{"id":802,"date":"2025-09-04T08:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T08:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/802\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T08:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T08:40:09","slug":"wellington-arson-trial-court-hears-maya-moore-had-a-volatile-temper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/802\/","title":{"rendered":"Wellington arson trial: Court hears Maya Moore had a volatile temper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moore is on trial<\/a> facing nine charges, including five of arson and one of attempted arson.<\/p>\n

The 50-year-old denies lighting a fire at a house and a sleepout at one property and setting alight a house, an implement shed, a hayshed, and attempting to burn a sleepout at a second.<\/p>\n

She also denies a charge of resisting arrest and possession of a rifle and 133 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition. <\/p>\n

The Crown\u2019s case is that the fires were lit after Moore fell out with the couples who lived at the two properties. Before the fires, Moore had been living and working on one of the farms and was grazing her small herd of cows at the other.<\/p>\n

Moore is not present in court, and lawyer Janine Bonifant has been appointed by Judge Peter Hobbs to help the court because Moore isn\u2019t represented.<\/p>\n

She got grumpy with me<\/p>\n

Today, the court heard from several people who knew Moore before the fires. <\/p>\n

Carterton resident Deborah Aston told the court she first met Moore in 2018, not long after she\u2019d moved into the town. Moore had been staying with her neighbour after she\u2019d injured her leg as a result of being kicked by a horse and thus couldn\u2019t work. <\/p>\n

They shared an interest in horses, and Moore left the neighbour\u2019s place to move in with Aston, where she\u2019d stayed for about four months, during which time she never had any visitors. <\/p>\n

Asked about Moore\u2019s temper, Aston described it as volatile. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was very wary of her once I got to know her, not to antagonise her,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Aston said Moore didn\u2019t like certain things, like using the Wi-Fi, but it was a discussion about a knife missing from the kitchen drawer that prompted her to move out. <\/p>\n

At that time, Moore was sleeping in her box truck, which was parked out front of her house, and Aston thought the knife might have been taken out there by mistake. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe thought I was accusing her of stealing the silverware, which I wasn\u2019t, and she got grumpy with me.\u201d <\/p>\n

After Moore left, Aston didn\u2019t really see her again for several years, although her mail continued to be delivered. <\/p>\n

She\u2019d told Moore many times about her mail in the letterbox, but Moore had been reluctant to collect it and hadn\u2019t opened her mail during her stay. <\/p>\n

Aston said she didn\u2019t see Moore again until early in 2022. She knew Moore had found the job in Wards Lane because she\u2019d helped her move into the sleepout. <\/p>\n

While Moore was initially happy with the job, Aston said, she rapidly grew frustrated with her employers\u2019 farming practices and claimed the people whose land she leased for her small herd of cows were reneging on the lease agreement. <\/p>\n

Aston even went out to the farm at Wards Lane after Moore claimed her physical welfare was under threat. <\/p>\n

She saw Moore several days before the fires and told the court Moore was agitated and upset. <\/p>\n

Moore told her she\u2019d had enough, felt alone and wanted to do something to get her put in prison. <\/p>\n

Aston told Moore she was being ridiculous and asked how she would look after her cows, whom Moore visited every day.<\/p>\n

\"MayaMaya Moore faces nine charges, including five of arson.<\/p>\n

During cross-examination, Aston agreed with Bonifant that when Moore made her comment, she was feeling despondent, and Aston hadn\u2019t been concerned to alert anyone in the area about it. <\/p>\n

Aston also told the court that while she was aware Moore had a firearm, she\u2019d never seen it. <\/p>\n

You had to walk on eggshells<\/p>\n

Martin Haywood told the court he\u2019d offered Moore his spare room after meeting her at the Carterton pub in 2019, where she told him she was sleeping in her truck. <\/p>\n

Asked how she\u2019d left his house, Haywood agreed it wasn\u2019t on the best of terms, but there was no hatred between them. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut after getting beer thrown on your head, I wasn\u2019t that pleased about it,\u201d he said, adding that Moore had moved out the following week. <\/p>\n

During her four-week stay, Haywood said, he fed her, but Moore never contributed financially. But he said she was cranky in the morning after drinking a bottle of beer each night. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou had to walk on eggshells,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Her only visitor during her stay was a guy from Featherson with whom she\u2019d go cycling.<\/p>\n

We had to evict her <\/p>\n

Carterton resident Joanne Seddon told the court Moore had looked after their farm while they were away overseas for two months in 2018, but ended up staying four to five months. <\/p>\n

Asked by prosecutor Anselm Williams how the relationship had ended, Seddon said: \u201cIt ended quite badly because she didn\u2019t want to move on, and in the end we had to evict her.\u201d <\/p>\n

Seddon told the court she\u2019d seen Moore very angry at times, to the point she felt unsafe in her company. She said Moore threw things around and had driven in and out of their driveway recklessly.<\/p>\n

Asked whether she knew Moore owned a firearm, Seddon said Moore was interested in being self-sufficient, and they had talked about hunting, with Moore even taking a hunting trip with Seddon\u2019s husband. She said Moore had a firearm, but she\u2019d never seen it. <\/p>\n

During cross-examination, Seddon rejected a suggestion made by Bonifant that there had been no issues with the property or stock while they were away. She also confirmed she\u2019d never seen Moore\u2019s firearm, although she knew she kept it in the truck. <\/p>\n

The trial is expected to continue into next week. <\/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 is on trial facing nine charges, including five of arson and one of attempted arson. The 50-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1117,53,1349,1359,63,1351,1360,42,1350,1364,424,1357,1362,59,60,43,384,1356,1355,1353,1361,40,38,41,39,1358,54,1352,62,1363,52,1354],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accused","tag-arson","tag-court","tag-described","tag-fires","tag-had","tag-having","tag-headlines","tag-hears","tag-her","tag-life","tag-lived","tag-made","tag-maya","tag-moore","tag-news","tag-people","tag-properties","tag-starting","tag-temper","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-transient","tag-trial","tag-volatile","tag-wairarapa","tag-wary","tag-wellington","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","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=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}