Pod Insights The Case Of 01 The Airbnb Guest | A body in the ashes About this episode After welcoming a British visitor named Timothy Loosemore, Maree Vermont's house went up in flames, and her body was found in the ruins. How did things go so wrong?
In this episode, reporter Anna McGuinness explains the prosecution's case against Timothy Loosemore, and how the defence argued back in his trial this year.
If you have any questions you'd like Anna and Stocky to answer in future episodes, please email [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.
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0:46 Speaker 01 Marie Vermont spent years building her stone house in the Victorian bush, but after a man came to stay, her pride and joy was reduced to ashes and he was charged with her murder. I'm Stephen Stockwell, this is the case of the Airbnb guest.
1:01 Speaker 03 Mr. Loosemore was a farm stay guest at the home in Goldie, near Kilmore.
1:05 Speaker 04 We didn't really expect to have something dangerous happen.
1:09 Speaker 03 The prosecution alleges the 62 year old from the UK killed Miss Vermont and lit a house fire to cover it up.
1:15 Speaker 05 She was a very kind and caring person and we're very proud of who she was, how she brought us up.
1:22 Speaker 06 This hand-built house was a labour of love. It's all been lost alongside everything she owned and, her sons say, evidence of her final moments.
1:36 Speaker 01 The stone house was Marie Vermont's pride and joy. She raised a family in it, but by the time she opened it up to others, her three sons had left and she was living in an empty nest. The decision to put a room on Airbnb is how her life ends, though. A visit from Timothy Loosemore led to a house fire and then a murder trial. The person who can help us understand the case against Timothy Loosemore is Anna McGuinness, an ABC reporter in Bendigo and someone who's followed this story and trial. Anna, welcome to the case of.
2:07 Speaker 03 Thanks, Doc.
2:08 Speaker 01 Anna, this is a story about a woman's body being found in a burnt out house, a house that she has built, you know, with her own bare hands and her family over decades. You know, you've been to the house. What's it like out there?
2:23 Speaker 03 To me, it feels like somewhere quite an idyllic country lifestyle. You head down gravel roads to get to this property that's surrounded by bush on one side and, you know, country neighbours on the other side. It's got a large dam where the kids had built a jumping platform and Marie had gone fishing. There was the veggie patch and an apple orchard and sheep in the paddocks. So the house had these uncut stones, they were all different sizes, built into the walls. This beautiful, big, open space in the living room with a huge beam up to the ceiling. It had a balcony overlooking the living room, wood heaters, you can imagine a cosy winter's night.
3:05 Speaker 03 And it was definitely a unique house, something probably I haven't seen before, the way it was so large and the stones and sitting amongst this property, it's definitely something that catches your eye as you drive into Goldie.
3:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, it sounds like this, you know, idyllic, as you describe, location, you know, almost a, the photo you'd see if you searched stone house Victorian countryside. So, um, yeah, it's a shame that it is the site of kind of such a tragedy, right? Because, I mean, this is a story about a fire at a house, but it's also the story about a murder trial. And, you know, the woman we're talking about here is Marie Vermont. Who was she?
3:46 Speaker 03 Marie was a 60-year-old woman. She was living in Goldie, about an hour north of Melbourne, in this stone house she'd built with her ex-husband and three sons. She and her husband had met in high school, they were high school sweethearts, and they moved to this 16 hectare property in rural Victoria where they raised their sons, living off the land with homegrown produce and milk from the dairy cow. She worked at a nearby pharmacy in Kilmore and had started renting out a room in the stone house in 2022 to bring in some extra money, but also to have someone give her a hand around the property.
4:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. And that's where Timothy Luce-Moore comes in.
4:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, so Timothy Luce-Moore, he is from the UK. He arrives in Australia in Perth in September 2022, rides his bike across the Nullarbor to Victoria, and in March 2023, he books a one-night stay at the stone house, which is when he meets Marie.
4:40 Speaker 01 Right, okay. So just the one night he's there originally.
4:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, the one night stay through Airbnb, but then actually returns in a farm stay arrangement, on and off for weeks at a time. He and Marie have this arrangement where he'll work around the property in exchange for food and a place to stay.
4:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. So Timothy Luce Moore is staying at this property with Marie. Um, you know, it does sound like he's doing a little bit more than just kind of like work around the house because they end up kind of having a short relationship, don't they?
5:12 Speaker 03 So at one point early on, when he's staying with Marie, they do have what's described as a brief sexual dalliance. It's sort of described as a one-off. Um, Marie doesn't appear to want it to go any further. She tells her friends that they have slept together, but she is loving life independently and she's not looking for anything more serious with him. She also remarks to them that she hopes he's not falling in love with her.
