- In June 1994 David Bain was charged with murdering his parents and siblings
- Thirty years on the wider family are still overwhelmed by the horrific crime
- David was convicted of killing his mother, father, sisters and brother
- He then fought for 20 years to clear his name and was eventually acquitted after a retrial
- Now 52 - with a new name, a wife and kids - he is living a new life in Cambridge
- David has moved on - but Kiwis are still deeply fascinated by the case
- His lawyer reveals why - and why his famous client’s “innocence” is so polarising
Arawa. Laniet. Stephen.
Their names are synonymous with one of New Zealand’s most brutal and shocking crimes.
For the most part, when anyone talks about the Bain family murders attention soon turns to the “whodunnit” - did the patriarch Robin kill his wife and three teenage children and then himself; or did his son David, the eldest child, murder his siblings and parents?
Attention also turns to the Bain family’s quirks and dysfunction, their rambling and shambolic Dunedin home, their somewhat unconventional way of life.
Mostly, people forget that Arawa, Laniet and Stephen Bain were murdered in their own bedrooms - places they should have been safe.
They were shot at point-blank range by a man they had known their whole life, who they trusted and loved.
Stephen put up a helluva fight before he was strangled with his own t-shirt and gunned down; and Arawa could have been running away or for help when she fell dead.
Arawa was days shy of her 20th birthday.
Laniet turned 18 three months earlier.
Stephen celebrated his 14th birthday on New Year’s Day.
The three were, effectively, kids.
And 30 years on from their deaths, that is not lost on their still-grieving family.
“The matter’s still fresh in our minds,” Robin’s brother Michael Bain told the Herald.
“We are all still carefully treasuring the memories of each of those who were lost on that terrible day.
“Over the last 30 years, Robin and Margaret should have been able to enjoy seeing Arawa and Laniet and Stephen mature into the fine adults they would undoubtedly have become.
“They would have had developed their own careers and hopefully had families of their own.
“The tragedy is that they were all denied that opportunity.”
When Robin, Margaret, David, Arawa, Laniet and Stephen Bain went to bed on the night of Sunday, June 19, 1994 they did so as members of an ordinary-albeit-non-conventional Kiwi family.
They all had plans for the next day: work, university, school, errands.
David, 22, was out the door around 6am to do his morning newspaper delivery - the family dog Casey in tow.
At 7.09am David called 111 and told the operator “They’re all dead”.
By 7.28am the first police officers arrived at 65 Every St.
Within hours the Bain family were at the centre of what would become New Zealand’s most high-profile family mass murder.
Initially, police believed it was a case of murder-suicide and Robin was the man responsible.
They surmised Robin had come into the house while David was out delivering the Otago Daily Times, ended four lives then went to the living room where the communal computer sat and typed a suicide note.
“Sorry, you are the only one who deserved to stay,” it read.
Then, they theorised, Robin put the semi-automatic .22 Winchester rifle to his left temple and pulled the trigger for the last time.
Soon after his body crumpled to the floor, David arrived home, unwittingly stumbling into the horrendous crime scene.
But each day more forensic evidence was found in the house that pointed away from Robin to his surviving son.
David’s bloody fingerprints were lifted from the rifle.
His partial palm print - also in blood - smudged on to the washing machine.
That was suspicious to investigators because David said he’d thrown his clothes in the wash before finding his family members dead.
He could not explain how the bloody prints got where they were.
And then there was the 111 call. Bain had told the operator, repeatedly, “They’re all dead”, but later told police he’d seen only his mother and father.
The case against David intensified.
On Wednesday police found a bloodied pair of his gloves under Stephen’s bed. On Thursday, a lens from a pair of David’s glasses was found in the teen’s room.
The other lens and frame were in David’s room on a chair.
Police believed the glasses were broken as Stephen struggled with his oldest sibling, as he was strangled with his own t-shirt and before the fatal gunshot.
When it was over, they said, David had collected the frame and one lens, but could not find the other in Stephen’s messy space.
At 11.55am that day, a friend of Laniet’s presented at the central police station in Dunedin.
He disclosed that the teen had been working as a prostitute and that during their friendship she’d made a number of disclosures about having an “incestual” relationship with her father.
She said it had been going on for years, that she wanted it to stop, and that she was going to tell her mother and siblings.
“I’m going to put a stop to everything,” she reportedly said.
The supposed new information bolstered the case that Robin was the killer. Perhaps he’d panicked about being exposed by Laniet, going on a shooting rampage to keep his dark secret.
But by then investigators were firmly fixed on David as the mass murderer.
On Friday morning - as David was finalising plans for a combined funeral for his parents and siblings the next day - police requested another interview with him.
