Cellphone tower polling data provided to a jury in a murder trial show that the accused woman’s cellphone was sending and receiving text messages while very near the murder site – something she says she cannot explain.

Polling data and cellphone records obtained by police showed that Lynne Martin’s cellphone was no more than 10.6km from a cellphone tower at Te Karaka, near Gisborne on the evening of January 24, 2013.

Martin, 63, is on trial in the High Court at Gisborne for murdering her father by setting fire to his house near Te Karaka, in the early hours of January 25, 2013.

She denied being in the area and told police she couldn’t explain why her phone would have polled off the Te Karaka tower.

The Crown says Martin killed Ronald Russell Allison, 88, because she was broke, angry, and wanted the $150,000 inheritance she would get when he died.

It is alleged that Martin drove to Allison’s house from her Tauranga home on January 24, after telling her boss Rachel Rolston, that she was feeling sick and had to go home.

She text messaged her husband Graeme to say she was going to Auckland with Rolston for the night and wouldn’t be home.

A combination of CCTV video and cellphone tower polling records showed that Martin actually drove to Opōtiki, and Martin would later admit driving this route and lying to Graeme about being in Auckland.

Phone data showed that between 8.56pm and 10.47pm Martin’s phone sent and received text messages and made a call that polled off the Te Karaka cellphone tower, near Allison’s house.

On Thursday the jury heard from various telecommunications experts, who described how the cellphone data had been obtained, and explained that Martin’s phone had to be within 10.6km of the Te Karaka tower when the texts and calls were made.

The jury was shown every text message sent and received by Martin on January 24 and 25, and the times they were made.

Amongst them was a text message she sent to Rolston at 6.17am on January 25, saying “Do Me a big favor if anyone contacts u tell them I have been with u all night I explain later”.

Rolston did not receive the message, because it was sent to a phone she was not using that day.

Lynne Martin allegedly drove from Tauranga to her father's house near Te Karaka, 30km northwest of Gisborne, to set his house on fire and kill him. Image: Google Maps.

Rolston, who employed Martin for about six hours a week at her employment relations advocacy firm ERNZ Consultants Ltd, told the jury about Martin arriving at her place on the morning of January 25.

She said Martin, who had usually been “impeccably well-presented” over the six months she’d employed her, appeared “like something wasn’t right”.

She said Martin looked like she was “really rushing to do something” and seemed “nervous and concerned”.

Martin told her she was worried because she had lied to Graeme about being in Auckland, and that she had actually spent the night in her car at Ohope.

Rolston told the jury of a call Martin made to a police detective in her presence in which she told him her father had cut her out of his will.

Rolston also said she later saw a handwritten letter sent to Martin in 2012 from her father in which he told Martin he had loved her from the moment she was adopted as a baby, and that he would be leaving her $150,000 in his will.

Rolston also recalled Martin telling her that her father and brother had sexually abused her (a claim that Martin had made to police some years earlier, which had been investigated and came to nothing).

While driving to Auckland in June 2013, Rolston remembered Martin telling her “My father deserved to be punished for what he did to me”.

When Rolston appeared taken aback by the comment, Martin said “but not like that”.

The trial, before Justice Helen Cull, began on Monday and is expected to run for up to five weeks.

-Marty Sharpe/Stuff.