <\/p>\n
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moore worked for Morrison\u2019s neighbour Gerry Van Dalen, and lived in a sleepout at his property. Both Morrison…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,53,89,682,2245,12026,12967,13994,2079,11551,78,59,60,1304,111,43,139,69,13992,312,61,54,8238,62,13993,8211],"class_list":["post-11448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-arson","tag-attack","tag-being","tag-early","tag-farmer","tag-farmers","tag-feared","tag-fire","tag-hours","tag-in","tag-maya","tag-moore","tag-morning","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-recount","tag-says","tag-to","tag-trial","tag-under","tag-wairarapa","tag-waking","tag-woken"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}