At 1.46pm that day, he was charged with all five murders.
“Do you have anything to say?” police asked.
“No, I’m not guilty,” David said.
Speaking at an international justice conference in 2012 - years after his retrial and acquittal - David would recall his first night in prison.
“Friday evening, June 24, 6.30pm I was handed a tray with cold fish and chips, and introduced to my cell,” he said.
“All I could do was cry myself to sleep . . . After a very restless night, I tried desperately to get somebody to let me go to my family’s funeral but between the insistence of the police and my relatives’ reluctance, I was not allowed to attend.
“To this day I feel the pain of being denied the basic right of saying goodbye to my family.”
Most adult New Zealanders are well-versed in what happened next to David Bain.
In 1995 he stood trial in the High Court at Dunedin and after deliberating on 18 days of evidence, the jury found him guilty on all charges.
David was sentenced to five concurrent terms of life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 16 years.
More than 20 years after numerous failed appeal attempts, the case went before the Privy Council - then New Zealand’s final court of appeal.
By then David’s team was headed by prominent lawyer Michael Reed, KC, and former All Black Joe Karam, who took an interest in David’s case after reading a newspaper article about the young man’s friends trying to raise money for an appeal by selling jam.
He soon became convinced David was “totally innocent” and became the face of a lengthy campaign to clear his name.
In May 2007 the Privy Council concluded that a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred in David’s case, quashed all of the murder convictions and ordered a retrial.
Fast forward to Friday, June 5, 2009. The jury in the second trial indicates to the court that its members have reached verdicts.
After hearing evidence from 180 witnesses across three months, they deliberated for five hours and 50 minutes to decided David’s fate.
Each of the five murder charges was read to them for their answer.
That answer was the same every time - not guilty.
David was a free man, his name legally cleared.
But the fight was not over.
In 2010 Karam and company launched a bid for compensation, on the basis David had spent more than 20 years in prison for crimes he had subsequently been acquitted of.
To cut a lengthy and complex chain of events short, the New Zealand Government will only pay compensation to a person for time wrongly spent in prison if they can prove they are “innocent on the balance of probabilities”.
David had of course been acquitted on the charges of murder - but that is not a jury finding him “innocent”.
It means, in a legal sense, the jury did not think the Crown had proved its case.
Expert reports from senior and highly experienced judges in Canada, New Zealand and Australia were sought.
Some said David should be compensated, others were firm that his innocence had not been proven.
Eventually, compensation was ruled out but an agreement was reached that David would accept a one-off ex-gratia payment - given from a sense of moral obligation rather than because of any legal requirement.
Then Justice Minister Amy Adams said it was “desirable to bring finality to the Bain case and avoid the cost and uncertainty of further proceedings”.
As part of the deal, David signed an agreement confirming he would not seek any further money.
His lawyer throughout the latter part of his legal battle was Michael Reed, KC.
Reed agreed to speak to the Herald about the case and his famous client - as long as no questions were asked that would breach David’s privacy.
“I first met him in prison, when we applied for bail [after the Privy Council decision],” he said.
“Despite his 13 years in prison, he was very courteous - very courteous - and quite charming.
“He was very understanding and appreciative of what we were trying to do for him.”
Reed said when he joined the team he did not consider - at first - whether David was innocent or guilty.
“I was shocked at the decision of the Court of Appeal [in December 1995] - it was wrong, and I thought that wasn’t a fair result,” he explained.
“And I think David … needed better - and didn’t think it mattered to me whether he was innocent or not.
“Although really … I just got the feeling that perhaps he was innocent. It was certainly unfair.”
Reed will never forget the moment the second jury returned its verdicts.
“It was just amazing … overwhelming,” he said.
“Normally, when a person’s found not guilty they walk out of the dock and the court - they’re free. But on this occasion, for some reason, David went towards the lock-up area where he had been held.
“He shouldn’t have because he was no longer in custody. I went in … and he was there being hugged by the prison staff. And they were all in tears.
“I just spoke to David, I said ‘You shouldn’t really be in here - you’re a free man’. And he was overwhelmed … Everyone was crying.”
Reed’s legal career has been lengthy and he’s been at the helm of countless cases. But the Bain case was by far the most high-profile.
He has barely forgotten a moment of it and can understand why 30 years on there is still an intense fascination with the family and their fate.
“Everyone in the country had a view one way or the other, they probably still do have a view - [whether David is] guilty or not guilty,” he said.
“And I’ve spoken to so many people who have come up to me and saying: ‘Oh, we know he’s still guilty’, And I’ve always said to them: ‘Just give me one reason why you’re so firmly of the view that he’s guilty?’
