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David Cullen Bain
Born 27 March 1972 (age 40)Dunedin, New Zealand
Nationality New Zealand
Known for Convicted of the murder of his five family members in 1995. Acquitted in retrial 13 years later.
Karam, a former All Black, had supported Bain throughout the numerous appeals and, over the years, wrote a number of books on the case. He raised questions about the quality of the police investigation, the burning down of the Bain house three weeks after the murders, and the admissibility of certain pieces of evidence – which became the focus of many of the appeals.
This was one of New Zealand's most complex and controversial murder cases. It generated thousands of stories in the media and, prior to his acquittal, nearly everyone had an opinion on whether David was guilty or not. Speculation continued after he was acquitted.
Early life
David was born in Dunedin, New Zealand to Margaret Arawa and Robin Irving Bain and was the oldest of four children. Soon after he was born, the family moved to Papua New Guinea, where Robin worked as a missionary teacher. The family returned to New Zealand fifteen years later (in 1988) by which time Margaret and Robin were having serious relationship problems.[2] Once they returned, it took David a year to settle back into school in Dunedin, but he joined the school choir and in the seventh form his marks improved. Encouraged by his parents, he then went to university. This did not last and he dropped out for a while and worked at Opera Alive, an offshoot of the Dunedin Opera Company, before returning to university to study classical music and take professional voice training lessons.[2] Robin Bain became the principal of Taieri Mouth Primary School, a two-teacher school about 50 kilometres down the coast from Dunedin.[3]
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Killings and first trialBy 1994, Robin and Margaret were estranged and Robin was sleeping in the back of his van at Taieri or in the schoolhouse. David Bain and the rest of the family lived at 65 Every Street, Andersons Bay, Dunedin. Robin returned to the family home at the weekends and slept in a caravan in the back garden.[4] Robin was said to be in an incestuous relationship with his daughter Laniet that began when the family were in Papua New Guinea, and was still going on.[5] Fellow teachers later described him as "deeply depressed, to the point of impairing his ability to do his job of teaching children".[6]
“
111 Operator: Ambulance, can I help you?
Bain: Help.
111 Operator: Yeah.
Bain: They're all dead.
111 Operator: What's the matter?
Bain: They're all dead. I came home and they're all dead.
111 Operator: Whereabouts are you?
Bain: Every St
111 Operator: What Every St?
Bain: 65 Every St. They're all dead.
111 Operator: Who's all dead?
Bain: My family, they're all dead, hurry up.
On the morning of 20 June 1994, David Bain called 111 at 7:09 am in a distressed state and told the operator: "They're all dead, they're all dead." When the police arrived at Every Street they found five members of the Bain family had been shot – Robin Bain (the father aged 58), his wife Margaret (50), their daughters Arawa (19), Laniet (18) and son Stephen (14). Four days later, David Bain, then aged 22, was charged with the murder of all five members of his family. Three weeks after that, on 5 July, the house was burnt down by the New Zealand Fire Service, at the request of the trustees of the Bain family trust.[8]111 Operator: Ambulance, can I help you?
Bain: Help.
111 Operator: Yeah.
Bain: They're all dead.
111 Operator: What's the matter?
Bain: They're all dead. I came home and they're all dead.
111 Operator: Whereabouts are you?
Bain: Every St
111 Operator: What Every St?
Bain: 65 Every St. They're all dead.
111 Operator: Who's all dead?
Bain: My family, they're all dead, hurry up.
