Lone crusade ends in vindication

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/The Press

HIGH POINT: Joe Karam gives David Bain's supporters in the public gallery the thumbs up as the not-guilty verdict is given at the High Court in Christchurch on Friday.

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It is like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers: something has gone terribly wrong and no-one else seems to notice. Or, as Joe Karam put it to New Zealand Herald journalist Geoff Cumming in 2007: "It started to feel like you're the only person who's seen a Martian walking down Queen St."

In this metaphor, the Martian is David Bain's innocence. Karam has spent 13 years waving his arms and shouting and forcing the rest of us to wake up and pay attention. But how and why did this happen to Karam?

The story goes like this: Karam was a successful Auckland businessman in his prosperous mid-40s. Big cars, flash house, 4 hectares at Clevedon, children in private schools.

It was reported that he owned 25 investment properties. He was a former All Black with a lucrative vending machine business, a winning racehorse and the associated pleasures.

In the florid language of a 2007 Listener profile: "With a galloping enthusiasm for life and an entertaining line in braggadocio, Karam was a middle-aged colt with a nose for making money and an appreciative eye for the fillies."

In January 1996, the then 44-year-old Karam read a newspaper story filed from Dunedin. It concerned a few friends of David Bain struggling to raise the $10,000, or maybe $15,000, they needed to get his case to the Privy Council .

Karam initially thought that he might throw them a couple of hundred dollars. Thirteen years later, when he tallies up what he has spent and what his lost earnings would be, he says his support for Bain has cost him "millions".

Again, why? One reason is that there has been no easy place to stop. There has always been another battle.

The campaign went to the Court of Appeal twice, the Privy Council and the Governor-General before the full Privy Council hearing that led to Bain's release in 2007.

Then came the Crown's decision to retry him. There were defamation cases to fight, including against two police officers who sued Karam and lost.

You also have to consider the Karam personality. He likes to talk about a crusading sense of right and wrong, a hatred of bullying and unfairness.

Reporters have heard the stories about Karam as a schoolboy, watching a bully pick on another kid. He said that the only fight he ever got into at school was teaching that bully a lesson. Now picture the Crown as the bully and Bain as the weakling.

Heroic stuff. But you can also read it as a stubborn determination as in this explanation he gave to the Herald: "Over time it became a little blurred as to why I was doing it. I wanted the fact that I was right to be proven ... I don't think I could live with myself, knowing that I was right, if I had given up."

How convinced is he? Salient magazine put the question to him in 2007, looking ahead to the new trial.

What if Bain was found guilty all over again? Karam: "I would be astonished because I think it's impossible."

Stubborn and heroic sometimes, but melodramatic sometimes, too. "One of the hardest things has been the loneliness," he told the Listener in 2007. "I'm the only bugger left. No-one's there to pat you on the back."

The most revealing comments that Karam has made about his long campaign come from that year. He was finally able to reveal the emotional toll.

But there was also the euphoria of Bain's release in Christchurch in May 2007. What reporters saw, and the rest of the country saw, was a man who seemed on the surface at least to be surprisingly self-possessed, lucid, intelligent and it has to be said sane. This was a long way from the Bain of legend.

"I think it's entirely natural that people have been enchanted by the fellow that they've met 12 years later," Karam told Salient.

Karam's support had much to do with this shift in the appearance and public perception of Bain. You can expect that Karam's self-belief has had a persuasive effect on Bain. He said Bain was "just a completely shattered individual" when they met.

Karam flew to Christchurch at least once a month to see Bain. He became an expert on the evidence and put his son, Matthew, a lawyer, into the defence team.

On that euphoric day in 2007, outside the High Court in Christchurch, Bain spoke warmly of "the strength that Joe has given me all these years".

"Joe is one of the best friends I've got," he said.

The feeling was mutual. Karam told radio host Mikey Havoc on the same day that one of the enriching things about all this has been "developing a marvellous friendship and relationship with David Bain; he's an astonishing bloke."

Does this mean he was seduced by the personality? "I've put him through some tough hoops," Karam said. "It's not like I sit there stargazing at him, believing everything he says."

Karam chose not to be interviewed for this story.

- © Fairfax NZ News