5:36 Speaker 01 Hmm.
5:37 Speaker 03 But he does hang around the property. At some point, she says to her friends that she's told him to move on, find somewhere else to stay. But it doesn't sound like it's an urgent request. He's hanging around, he's finding more work to do. And they're getting along, it sounds like.
5:53 Speaker 01 Right, okay. And you're talking there about the messages she's sending to friends. But I mean, we also know that she was very close to her children, specifically her son Darcy. I mean, does she say anything to him?
6:03 Speaker 03 So Darcy kind of knew about the relationship and what was going on because he spent time at the property, at another house. He lived there from time to time. And actually, in the days before the fire, Marie had sent him a message while he was staying there and asked him to keep a casual eye on Timothy Luce Moore because she said she's made it clear that she doesn't want an intimate relationship with him and that he's taking it badly. So he's seeing, I guess, the dynamic between them. And he ends up leaving back to Melbourne where he lives most of the time on the Friday before the fire.
6:34 Speaker 01 Okay, right.
6:35 Speaker 03 So he heads over to the Stone House on Friday morning. He has breakfast with his mum at the kitchen table. Timothy doesn't join them, he's sitting on the couch. But, uh, Darcy leaves them a slab of beer because they've given him some over the course of his stay and then heads back off to Melbourne.
6:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's the, uh, the classic country economy. I remember that, uh, well from working in, in Northern WA. This is the day before the fire at the Stone House, Anna, the Friday. Saturday, there is the fire there. What happens on that day? Do we know much about the lead up?
7:10 Speaker 03 So we know that Marie worked in her job at the pharmacy in nearby Kilmour in the morning. She wraps up about two o'clock in the afternoon and goes to pick up Timothy, who's been at the dentist getting some treatment done. They drop by the shops on the way home, in the bottle shop. And once she's home, she calls her brother, who lives in Melbourne, about five o'clock. They have a chat about life and just catch up. The next thing we know is later that evening, about 10pm, a neighbour hears a loud popping sort of sound or explosions. He heads outside and he sees this orange glow and thinks there's a bushfire. He heads down the road and sees the stone house on fire and heads back to his house to call triple zero.
7:50 Speaker 01 Hmm.
7:50 Speaker 03 There's also a nearby neighbour, which Tim actually shows up to the front door of at 20 past 10. He knocks on the door and he raises the alarm with this neighbour.
8:00 Speaker 01 What, just saying, quick, come help, the house is on fire?
8:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, he says the house is on fire. He doesn't have a phone to call triple zero, so he asks the neighbour to ring for the fire brigade and police.
8:11 Speaker 01 Right, okay. Um, this must have been a pretty substantial fire.
8:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was, when the fire brigade arrived, they said it'd been burning for at least 20 minutes. It was well ablaze. And when Timothy and the neighbour go back to the house together, they call out for Marie, but there's no response. And Tim says that, um, he'd left the house and gone to collect firewood and returned to find it ablaze and it'd been too hot for him to get back inside.
8:39 Speaker 01 So no sign of Marie?
8:42 Speaker 03 No, so Timothy and the neighbour have gone back to the house. They've called out for a response from Marie. He says that Marie was maybe somewhere downstairs, but it's not really clear. At some point, the ambulance arrives and Timothy Luce Moore is taken off to hospital.
8:57 Speaker 01 I mean, no one can find Marie while this fire's underway. When do they find her?
9:05 Speaker 03 So the next morning, the Sunday morning, the crime scene officers find Marie's remains in the living room when they're excavating the ash from the fire.
9:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. And when's Timothy Luce-Moore charged with murder?
9:20 Speaker 03 So on the way to the hospital in Melbourne, the ambulance actually pulls over about halfway and a police officer gets in, starts asking him some questions. Timothy Luce-Moore was also questioned at hospital. And then eventually he's charged with murder on the Monday.
9:33 Speaker 01 So Anna, at this point, we are in August 2023. That's when there's the fire at the Stone House. Fast forward to 2026, we have the trial of Timothy Luce-Moore, charged with murder. And it starts in outrageously dramatic fashion, something I have never seen happen before, something I've heard about but have never seen before. On the first day, he fires his entire legal team. There's kind of chaos in the courtroom as this is dealt with. You know, they don't want to delay the trial because it's been so long coming. So the prosecution continues their opening. And then the next day, we are set for the defence opening with
10:16 Speaker 01 Timothy Luce-Moore without a defence team. And, I mean, case of listeners will know how tight courtroom rules are, how easy it is to stray outside of them. And I was kind of fascinated to hear and see what was going to unfold. Anna, what happened?
