A woman accused of trying to burn down a central Dunedin hotel was only in the frame because she was ‘‘a bit weird’’, her lawyer says.
Angela Marie Robertson (37) is on trial at the Dunedin District Court, charged with one count of arson and one of attempted arson.
She stayed at the Leviathan Hotel the night of August 28, 2018; minutes after she left the following morning, staff found both a couch and a printer aflame.
A later inspection of Robertson’s room found a bunk bed had been moved in front of a fan heater and a bedsheet placed directly against it.
Crown prosecutor Craig Power said the set-up was clearly an attempt to burn down the hotel, and that the other fires therefore must have been lit by the defendant.
Defence counsel Anne Stevens, though, told the jury in her opening statement yesterday that that logic was ‘‘completely flawed’’.
Robertson became the suspect for the arson because staff found her unusual, she smoked and she left around the time the blazes were discovered, Mrs Stevens said.
‘‘The defence says there’s nothing about being a bit weird that makes someone an arsonist — that’s called prejudice,’’ she said.
Robertson, the court heard, checked into the hotel late on the night of August 28.
Taxi driver Charles Adam, who drove the woman there from Wakari, said she seemed talkative and pleasant.
The night porter who checked her in at the hotel, Allan Nisbet, had a different take.
He immediately told Robertson she could only stay one night.
‘‘She had a bit of gear with her; I thought she might be hard to get rid of if we kept her on,’’ Mr Nisbet said.
The defendant accepted the decision, he told the jury, and did not seem upset.
However, Mr Nisbet said, he remained suspicious.
‘‘Angela was just weird. She was bubbly in a weird way. I thought she was on something. I didn’t really trust her and she seemed over-friendly, which made me cautious,’’ he said.
Under cross-examination, he acknowledged he may have described her as ‘‘a nut-case’’ to other staff members.
India Gillespie, the receptionist who checked Robertson out the following morning before 8am, said the defendant ‘‘didn’t seem altogether there ... quite spacey’’.
When she called a taxi at the front desk, Ms Gillespie said she had to remind her of the name of the hotel.
Within five minutes, she said, she could smell smoke but put it down to the open fire in the dining area.
Moments later, a housekeeper ran downstairs shouting for water.
Manager Ryan Beck recalled grabbing a fire extinguisher and entering the lounge, which was filling with smoke.
He put out the three-seater couch that was ablaze and used a jug of water to dampen the smouldering cushions.
He then saw an ‘‘orange glow’’ and more smoke on the mezzanine floor, he told the jury.
Mr Beck found a printer engulfed in flames 40cm tall, which he also extinguished, before firefighters cleared the building.
Mr Power accepted the Crown case was circumstantial but stressed that did not make it inherently weak.
Mrs Stevens, on the other hand, argued Robertson had no motive and no lighter to even start the fires.
The trial, before Judge Michael Crosbie and a jury of six men and
six women, is scheduled to last three days.
