What you need to know about Loafers Lodge trial

The Loafers Lodge murder trial has revealed harrowing tales of residents' escapes from the fatal blaze, haunting evidence of a man who didn't make it and expert takes on the killer's state of mind.

Esarona Lologa, 50, lit the boarding house fire that killed Peter O'Sullivan, Kenneth Barnard, Michael Wahrlich, Melvin Parun and Liam Hockings on 16 May, 2023.

On Friday, Lologa was convicted of five counts of murder and one of arson.

The case boiled down to whether he was insane at the time or knew it was morally wrong.

Lauren Crimp reports on the near five-week trial's poignant, pivotal and dramatic moments.

Disturbing 111 call: 'I'm dead'

WARNING: Video contains audio that may upset some viewers.

Toetu Tui Saili was one of a handful of residents who called emergency services during the fatal fire from his smoke-filled room on the fourth-floor mezzanine.

As his 111 call was played to the court, Saili sat in the witness box, slumping down and resting his head on the bench.

His clear distress prompted Justice Churchman to excuse him from listening to the remainder of the half-hour call.

On the call, Saili repeated over and over, "Help, please help me, I can't breathe" and "get me outta here".

It was punctuated by the sharp beeps of a smoke alarm and Saili's coughs.

He became more urgent and panicked, yelling, before his voice quietened.

"I'm dead," he murmured.

For a time, there was silence.

In those moments, you could have heard a pin drop in the courtroom.

"Tui, can you hear me?" the call-taker repeatedly asked. "Tui?"

Shortly after, he told the call-taker he had made it onto the roof, from which he was rescued.

The jury also heard an emergency call made by one of the victims, Liam Hockings.

It is understood he died during the call or shortly after.

A victim's kindness

Included in the hours of CCTV footage shown to the court were resident Kenneth Barnard's efforts to help Lologa on the night of the fire he would later die in.

After the first, smaller fire Lologa lit that night, he returned to the building, but couldn't get in, after leaving his key in his room.

He and Barnard are seen walking through the lodge together.

"You need someone with a key, I'm looking for such a person," Barnard said.

Lologa eventually told Barnard he would stay with a friend.

After Lologa was seen gathering the materials he would soon light on fire, Barnard popped his head out of his room.

"Do you want a sleeping bag or something?" he said. "I can give you a sleeping bag, if you want to sleep in the lounge."

Lologa initially declined, but eventually accepted.

Barnard took him to a couch he suggested the man sleep on, but Lologa said he would sleep on the street.

"All the best," Barnard said later, returning to his room.

Minutes later, in a cupboard just down the hall from Barnard's room, Lologa lit the fatal fire and walked away.

A leap of faith

Warning: Video contains footage and audio that may upset some viewers.

The crash of Faamatala Sili landing on the roof of the building next to Loafers Lodge reverberated through the courtroom in the trial's first week.

Members of the jury winced, as they watched hazy CCTV footage of the moment he likely saved his own life.

Minutes earlier, Sili had been playing his Xbox in his room on the third floor. He heard stomping feet near his room and thought it was drunk people.

He heard smashing glass and thought it was beer bottles. Then, thick black smoke began snaking under his door.

He panicked and climbed out his window.

"I took a few moments to gather up the courage and then I just jumped onto the roof of the building next to my window."

Sili felt, if he did not jump, he would die.

"I was just terrified of burning, of going up in flames."

Sili stood on the windowsill for about 30 seconds, before he jumped.

He landed on the roof of the building next door and tried to stand up, but he was dizzy, his legs were shaking uncontrollably and one was gashed.

While he was there, he heard an old man screaming for help.

Sili said he sounded weak and desperate.

"It just sounded terrifying to me, it was... a horrible sound."

Other residents told the court of the impossible choice they made that night, leaving their mates to save their own lives.

'Trying to kill us'

Lologa lit two fires - the first was under a couch in the lounge about 90 minutes before the second, fatal blaze.

The jury saw dramatic footage of the couch fire that residents put out, followed by conversations between them.

With the knowledge this was not where the night would end, they were eerie exchanges.

"F***, it was close, bro, it almost spread," Ben Hofmann told Raymond Lauder.

Later, Lauder bumped into Kenneth Barnard in the hallway.

"Some c***'s trying to kill us," Lauder said to Barnard.

Barnard died in the second fire.

