When Lynne Martin watched a Cold Case TV show about the death of her father, she knew she was the prime suspect.

What she didn’t know, was that her house was bugged and the conversation she held with her husband as they watched the show was being recorded.

Martin, 63, is on trial for the murder of her father Ronald Russell Allison, 88, by setting fire to his house near Te Karaka, about 30km from Gisborne, in the early hours of January 25, 2013.

On Monday, the 11th day of the trial, before Justice Helen Cull in the High Court at Gisborne, the jury was played recordings from hidden devices police planted in the bedroom and lounge of the couple’s Matamata home between July and December 2020.

Police also bugged the couple’s landline, and Martin’s cellphone, and in total recorded more than 22,000 conversations from these devices.

These were on top of conversations recorded by an undercover police officer who spent 157 days ascertaining Martin’s involvement in the fire.

The Cold Case episode on Allison’s death screened on the evening of November 3, 2020.

The show mentioned a telephone call Martin made to Allison at 11.25am on January 24, 2013, the day before he died. The call lasted 22 minutes and caused great distress for Allison. The call was made by Martin.

As the show aired, and in the hours following, Martin discussed matters it raised with her husband Graeme.

As they watch the show Martin tells her husband she had called her father to ask how he was.

“There was nothing, there was no malice in it, no nothing; he was in good spirits,” she said.

When asked by Graeme if she “had a go at him”, she replied “Oh f..., I was always having a go at the c..., but I can’t say that”.

She said the police had “made their minds up” and she thought her brother John “has told a lotta lies and given a lot of misconceptions”.

She also said that although police had cellphone tower data that put her phone near her father’s house at the time of his death, they had no proof she was there.

Martin has said she drove as far as Ōpōtiki on the night of the fire, but no further, and told police she couldn’t explain how her phone was polling from the Te Karaka tower.

After watching the TV show she told Graeme “they can put me down there, but it doesn’t prove I went to Whatatutu (Allison’s house), it doesn’t prove I set the house on fire”.

In another recorded conversation between the couple, on the night of August 2, 2020, she tells Graeme she told a detective investigating the case that she wished it was her brother who died.

“Like I said to Smithy (the detective), ‘The wrong c... died. It shoulda been my brother. I’d love to see him be a crispy critter. No wonder I got myself in the shit,” she said.

Earlier on Monday the jury heard from the undercover officer ‘Millie Tait’, including a covert recording taken in August 2020, in which Martin used a camping stove and a pot of fat to show Millie how to start a kitchen fire so it would not appear like arson.

Martin’s lawyer Rachael Adams put it to Millie that she was deployed with a brief that assumed Martin’s guilt, and used “elaborate lies” to entice her to confess. Millie denied that. She said she elicited conversations, and it was Martin who raised the idea of arson.

Adams said Millie had created a “fake friendship”, had gained Martin’s trust by means including fake crying and put it to her that she was a “professional liar”.

“I’m an undercover police officer,” Millie replied.

The Crown ended its case on Monday. Martin elected not to call evidence.

Closing statements will be made on Tuesday.

-Marty Sharpe/Stuff.