“And they all come up with the [most] extraordinary reasons - which have got virtually no relevance to the case at all.
“The public are strange in their views … very weird, actually. I think in a lot of cases, people don’t realise that what they see in the news and the papers of the coverage of a trial is probably only about 5 per cent of the evidence that the jury are hearing.”
Reed said there were a number of factors that made the Bain murders so “memorable”.
“The people, Dunedin’s quite a small place, I think the police were very naughty in their handling of it, one of the daughters was a prostitute,” he listed.
“There were aspects of the case which were very strange. The father had just descended into a state of total depression and was acting very weirdly.
“And we know he was having sex with his daughter which was quite disgraceful behaviour for a school teacher. It was just horrible.
“The father was dirty, smelly, grossly depressed. And talking to psychiatrists, they will tell you that when someone is totally depressed, they are irrational. When you’re totally depressed you are not thinking rationally whatsoever - and he wasn’t. Who would know what went on in his brain that day he killed them - who knows.”
Reed was disappointed there were still questions around David’s involvement in the murders of his family.
“Unfortunately, there is a trend going around and in our highest courts that not guilty doesn’t really mean not guilty. It means the police haven’t proved the charge,” he said.
“The idea of ‘not guilty - that means I didn’t do it, get on with my life’ - seems to be watered down.
“We now have these subtleties of ‘well, maybe the police didn’t prove it properly’ or ‘maybe the jury were wrong’.”
Reed wouldn’t speak about David’s life after his legal journey.
“I know that he’s happily married. I know he’s got children. I’m not at liberty to disclose where he now lives. But I believe he’s . . . quite happy in his life.
“Whether he’s ever gotten over the trauma, who knows?”
Since his government payment, David has largely stayed out of the headlines.
At first, he settled in Christchurch where he fell in love with primary school teacher Elizabeth Davies - the daughter of one of his closest supporters during the retrial.
He moved into the small back-section flat she owned in Redwood in the north of the city.
David worked at a local engineering firm and his wife at Cotswold School in Bishopdale, where she taught Year 6 and was a Māori and Pasifika leader.
They became engaged in 2012 and in January 2014 they got married in front of 80 family and friends at Trent’s Vineyard, on the southern outskirts of Christchurch.
“David, I love you truly and deeply, more than all the stars in the sky,” Elizabeth said in her vows.
Soon after the wedding, the Herald revealed that David’s best man was Paul Tainui - jailed for life after he raped and murdered 21-year-old West Coast woman Kimberly Schroder in 1994.
After he was granted parole Tainui changed his name to Paul Russell Wilson - and that was the moniker that would appear on court documents four years after the wedding when he raped and murdered 27-year-old Nicole Tuxford in her Christchurch home.
David was “shocked to the core” when he heard, saying there was “no indication” Wilson would reoffend.
Just months after his wedding, David confirmed his wife was pregnant and their son was born in December 2014.
“Elizabeth and I are delighted to announce the arrival of our beautiful son. We are all delighted, happy, and in good health,” David said in a statement.
The boy’s name has not been made public.
A daughter followed in 2017, named Sophie Arawa Carolyn - her middle names nods to her late aunt and maternal grandmother.
Naming children after family members was a Bain tradition. Stephen’s middle name was Robin, Laniet’s was Margaret. Arawa was given her mother’s middle name and the Cullen in Bain’s name was Margaret’s maiden name.
The tradition is one of the only connections he has left to his family three decades on from their deaths.
In 2017 David changed his own name, first to William Davies and then possibly again when his new moniker was published in the media.
Fair enough. He’s had more than his share of publicity.
There was speculation a few years back that David had moved his family to Australia for a fresh start. But it seems he and his wife and at least two kids are happily living in the Waikato.
The Herald contacted David to see how he would mark the anniversary, if at all.
His longtime supporter and friend Joe Karam, central to David’s journey to freedom, responded on his behalf.
Karam said the “only meaningful addition to the commentary on this case” would be a “debunking” of what had been published about David in the past.
“As for tributes to the family, start by acknowledging the evidence that Robin Bain molested both his daughters, was severely depressed and living in squalor.
“Mrs Bain was sadly afflicted by an obsession with the occult.
“The extended family essentially stole what should have been David’s inheritance and contributed significantly to the miscarriage of justice and terrible ordeal David lived through.”
The theft Karam alleges concerns the Every St property.
David’s wider family had the house razed just months after the massacre.
Alongside the Dunedin house, Margaret and Robin owned sections in Whangārei and Bundaberg, near Brisbane.
They also had about $60,000 invested and a large sum in an overseas bank account.
