Thirty years later and the name David Bain still makes people in New Zealand lean in or turn away with a sharp intake of breath. It is the kind of case that doesn’t just sit in the archives; it lives in the bones of the country. You can’t go to a dinner party in Dunedin or a pub in Auckland without someone having a theory about what happened on that freezing morning at 65 Every Street. Honestly, the sheer weight of the evidence, the counter-evidence, and the absolute mess of the initial police work is enough to give anyone a headache.
Most people think they know the story. They think it’s a simple binary: either David did it, or his father Robin did. But if you look closer, it is way more complicated than a simple "whodunnit." It is a story of a semi-derelict house, a family living in squalor, and a set of events so tragic they feel like a dark play rather than reality.
David Bain: The Morning the World Stopped
On June 20, 1994, David Bain came home from his paper run. He was 22. He walked through the door of a house that was, by all accounts, a disaster zone. The police would later describe rooms filled with "squalid heaps" of belongings. At 7:09 am, David dialed 111.
"They're all dead," he told the operator. He sounded terrified.
When the police arrived at the Every Street address in Dunedin, they found five bodies. Margaret, David’s mother; his sisters Arawa and Laniet; and his younger brother Stephen. Then there was Robin, the father, lying in the lounge with a .22 rifle nearby. The most chilling part? A message on the computer screen: “sorry, you are the only one who deserved to stay.”
The early police theory was murder-suicide by the father. Robin was depressed, they said. He was sleeping in a caravan because the marriage was a wreck. But within days, the focus shifted. David was charged. He spent 13 years in prison before a retrial eventually found him not guilty in 2009.
The "Black Hands" and the Evidence That Divided a Nation
You’ve probably heard about the "black hands." David told police about seeing black hands coming to take his family. To some, this was the hallucination of a traumatized survivor. To others, it was the slip-up of a killer.
✨ Don't miss: NYC Presidential Election 2024: What Really Happened in the Five Boroughs
The physical evidence was a battlefield. Take the bloody footprints. They were found on the carpet after luminol testing. The problem? The house was burnt down by relatives just weeks after the murders, with police permission. That "critical" piece of evidence—the actual carpet—was gone. Judge Ian Binnie later called this an "egregious error."
Then there were the glasses. A lens from David’s glasses was found in Stephen’s room. Stephen had fought for his life; there were signs of a massive struggle. David said his glasses must have been knocked off or moved. The prosecution said they broke during the murder.
- The 111 Call: David said "They're all dead" before he’d supposedly seen everyone.
- The Prints: A bloody palm print on the washing machine.
- The Rifle: David's fingerprints were on it, but he claimed he used it for target practice.
Why David Bain Still Matters in New Zealand
The reason this case hasn't died is because of Joe Karam. You basically can't talk about David Bain without talking about the former All Black who spent 15 years and a fortune fighting for him. Karam was like a dog with a bone. He wrote David and Goliath and systematically picked apart the police investigation.
Without Karam, David would almost certainly still be in prison. He was the one who pushed for the Privy Council appeal in London. When they quashed the conviction in 2007, they didn't say David was innocent; they said there had been a "substantial miscarriage of justice."
There is a massive difference between "not guilty" and "innocent." In the 2009 retrial, the jury only had to decide if the Crown had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. They decided it hadn't. But that didn't stop the government from fighting the compensation claim for years.
The Compensation Tug-of-War
David wanted millions. He spent years in jail for a crime a jury eventually said they couldn't prove he did. The government hired Ian Binnie, a retired Canadian Supreme Court judge. He said David was "innocent on the balance of probabilities" and should get paid.
The Justice Minister at the time, Judith Collins, didn't like that. She got another report. Then another. Eventually, in 2016, a deal was struck.
It wasn't "compensation." The government was very specific about that. It was an ex gratia payment of $925,000. It was a "final settlement" to make the whole thing go away and stop the litigation. David took it, though Joe Karam said he did so "reluctantly."
Where is he now?
Life for David Bain—who now goes by the name Liam Davies—is remarkably quiet. He married Liz Davies, the daughter of one of his long-time supporters, in 2014. They live in the Waikato, specifically Cambridge.
He’s a father now. He has two kids. He reportedly works in a job that keeps him out of the limelight, though the New Zealand media still occasionally "doxes" his new identity, much to the anger of his supporters. Honestly, after decades of being the most famous face in the country, you can see why he’d want to just be another guy at the supermarket.
Lessons from the Case
If we’ve learned anything from the Every Street tragedy, it’s that our justice system is fragile.
- Scene Preservation is Key: Burning the house down was a disaster for the truth. It meant neither side could ever truly "prove" their theory.
- The Power of Advocacy: One person (Karam) can actually change the course of legal history if they have enough resources and stubbornness.
- The Burden of Proof: "Not guilty" is a legal status, not a moral one. The public remains split because the legal system isn't designed to find "The Truth"—it's designed to see if the prosecution can prove a specific story.
The Every Street house is gone. The family is gone. What’s left is a legacy of doubt. Whether you believe David is a victim of a terrible mistake or the luckiest man in New Zealand, the case remains the definitive study of how a family can fall apart and how a legal system can struggle to put the pieces back together.
To understand the nuances of the case further, you can look into the Binnie Report versus the Callinan Report. They offer two completely different takes on the same evidence, proving that even at the highest levels of the law, "facts" are often a matter of interpretation. For those following the legal history of New Zealand, this case remains the benchmark for how we handle miscarriages of justice and the high cost of a "not guilty" verdict.