Revealing two decades of mental health records

Crown lawyer Stephanie Bishop took 22 minutes to read out Lologa's clinical history.

While the jury knew his lawyers planned a defence of insanity, before this point, they had little information about his mental state.

The details were startling.

Lologa, who has schizophrenia, had been admitted to mental health facilities eight times between 2001 and when the fire was lit on May 16 2023 - and then a ninth time, following his arrest.

During his most recent admission to an Auckland hospital between March and April 2023, he was hallucinating, hearing ocean waves and "smelling evil on the ward".

The court heard he fled that facility and lit the fatal fire weeks later.

The two decades' worth of records showed he would mumble to himself incoherently, laugh incongruously, was often perplexed, angry and paranoid about people interfering with his food, and heard voices in his head.

He had assaulted people, was sexually inappropriate towards women, would do jumping jacks on the spot and hold intense eye contact with people.

Lologa was described at times as "floridly psychotic".

At one point, he was found running in front of traffic, sitting and lying on the road, and claiming to be the devil, the court heard.

During each hospital admission, which ranged from about a month to about a year, he responded well to medication and would be discharged, before deteriorating and being re-admitted.

The jury also learned he had 50 previous convictions. That included being jailed for attempted murder for attacking his partner's teenage son with a machete and fracturing his skull in 2009, and attempted arson in 1996.

Voices told defendant to 'burn the place down'

In the second week of the trial, the jury heard for the first time Lologa's account of what happened the night of the fire.

Crown witness, psychiatrist Dr Justin Barry-Walsh, recounted his many interviews with the defendant.

He said Lologa told him, the night of the fire, he heard voices in his head, telling him that people at Loafers Lodge were planning to attack him, and he believed a camera in his room was spying on him.

"Mr Lologa said he asked himself how he could stop this from happening... the voices told him to burn the place down."

After lighting the couch fire, Lologa went outside and waited for the building to go up in flames, Barry-Walsh said.

It did not.

"Mr Lologa said the voices told him to go back and check."

He then discovered the fire had been put out, Barry-Walsh said.

"Mr Lologa said voices told him 'tonight is the night', so he went and lit another fire."

The court also heard Lologa initially lied to the police about lighting the fires.

He also told people who tried to help him afterwards, believing him to be a victim, that he had run for his life from the blaze.

Sole psychiatrist believes man was insane

The defence called Dr Krishna Pillai, the only mental health expert of the six who testified who believed the defendant was insane when he lit the fire.

He said Lologa was experiencing a serious psychotic relapse and did not intend to harm anyone.

Pillai told the court the man's hallucinations - hearing voices telling him to light the fire - rendered him incapable of knowing it was morally wrong.

Under cross examination by Crown lawyer Stephanie Bishop - which took the best part of a day and ramped up in intensity - Pillai said he placed a lot of importance on the defendant's own account of what happened that night, but Pillai also called the defendant an "unreliable historian".

The court had heard Lologa had changed his story about what happened that night several times.

Pillai conceded, without the defendant's own account, the remaining evidence did not show he was seriously unwell.

Bishop suggested Pillai had not considered reasons Lologa may have lit the fire other than insanity and that he looked specifically for evidence consistent with mental illness.

"Yes," Pillai said.

He told defence lawyer Steve Gill that Bishop's questioning had given him "pause for thought", but they didn't change his opinion.

In the dock

Each day, Lologa sat silently flanked by security staff and a support person, wearing a plain black or white shirt.

His eyes were closed at times and, at other times, he watched the CCTV footage being played to the court or stared straight ahead.

Now and then, he rocked back and forth, or jiggled his hands.

Once, he broke his silence in a dramatic fashion, threatening to kill a psychiatrist on the stand.

He was absent from the dock for the rest of that afternoon.

Throughout the trial, most witnesses avoided looking at the man, as they walked directly past him to enter and exit the courtroom, but before giving his testimony, Loafers Lodge resident Hemi Lewis stared intensely at the defendant, as he was sworn in.

Other residents - Gordon Fisher and Robert Vercoe - held their gaze on Lologa, as they walked from the witness box, past the dock and out the double doors of the room.

The only response the defendant gave was to his sister, Failelei Lologa.

As she passed the witness box afterwards, she paused, giving her brother a teary smile and small wave through the glass.

He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows to acknowledge her.

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