Bain family murders

On the morning of 20 June 1994, five members of the Bain family were found shot dead at their home at 65 Every Street in the Andersons Bay area of Dunedin, New Zealand. The dead were Robin Bain, aged 58, a primary school principal; his wife Margaret, aged 50; and three of their children, Arawa, 19, Laniet, 18, and Stephen, 14. All had been killed with a .22-calibre rifle. The only other person present was the eldest son, David Bain, then aged 22, who telephoned emergency services shortly after 7 a.m. He and his father were the two people ever identified as possible perpetrators.

Four days later, police charged David Bain with all five deaths. At a 1995 trial in the Dunedin High Court he was convicted on every count and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of sixteen years. His case was subsequently championed by a prominent public campaigner, and after several unsuccessful appeals the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London quashed the convictions in 2007, ruling that a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred, and ordered a new trial. David Bain was released on bail after nearly thirteen years in prison. At a 2009 retrial in the Christchurch High Court he pleaded not guilty and, after a trial lasting about three months, was acquitted on all five charges. He is therefore not guilty in the eyes of the law.

The case turned on two competing accounts. The prosecution argued that David Bain shot his mother, two sisters and brother, left on his early-morning paper round, returned home, and then shot his father. It pointed to evidence such as his connection to the rifle and a spectacle lens said to have been found in his brother's room. The defence argued instead that the father, Robin Bain, killed his wife and children and then took his own life, and it presented evidence about his deteriorating mental state and estrangement from the family. The defence further alleged that Robin was motivated by an incestuous relationship with one of his daughters that was about to be exposed. That murder-suicide account was a defence theory; Robin Bain was never charged and is counted among the victims.

After his acquittal, David Bain sought compensation for wrongful conviction and imprisonment. One government-commissioned review concluded he was innocent on the balance of probabilities, but that finding was disputed and a second reviewer reached the opposite conclusion. In 2016 the government made an ex gratia payment of NZ$925,000 in what it described as full and final settlement, without accepting that the compensation threshold had been met. Because the sole conviction was quashed and the retrial ended in acquittal, no one now bears legal responsibility for the deaths, and the case remains among the most debated in New Zealand's history.