Bain family murders

Robin Irving Bain and Margaret Arawa Cullen were married in 1969 in Dunedin, New Zealand.

They had four children: David (born 1972), Arawa (born 1974), Laniet (born 1976), and Stephen (born 1980).

In 1974, they moved to Papua New Guinea, where Robin worked as a missionary teacher.

The family returned to New Zealand in 1988.

Three years after his return, Robin became the principal of Taieri Beach School.

On 20 June 1994, Robin and Margaret Bain and three of their four children – Arawa, Laniet, and Stephen – were shot to death in Dunedin, New Zealand.

The only suspects were David Cullen Bain, the eldest son and only survivor, and Robin Bain, the father.

David Bain, aged 22, was charged with five counts of murder.

In June 1994, the family lived at 65 Every Street, Andersons Bay, Dunedin.

The house was old and 'semi-derelict'.

Photographs presented at the trial showed most of the rooms were squalid and messy with the family's belongings strewn in disorderly heaps.

At the time of the murders, Robin and Margaret were estranged.

Margaret Bain had developed an interest in new-age spiritualism.

She referred to her husband as "a son of Belial – one of the Four Crown Princes of Hell".

They used to fight and bicker, and shortly before the murders Margaret told an acquaintance that she would shoot Robin if she could.

She refused to let him sleep in the house, so he often slept in the back of his van near the school.

When he came home on weekends, he slept in a caravan in the garden.

At David Bain's third Court of Appeal hearing, fellow teachers described Robin at the time of the killings as "deeply depressed, to the point of impairing his ability to do his job of teaching children."

Cyril Wilden, a former teacher and registered psychologist visited the Taieri School, and noted that "Robin appeared to be increasingly disorganised and struggling to cope."

There were piles of unopened mail on his desk and his classroom was ‘dishevelled, disorganised and untidy’.

Laniet had been flatting in Dunedin but also lived with her father in the Taieri schoolhouse.

She returned to the family residence on the Sunday evening of 19 June, the day before the murders, to attend a family meeting.

At David Bain's retrial, witnesses said the meeting was called because Laniet, aged 18 at the time, wanted to disclose that her father had been committing incest with her prior to the murders.

David Bain was studying music and classics at Otago University and had a part-time job delivering morning newspapers.

In May 1995, he was convicted on each of the five counts and sentenced to mandatory life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of sixteen years.

David's case was taken up by businessman and former rugby player Joe Karam.

In 2007, his legal team, guided by Karam, successfully appealed to the Privy Council, arguing that Robin Bain was involved in an incestuous relationship with one of his daughters.

When this was about to be disclosed, he killed everyone in his family except David and then committed suicide.

The Privy Council declared there had been a 'substantial miscarriage of justice'.

Bain was released on bail in May 2007.

The retrial in June 2009 ended with his acquittal on all charges.

The case has been described as "the most widely discussed and divisive in New Zealand's criminal history".

Speculation about it continued long after David was acquitted, including whether or not he should receive compensation for the years he spent in prison.

Ian Binnie, a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, was appointed in November 2011 to review the circumstances and advise the government on whether compensation should be paid.

Binnie concluded that the Dunedin police made 'egregious errors' and that the 'extraordinary circumstances' in the case justified the payment of compensation.

This report was rejected by the Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, on advice from the police, the Solicitor-General and High Court Judge Robert Fisher.

Following Judith Collins' resignation, in March 2015 the government appointed Ian Callinan, a retired justice of the High Court of Australia, to conduct a second review of David's compensation claim.

Callinan concluded that David was not innocent on the balance of probabilities.

David's legal team indicated they would contest the report's findings in Court.

The Government offered David an ex gratia payment of $925,000 to put an end to the drawn out dispute over compensation which David reluctantly accepted.