The estate, once valued at more than $600,000, was divided between Robin and Margaret Bain’s six siblings.
Robin’s brother Michael wasn’t interested in rehashing the drama again all these years later.
His brief words to mark the 30th anniversary and an article he penned for the Listener magazine in 2009 summed up everything and all there was to be said on the matter.
“Thank you for the opportunity … but the family wish to decline, with respect, participating in any further interviews with regard to the tragedy,” he said.
“My own comments are best recorded in my article - and are just as relevant today.”
In the article, Michael rejects any suggestion his brother was depressed, spiralling, a child molester, killer.
“Robin was a gentle, humble, caring Christian man. He had a great sense of humour, he was thoughtful and careful,” he wrote.
“From the outset, our family totally rejected the hearsay allegations that were made - against Robin in particular - as they were totally out of character, speculative and disbelieved.
“Nothing has occurred since to change our minds. We, his family, knew him to be a man of integrity and a good and faithful husband to Margaret and an excellent father to his children.”
Michael said even in his brother’s last days, he was motivated and “had everything to live for”.
“There were no circumstances in which Robin ever would or could have harmed anyone,” he wrote.
“Robin was no killer. He was a calm, wise, loyal, peaceful man who deserved to grow old surrounded by the love of his family.
“I remain honoured to be his brother.”
Michael’s final words were directed at his brother’s only surviving child.
“For us … the end of each of them remains as unimaginable and horrifying today as it did when we first heard the news.
“David is able to enjoy his … freedom, but we haven’t forgotten those who were never given a chance and are now unable to defend their reputations - or enjoy any future at all.”
When people talk about “the Bains”, rarely do they talk about the loss - particularly the loss of the three teenagers.
They skip over the terror Stephen must have felt as he fought - hard - in his attempt to get away from his killer.
They avoid thinking about the proposition that Arawa - who was found on her bedroom floor rather than her bed - spent her dying moments trying do the same, or to get help after she’d been shot.
It is, it seems, much more interesting to speculate about the sex work and incest.
Senior journalist David Fisher has written much about the case over the years and attended both trials. in part.
He’s covered countless crimes, investigations and trials in his career but Operation Every easily remains one of the most peculiar.
“The Bain case, I think, was particularly shocking for New Zealand in that it saw all members of a family, bar one, killed,” he said.
“And I think the shock of what came out of Dunedin that cold winter morning has never really dissipated.
“There’s not many cases like that in New Zealand’s history where there’s been such a toll, and also where it seems beyond any doubt that the killer was one of the people that was on that property that day.”
Fisher said the botched police investigation - well documented and accepted over the years - added to the intrigue.
“Because the investigation was so poor, it left so much room for debate.”
The case wasn’t just unusual from a societal perspective - it was also unprecedented in a legal context.
Warren Brookbanks - an internationally recognised authority on criminal law and justice and Auckland University of Technology professor - said it was “unique on a number of counts”.
“One of the major reasons it was unique was simply the number of appeals which occurred … so there was a lot of legal manoeuvring that went on to get to the final result,” he explained.
“And the other thing about the case itself that was quite unusual, was that the evidence for the case was almost entirely circumstantial.
“There was no direct eyewitness testimony, and the trial was pieced together on the basis of inferences drawn from the hard evidence secured by the police.
“No one piece of which alone would have been enough to convict, but when considered together, it created a plausible narrative pointing to guilt, at least in the original trial.”
No matter how many years go by, the Bain family massacre will always be one of the most infamous crimes in New Zealand.
The awful circumstances, the grisly scene, the polarising survivor, the messy police investigation, the scandalous trials, remarkable appeals and the result will remain in the country’s consciousness for a long time to come.
There were massacres and mass murders before and after the incident at Every St - but none garnered the same level of fascination and no case has divided the nation as much.
Thirty years on though it’s important to note that at the core of it, and no matter who you think did or did not do it - five people lost their lives, in their own home, at the hands of one of their own.
And it’s hugely important to remember that three of the victims were teenagers - innocent and harmless kids just starting to work out the world and where they wanted to be in it.
Arawa was determined to teach and educate the next generation of Kiwis.
Laniet may have been dabbling in a very adult world, but it seems she was desperate to change the trajectory of her life - she wanted healing and a fresh start.
And Stephen. Not old enough to drive, just old enough to be left home on his own.
He should have woken ahead of a new school day - but instead was confronted by an adult he had loved and trusted his whole life brandishing a gun.
The real tragedy here is the young Bains who, instead of living their dreams - lie in a grave with their parents in a cemetery 17km from the haunting Every St home where they took their last breaths.
Anna Leask is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 18 years with a particular focus on family violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz
