'Fantasy' - Karam hits back at claims

Joe Karam. Photo / Greg Bowker

Joe Karam has dismissed Crown claims that David Bain fantasised about raping a woman and using his paper round to give him a false alibi as nothing more than a teenage boy "enchanted with the girl across the road".

Former Bayfield High students Mark Buckley and Gareth Taylor told police that Mr Bain planned what a court later referred to as a rape of a female jogger while at high school.

The men claimed Mr Bain had a sexual interest in the young woman and had told Mr Buckley in 1990 that he could use his paper round to "get away" with the proposed crime.

The Court of Appeal ordered the evidence withheld from the jury hearing the charges against Mr Bain, saying it was too prejudicial to his defence.

In its judgment, the Appeal Court said the words "rape" and "alibi" were not attributed to David Bain by the witnesses; the court had used both words for ease of reference because they seemed to capture the essence of what was proposed.

The suppression order was lifted after last week's jury verdict acquitting Mr Bain of killing his parents and sibling.

Mr Karam yesterday dismissed Mr Buckley's claim as "fantasy".

"This bloke had obviously been talking to David about a girl David saw," he said.

"And David may well have been, as 17-year-olds are, enchanted with the girl across the road.

"Mr Buckley, on oath, denied having heard David Bain ever use the words rape and alibi. They were words put into his brief by the police."

Mr Buckley did not approach police until after the Privy Council quashed Mr Bain's convictions in 2007, prompting Mr Karam to question his memory.

"What I'm saying is, 13 years after the event, this guy came along and an interpretation was put on his evidence which went far beyond what it was capable of bearing and for that reason it was ruled out.

"I put this under a similar heading of a desperate police force desperate for evidence - 'Any evidence will do because we don't have much'," said Mr Karam.

He also said David Bain had two different paper rounds, one for two years, then another for the next two years.

The girl referred to by Mr Buckley lived on the first paper route, said Mr Karam, not the one Bain was doing when his family were found dead.

Two detectives tracked the woman to where she was living in Australia.

"She and David were quite good friends and she liked him very much," Mr Karam said.

Yesterday, Mr Buckley told the Herald he did not wish to discuss the matter.

Mr Bain did not tell Mr Taylor of the paper-round alibi.

But Mr Taylor told his wife, Greer, years later - but before the murders - of the rape conversation with Mr Bain, as she was studying music with him.

Prosecutors wanted the jury to hear Mr Buckley's evidence, as the paper-round alibi tied in with the Crown case, particularly Mr Bain's behaviour on the morning of June 20, 1994, when his family died.

He said he could not have murdered them as he was delivering newspapers in his Dunedin neighbourhood.

Two witnesses gave evidence at the trial that Mr Bain delivered the papers 10 minutes early on the morning of the killings.

Another witness, Kathleen Mitchell, said Mr Bain took unusual measures to ensure that she noticed him on the paper round, in particular opening the gate to her property.

"He had never done this before and there was no need for him to do this," Mrs Mitchell told police.

The retrial judge, Justice Graham Panckhurst, originally ruled that the jury could hear the evidence of Mr Buckley, but not Mr Taylor.

After appeals by both sides in the case, the Court of Appeal found that the false-alibi evidence had value, but statements that Mr Bain had planned a rape were too prejudicial.

"If the jury learns that [Mr Bain], while at school, was apparently planning the rape of a female jogger, there is a risk that the jury will place more weight on the proposed offending than the proposed use of the alibi," said the court's decision.