10:36 Speaker 03 So in the morning, Timothy Luce-Moore speaks up from the dock and says he wants to request legal help. He says he's had two hours of sleep the night before. He's been up trying to get through all the material for the day ahead. He says his head is like a washing machine. So the judge asked the prosecution to see if his previous barrister is still available, which is a big question. He could have been assigned to another case. He could have gone on a holiday. So the prosecution team are sent off to find out if Timothy Luce-Moore's barrister is available. And meanwhile, the prosecution opening continues.
11:11 Speaker 01 What happens? Do they come back?
11:13 Speaker 03 So Crown Prosecutor Mark Gibson is in the middle of his address and he gets a note. And he tells the judge he's been told he needs to take a break. The jury files out of the room and we're told that Timothy Loosemore's previous barrister is on his way down to the courtroom. He's about fifteen to twenty minutes away. He's going to speak to Mr. Loosemore and he's asked specifically for the prosecution address to stop until he can have that conversation.
11:38 Speaker 01 Wow, um, you'd think that'd be kind of enough drama for one day in a courtroom, but it doesn't end there.
11:49 Speaker 03 Yes, so once we get back from the break where the barrister's arrived and spoken to Miss Loosemore, the judge tells the juries that he's got some bad news and they're going to be discharged. It's been just over a day, they've sat through the opening address and now they will be sent home. And they will now start the trial again fresh with a new jury the next day.
12:11 Speaker 01 I can't imagine what it would have been like trying to organise this trial and run this trial. The amount of pressure that everybody was under for it, because this is also not the first time that Timothy Loosemore had been tried for this murder. There had actually been a trial the previous year, right?
12:29 Speaker 03 Yes, Timothy Loosemore was tried last year in 2025, but sort of went under the radar. And in the end, the jury couldn't reach a verdict after five weeks of deliberations. It was a hung jury.
12:42 Speaker 01 Oh God, I always feel for the family of people who are at the centre of these proceedings when something like that happens. The family of Marie Vermont, um, you know, kind of having to start this process to, you know, kind of give evidence, do all of that, only to not have a result and have to come back again. And eventually this trial does get underway, um, a new jury is impaneled, the openings begin. And the prosecution barrister, Mark Gibson, started his opening by saying that this was a case about four things. It was about rejection, it was about ego, it was about perverse anger and a stone house. What did he mean by that?
13:21 Speaker 03 So the prosecution case is that Marie rejected Timothy Luce Moore's advances and made it clear she didn't want a relationship with him, that this bruised his ego and he was unable to cope with that or move on from this, which led to extreme anger. They say there was a short period of absolute madness where he violently assaulted Marie. And this was perverse because she had provided him a place to stay, food and board. And lastly, the stone house, which they say was literally built stone by stone by Marie and her family for three decades.
13:55 Speaker 01 Hmm. And there's a kind of gap in the story, isn't there, Anna? Because, I mean, we've talked about, you know, what happened in the lead up to the fire, but, you know, we don't know what happened that evening. And so prosecution saying there was what, some sort of violent assault, some attack from Timothy Luce Moore that led to Marie's death before this fire?
14:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, so the prosecution say that this will be a circumstantial case. There's no one who can come up into the witness box and tell the jury what exactly happened before or during the fire. So they'll be bringing together lots of different pieces of evidence to build a picture of what they say happened that night.
14:33 Speaker 01 Right, okay. And the case they set out is pretty interesting. You know, you've got a man upset with the way that a relationship has ended, kind of violently lashing out, you know, on the prosecution's case, setting this fire as part of that. I mean, what did they point to to help them make this case?
14:49 Speaker 03 So there's that text message I mentioned where Marie asked her son to keep an eye on Timothy Luce Moore while he was here at the property because she'd made it clear that she didn't want a relationship with him and he was taking it badly. She's also told her friends that she doesn't want anything more with him and that she's actually asked him to move on and find somewhere else to stay. There's also the forensic side of the case where there was no soot found in her lungs and there was no carbon monoxide in her blood, suggesting that she may not have been alive at the time of the fire or she would have breathed those things in.
15:24 Speaker 01 The no soot in the throats and no carbon monoxide in the blood was something that really stuck out to me as well. It's something I learnt in the prosecution opening is that, you know, that, you know, is often something that you will see if someone is alive, when they're in a fire, when they're breathing in the smoke from that. Does that mean the prosecution is suggesting that Marie Vermont was dead before the fire started?
