Crypto 'flight risk': bail bid for murder plot accused

A woman accused of plots to kill her ex-husband and his mother is a flight risk after showing she can source money overseas while the subject of an international hunt, a court has been told. Lisa Lines, 45, should be denied bail after evidence suggested she had access to cryptocurrencies and numerous offshore bank accounts, prosecutor Timisha Ward said. Lines, accused of orchestrating plots to murder Jonathon Hawtin and his mother Rohnda Hawtin, appeared in South Australia's Supreme Court on Thursday for a home detention bail application. Lines had in the past demonstrated the capacity to "very intelligently and very creatively" source funds overseas while subject to Interpol alerts, Ms Ward said. Police had been unable to identify the substance of her funds, she said. "This is in part due to very significant evidence … suggesting she's engaged with cryptocurrencies, and that she is engaged with numerous offshore bank accounts, including companies that are registered in Panama and Vanuatu. "That is the real concern ... in respect of flight (risk)." Justice Rachael Gray said Lines was claiming impecuniosity - having no money - while the prosecution alleged she had "significant funds available". A written submission referred to Lines' purchase of citizenship in Vanuatu through the investment of more than $200,000, Ms Ward said. But there was nothing that positively demonstrated that Lines had access to resources or funds, defence barrister Will Mickan said. Justice Gray adjourned the application until March 18 to allow the prosecution to source a forensic accounting report from police of financial material they had compiled. The alleged conspiracy began with an October 2017 incident in a garage at Lines' Adelaide Hills property that left Mr Hawtin a tetraplegic. Zacharia Bruckner, Lines' then-lover and 13 years her junior, was found with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Police initially charged Mr Hawtin, who suffered several axe wounds to the neck, with attempted murder, assuming Bruckner was acting in self-defence. A jury acquitted Mr Hawtin after three hours of deliberation in 2019. At a 2023 bail application, Director of Public Prosecutions Martin Hinton told the court that detectives had reopened the investigation in 2020. They found crime scene evidence did not add up with Lines and Bruckner's version of events and pointed to Mr Hawtin being the victim, he said. Lines, a former academic and expert on the Spanish Civil War, is also accused of attempting to murder Mr Hawtin on New Year's Day 2018 with another woman she was romantically involved with, Letiticia Fortune. Fortune is alleged to have entered Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre, where Mr Hawtin was convalescing from his injuries, with the intention of suffocating him with a pillow. Following Mr Hawtin's trial in 2019, Lines is alleged to have fled to Thailand, along with their children, before settling in Taiwan - which has no extradition treaty with Australia. From Taiwan she remained in contact with Bruckner, with whom she sought to hire a hitman to "finish the job", Mr Hinton said. But the man she and Bruckner thought they were hiring to kill Mr Hawtin and his mother Rohnda was an undercover operative, the court heard in 2023. While overseas, Lines secured a passport and citizenship to the nation of Vanuatu, remaining beyond the reach of Australian authorities, Mr Hinton said. She was arrested in the Pacific Island nation of Palau in November 2023 and extradited to Australia.