James Mason guilty of killing partner after setting fire to her Chermside home

A man who killed his partner in a Brisbane house fire after she had taken him in off the streets has been found guilty of murder.

A man who killed his partner in a Brisbane house fire after she had taken him in off the streets has been found guilty of murder.

James Morton Mason, 46, deliberately set light to Alexis Parkes’ car that was parked directly under her timber Chermside home around 4am on February 5 2020.

The blaze quickly spread to the home as Mason, who had pre-emptively moved his belongings from the property, walked off.

Distressing footage played to the jury showed the home engulfed in flames.

Neighbours sprung into action in a desperate attempt to alert Mr Parkes to the fire and one of them, Michael Kramarenko, tried in vain to kick down an entrance door.

The Chermside home where Alexis Parkes was discovered unresponsive by firefighters.

A “frantic” Ms Parkes told several of them she had been locked in and the keys taken from the property.

Neighbour Katherine Jones told Ms Parkes to stay at a back window and keep talking to her.

“She said then again ‘I can’t get out. I can’t go out’ then she screamed, then there was a thud, and then the fire went through this middle of the house,” Ms Jones said during the trial that began last week in Brisbane’s Supreme Court.

Firefighters forced their way into the home and pulled an unresponsive Ms Parkes from the property and commenced chest compressions.

The mother of four died several days later in hospital after suffering multiple organ failure due to the effects of the fire.

The court heard that when Ms Parkes was found by firefighters she had her keys.

But crown prosecutor Mark Green told the jury this would have been of little assistance.

“When was she supposed to be alerted to the fact that she needed to find her keys at four o’clock in the morning?,” he said.

“When she started to smell smoke? When the house started to fill up with smoke? When she started to feel the heat? When she hears people yelling at her that the house is on fire?”

Alexis Parkes died of multiple organ failure.

Mason, who pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to arson, was arrested in Spring Hill a day after the fire. There was no evidence he had keys to Ms Parkes’ home.

Mason gave differing accounts to police, including to an undercover cop placed in his cell, over the following days but denied intending to harm Ms Parkes, who according to a text message read to the jury took him off the streets and into her home.

Mason said the couple had met on Facebook and had been in a relationship for about 11 months.

James Morton Mason.

Alexis Parkes.

Mr Green said during the police interview Mason took the opportunity to say as many negative things as he could about Ms Parkes including that she was “loopy” and had a “split personality”.

Mason claimed that in the hours before the fire Ms Parkes took some medication and went “psycho”.

He claimed she threatened his family and said vile things about his mother and daughter.

Mason told police Ms Parkes kicked him out of the house but opened up downstairs for him where he went with his possessions to go to sleep.

The scene of the house fire.

Inside the damaged home.

He claimed the threats continued in the early hours of the morning so he moved his belongings to a nearby vacant home and returned to set her car on fire with a few capfuls of petrol as “revenge” and to stop the purported threats she was making.

“Does that make any sense whatsoever?” Mr Green said in his closing statement to the jury.

“How could lighting someone’s car on fire stop them from angrily making threats against your family if that’s in fact what happened? That’s just a ridiculous story.

“And it’s a story because he intended that she suffer either grievous bodily harm or death by leaving her to burn in a fire”.

The Chermside house was engulfed by flames.

In a recording between Mason and an undercover cop the defendant said he set the car alight to get the “bitch” back. He even shared a joke about “marshmallows” and was quick to point out he’d never laid a finger on a woman as he was too much of a man.

After learning Ms Parkes had died Mason changed his story telling police he made efforts to save her yelling out “honey honey come on get out quick the house is on fire”.

Police suggested he was lying and Mason said he wanted to stop the interview.

The jury of two women and 10 men returned a verdict of guilty to murder after less than one day of deliberations.