”
— Excerpt of transcript of 111 call made by David Bain on 20 June 1994[7]
What happened in the house on 20 June has been the subject of speculation ever since.[9]At the trial, many points of evidence were disputed. The prosecution claimed that David killed his entire family after completing his early morning paper round[10] – though no motive or explanation as to why David might want to kill them was provided. The lack of motive even confused the presiding judge who in his summing up said the Crown had told the jury "... that these events were so bizarre and abnormal that it was impossible for the human mind to conceive of any logical or reasonable explanation".[11]
One piece of evidence was a message found typed on the family computer that read: "sorry, you are the only one who deserved to stay". The defence used this to put forward the proposition that David’s father, Robin Bain, had killed the others while David was out on his paper run – and then committed suicide.[12] Despite the apparent lack of motive, after a three week trial David Bain was convicted by the jury on five counts of murder and sentenced by Justice Williamson to life imprisonment with a 16 year non-parole period.[13]
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Joe Karam and appealsBain maintained his innocence, and thus began a lengthy campaign to have his case reheard, spearheaded by former All Black Joe Karam. According to one of his friends, media commentator Paul Holmes, Karam was appalled at the way the family, the Police and the Fire Service arranged to burn the Bain house down.[14] He felt something was wrong with the case and began to study the evidence presented at the original trial.[15] He went to visit Bain in prison in Christchurch and subsequently visited him over 200 times.[15]
Over the next 13 years, Karam wrote four books about David Bain's case and helped him in his numerous appeals against his convictions. The first appeal was made to the New Zealand Court of Appeal in 1995 but the Court refused to even hear it on the grounds that "the Crown case appeared very strong and the defence theory not at all plausible".[16] New Zealand did not have a Supreme Court at that time, so in 1996 Bain made his first appeal to the Privy Council in Britain. However, the Privy Council also declined to hear the case.[17]
In June 1998 David Bain petitioned the Governor-General for a pardon. The Governor-General passed the application on to the Ministry of Justice which conducted an investigation into new information presented by the defence team. In 2000, Bain received his first ray of hope when Justice Minister Phil Goff said the investigation had shown that "a number of errors" may have occurred in the Crown's case against him[18] and some aspects of the case were referred back to the Court of Appeal.[17] In September 2003, those hopes were dashed when the Court of Appeal examined the new evidence but decided once again that a retrial was not needed - on the grounds that it would not have changed the jury's verdict.
Karam did not give up. In March 2007 he travelled to London with David's defence team laying out nine arguments why his convictions should be quashed.[19] One of the nine points was about Robin Bain's mental state and potential motive. Reliable witnesses said Robin had been depressed, and living alone in squalid conditions in a caravan. Journals in his office at the school where he taught were found to contain stories about the mass murder of a family. The Privy Council wrote: "Many of those facts are highly contentious and the evidence could well have influenced the jury's assessment of them... If the (original) jury found Robin to be already in a state of deep depression and now... facing the public revelation of very serious sex offences against his teenage daughter, they might reasonably (have) concluded that this could have driven him to commit these acts."[20]
The Privy Council concluded that: "In the opinion of the board, the fresh evidence adduced in relation to the nine points... taken together, compels the conclusion that a substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred in this case."[20] The Privy Council quashed his convictions and ordered a retrial. Bain was bailed to live with Karam.
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Second trialThe retrial was held in Christchurch in 2009. It ended with Bain's acquittal on all five charges in June 2009 after five hours and 50 minutes of deliberations. Each verdict of not guilty for the five murders was greeted with cheers and applause by those in court. Further clapping and cheering could be heard as the judge left the room. Outside court an emotional David Bain thanked his supporters, particularly Joe Karam. "Without Joe and his solid strength ... I wouldn't have made it through this far," Bain said. [21] About 50 media personnel were at the High Court to cover the trial including TVNZ newsreader, Wendy Petrie, who made a fist pump when the verdict was announced which was subsequently watched by over 130,000 people.[22]
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Coroner's inquestsIn 1994, the Dunedin Coroner decided no inquest was needed, as he was satisfied that the evidence shown in court had established the cause of the deaths.[23] After the retrial, New Zealand's Chief Coroner consulted with the local coroner and others to decide whether to conduct inquests into the deaths, as the verdict implied the death certificates may not be accurate. He then announced that an inquest would only be held if one was requested and the High Court or solicitor-general granted the request.[24] A Law Society spokesman said that even if the coroner's findings disagreed with the retrial verdict, this could not lead to any further legal action against David Bain.[25]