15:49 Speaker 03 So it's not a definitive answer to what happened on the night, but they're building a picture of why she was in the house in the fire and didn't escape beforehand. They also point out that there was five exits from the house, five doors, which weren't lockable, all just closed with a latch. So they put the question into the jury's mind of if there were these five unlocked doors, why was she unable to escape and get out of the house before that fire fully enveloped it?
16:19 Speaker 01 Anna, what did the prosecution point to around the kind of behaviour of Timothy Luce-Moore following this fire? I mean, something that we've spoken a lot about on the case of is this idea of post-defence conduct, how someone has acted or what they've done following something like this. I mean, did they point to anything there?
16:34 Speaker 03 So the prosecution says that paramedics observed blood on Timothy Luce-Moore's hands and face, they had scratches on his face and his hair was singed. There was also a match to Marie's blood on his clothes. And one of the paramedics and some of the police officers say they actually smelt the smell of petrol coming off Timothy Luce-Moore and his clothes.
16:56 Speaker 01 Right, okay. What stuck with you from the prosecution openings?
16:59 Speaker 03 So we were told about three missing fuel containers that were identified by Darcy, Marie's son, when he came back to the property after the fire, that they were all made of plastic. And we were shown a photo of a shed where two metal fuel containers were kept and there was a gap between them that they say a red, plastic, 20 litre fuel container had been stored but was now missing. So the prosecution case will be that Marie was already dead at the time of the fire because Timothy Luce-Moore had killed her and that this was a murder.
17:32 Speaker 01 Okay, so Anna, that is the prosecution case against Timothy Luce-Moore, why they say he's the person who murdered Marie Vermont and set fire to the house where her body was. I mean, that's only one side of the story though. As we've discussed, Timothy Luce-Moore does end up with the defence team in this trial. What did his defence barrister say as he was getting into this?
17:55 Speaker 03 So the defence says there's no denying a terrible tragedy has happened at this house. A woman is dead, the house is completely burnt down, but that does not equal murder. He also denies the prosecution's narrative that Timothy Loosemore was driven by rejection to harm or kill Marie. And he says for the most part, the defence case won't be challenging witnesses on credibility or, you know, saying that they're lying, but rather they'll be challenging the reasoning that the prosecution is asking the jury to take from them and the picture that they're asking them to build. He says it would be an enormous leap to take from sort of unrequited love to this being an intention or motive for murder.
18:39 Speaker 01 Okay, right. And I guess as well, you know, from a defence barrister point of view, it's a circumstantial case, you know, as we've discussed, no one's seen what's unfolded or knows what's unfolded from Marie Vermont getting off the phone with her brother at kind of 5, 6pm that evening and then Timothy Loosemore going to the neighbour's house at, you know, kind of 10pm. So there's a gap there as well. Is that something that the defence was pointing out as well that, you know, look, really, no one knows?
19:06 Speaker 03 It's definitely true that there's a gap in the case and that no one knows what happened. The defence says that they'll be saying that a lot of the expert evidence the prosecution relies on is actually far less definitive than it's made out to be and that there are limitations and alternative conclusions that the jury can draw from it that they say means the prosecution won't be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Timothy Loosemore murdered Marie.
19:35 Speaker 01 Hmm, yeah, and I mean, that is a high bar. You know, there's certainly an emotional element to this story, but the jury has to make their decision with their head based on the facts and not their heart. In our next episode, I'm keen to dive into the relationship between Timothy Loosemore and Marie Vermont. Was it amicable or was he a man with a bruised ego following Marie's rejection? We're going to hear more from her sons and her friends to understand that a little bit better. This is such an interesting story. And if you're wondering why you haven't heard more about it before, well, that's because when Timothy Loosemore was charged with murder, it didn't really make the news. It was actually the same week that the story broke that three people had died after eating
20:18 Speaker 01 death cat mushrooms at a lunch in Lea and Gatha. And then, when he went to trial last year, it was the same time as the trial of Aaron Patterson. So the media was all focused on that, including us. And then, again, this year it slid under the radar as well. So Anna, I'm really glad we've got you here with us on The Case Of to bring this story into the light. I'm looking forward to unpacking more of this with you in our next episode.
20:42 Speaker 03 Thanks, Toki. We'll speak soon.
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21:08 Speaker 01 The Case of the Airbnb Guest is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Anna McGuinness and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Jar Jar Wurung and Wurundjeri people.
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