Bain trial: Crown sums up

"'I always seem to end up hurting those I love', and that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what he did".

The Crown has finished its closing address in the Bain family murder trial.

Lead prosecution counsel Kieran Raftery said David Bain told a friend "something horrible" was going to happen and "I always seem to end up hurting those I love."

Raftery said Bain carefully planned the murders of his family, attempting to create an alibi by making sure people saw him on his paper run, the Crown says.

He recounted testimony from Kathleen Mitchell, a woman David Bain delivered a daily paper to.

In a year, he had not gone on to her balcony and made her dog bark, but that morning he did.

The note he left on the family computer, "Sorry you are the only one who deserved to stay'', was another attempt to support that alibi and pin the murders on is father Robin, Raftery said.

David Bain, 37, is charged with murdering the five members of his family at their Every Street, Dunedin, home on June 20, 1994.

The defence contends Bain's father Robin killed the family and then himself after his daughter, Laniet, threatened to reveal their incestuous relationship.

The Crown said that Robin Bain's death scene was inconsistent with suicide, though.

Raftery said the position of the body of David Bain's father Robin was too far from the chair the defence say he used as an aid to kill himself.

The rifle's magazine was also standing on its thin edge.

"How realistic is that?" he asked, if Robin had shot himself and dropped to the ground, dead in an instant.

Earlier, Raftery said the identity of the killer of 14-year-old Stephen Bain was crucial.
 
The murder scene in Stephen's room showed signs of a bloody fight to the death.

The murderer's gloves had come off during the fight and bloody fingerprints belonging to David Bain were found on the rifle used to kill the family, he said.

"Whoever killed Steven killed everybody else," Raftery said.

Tests after the first trial also showed Stephen's blood on David's shirt and shorts.

One lens from a pair of glasses was also found in Stephen's room.

The other lens and the frames of the glasses were sitting near David in his room when police arrived.

Earlier, Raftery said David Bain had heard his sister Laniet "gurgling" after being shot but did nothing to help her for 15 or 20 minutes.

Raftery said it was "totally untenable" that Bain would have done nothing to get emergency services to his sister if he was not the murderer.

Bain's "gurgling" testimony in the first trial was a "Freudian slip" that showed he was remembering killing her, he said.  

The morning's sessions dealt with the defence theory that Robin was the killer.

Raftery began the day by telling the jury the question remained the same as Bain's first trial 14 years ago - was it David Bain or was it his father?

The fact that the Bain family killer wore gloves was the first pointer to David and away from his father, Raftery said.

Raftery asked why Robin Bain would wear gloves and disguise his identity when, by the defence's account, he was going to commit suicide and announce himself the murderer by leaving a note on the computer?

Raftery picked apart the defence case that Robin had killed the family and then himself.

A fight to the death with 14-year-old Stephen Bain would have left the Bain family killer covered in blood, he said.

"The man who killed Stephen was well-bloodied himself and yet Robin... has hardly any blood on him at all, and that blood is his own."

Raftery said if Robin murdered the family, he then went back to the caravan in the backyard, got changed into unbloodied clothes, and put them in the washing basket where David Bain would later wash them.

What did it matter, Raftery asked, whether Robin was bloodied when he was bent on murder and suicide?

Robin Bain would also have had to find David's opera gloves in his room and put them on.

What on earth are the gloves for? Raftery asked.

"Why would David wear the gloves? Like anyone who was committing murder- to mask his identity and get away with it."

The note left on the  computer was itself not the act of a man trying to explain why he had killed his family and himself, Raftery said.

The note, "Sorry you are the only one who deserved to stay", was inadequate as a suicide note and had more to do with David than it did with his father, he said.

Bloody sockprints found in the house have been a bone of contention as they were smaller than David Bain's foot.

Raftery said the Crown had shown bigger feet made foot prints smaller than the foot size.

The murderer who left the prints was also not trying to make large prints, Raftery said.

"He was creeping stealthily around his house, killing members of his family.

Raftery earlier covered the case for Robin Bain being the killer.

"Was Robin Bain depressed?" Raftery asked.

Caution was required, he said. Just because he wore unusual clothes did not mean you could "escalate" that to clinical depression.

Raftery said the trial had not heard from any clinical psychologist who had treated Robin for depression.

One of the "diagnoses" in court had, pathetically, been taken from photographs of Robin at school, he said.

Raftery said Robin's letters to his mother were positive discussions of family business - "nothing there that suggests the man is on a downward spiral".

"In order to take your own life you have to be at rock bottom."

Raftery went on to say, even if Robin was so low, why would he commit murder as well as suicide?

The murder motive was something the defence had to "struggle" with.

And furthermore, why leave only David alive?

While the defence said Robin had a motive - an incestuous relationship with his daughter Laniet - Raftery said if Robin was on trial the case would not have got off the ground as there was no forensic evidence that he had committed the murders.

Robin's supposed motive, the incestuous relationship, only ever came from Laniet, he said.

Raftery said Laniet had also told people she had had three children by the age of 12, one of them to a Papua New Guinean man who raped her.

"If the Crown was to prosecute Robin Bain for incest, on those accounts, they wouldn't have got past first base. Laniet is not the most reliable source."

Raftery said Laniet had mentioned the incest to her local dairy owner but did not tell her GP, even though she was candid about her prostitution with the doctor.

Dean Cottle, a witness who did not appear but had a statement read to the court, said the weekend of the murders Laniet was going to tell a family meeting of either the incest or her prostitution.

Raftery said despite this, there was "absolutely no evidence" anything had been said by Laniet that weekend.