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Possible compensationDefence counsel Michael Reed QC told media he would seek compensation for David for the 13 years he spent in prison before being found not guilty. A Canadian Supreme Court judge Justice Binnie has been charged with assessing David Bain's bid for compensation. In July 2012 he was in Dunedin interviewing those with a connection to the case. Any recommendation was likely to include non-monetary losses, such as loss of liberty, reputation, and actual monetary losses, such as loss of future earnings and loss of livelihood. The starting figure for calculating non-monetary losses is set at $100,000 a year, which is multiplied on a pro rata basis by the number of years spent in prison.[26] Mr Bain is in line for a multimillion-dollar payout from the Government if he can prove that "on the balance of probabilities he is innocent, and therefore was wrongfully imprisoned for 13 years."[27]
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Continuing speculationA full six months after Bain's acquittal, the "trial of the decade" raged on in cyberspace, prosecuted by anyone with a keyboard and an opinion. A few people joined Facebook groups such as Justice for Robin Bain and the website David Bain: Counterspin.[28] Joe Karam eventually sued Kent Parker, the head of the Justice for Robin Bain group, for libel in relation to remarks over the case.[29] The tenor of Parker's comments was that the Bain case was an illustration of a person accused of committing a crime "getting undue attention while the victims are ignored".[30]
In July 2010, film maker Bryan Bruce also fanned speculation with his documentary The Investigator Special: The Case Against Robin Bain,[31] which claimed there was a lack of forensic evidence linking Robin to the murders. The documentary also called into question some of the testimony given by defence witnesses that portrayed David Bain's father as a depressed man with alcohol and sexual problems.[32]
A month later, Joe Karam and controversial broadcaster Michael Laws held a live radio debate over who killed the Bain family. Karam said he made the decision to have an on-air debate with Laws because he heard Laws talking about the documentary and was "sick to the teeth" of commentary on the case. He described media who had followed the court case as "myth perpetrators" and said "It's kind as though certain sections of New Zealand society...are sort of clinging to some fiction of the 90's."[33]
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Subsequent eventsFollowing his acquittal, Bain undertook a three-month European holiday paid for by his supporters. Ten months later, he was struggling to find work and had no money. Auckland defence lawyer Peter Williams QC said Bain would be suffering from the stigma experienced by ex-prisoners re-entering the workplace. "There's obviously a very strong prejudice against people who can say their recent CV was inside prison," he said. [34]
In an interview with TV3's 60 Minutes, Bain said life in prison had been a very damaging experience and that there were times when he felt like giving up. He also spoke about the importance of unwavering support of long-time advocate Joe Karam. He said the hardest thing to get used to after leaving jail was walking down the street and learning to do every day things by himself without having to wait for permission.[35]
In March 2012, Bain was invited to speak at a a three-day conference on legal justice issues in Perth, Western Australia. The conference was billed as a world-first gathering of forensic experts, lawyers and justice advocates. It was Bain's first speech in which he talked about the impact the events have had on him. He said his first trial still haunted him and that his time in prison was a continual battle with depression.[36] In a sometimes tearful address, Bain spoke lovingly of the family he was charged with killing in 1994. He said he would never recover from the loss and admitted he was still in counselling. He said: "Every time I talk to the counsellor, every time I talk to Joe or my lawyers, I have to re-live that nightmare."[37]
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Popular cultureThe jumpers worn by David Bain during the original trial, knitted by Margaret Bain to his own designs, became a symbol of the Bain case.[38] During the retrial T-shirts inspired by the jumpers were sold on TradeMe[39] and on the Mr Vintage website.[40] Although 10% of the profits from the T-shirts were donated towards a charity dedicated to combating family violence,[41] they were condemned by several fashion label founders as being in bad taste.[42]
The December Brother, a 2010 play produced by Tim Spite for Wellington's Downstage Theatre, depicted re-enactments of the Bain family killings. It presented two scenarios – the first with David Bain murdering his family, and the second with his father, Robin Bain, carrying out the killings, then taking his own life. The play was based on the theories put forward by the legal teams for the defence and prosecution during the trials.[43]
ga! You put the guy on the subway with 'bloody loco' to shame.
