Tag Archives: unsolved

Feb 18 2012

No Bain no Gain


I was spurred on by this today about David Cullen Bain :  David Bain Defence Still Less Than Convincing | Stuff.co.nz.

I’ll put my stall out before I get to the article;

My opinion on this is that Robin didn’t do it. Despite insinuation and denial it’s not that cut and dried. It could have been if David had testified in the re-trial, which he chose not to do, relying on fear, uncertainty, doubt and liberal attitudes to sway an unpredictable jury.

For me the key piece of doubt relies on the time that the computer was switched on.

The time. What exactly was the time, compared to what time, there was no “reference time”, everyone looked at their own watches and decided that was the time. It’s was a nonsense from the get-go

So how do you tell when a computer was started, I might have missed a trick or two but I still do not know how or where a computer of that age would have stored that kind of information, and I then assume that it was a guess. A guess based on some “expert” pressing the go button and timing with a stopwatch the time it took him, an expert, to type in the mystery message. Like a said a nonsense.

Lets assume that there was a record, somehow, in a history boot file, or something unknown to me, that only tells us a relative time, it’s not “the time” it’s the time that the computer thinks it is.

If I could get that answer straight in my head then I’d be happier. I might be the only on banking on that drum though, the prosecution and certainly the defense don’t want to answer  the question. I even asked the defense team once and got a very off hand reply.

Any way via David Bain Defence Still Less Than Convincing | Stuff.co.nz.

The second item of key evidence is the bloody footprints found in the Every St house. Clearly, if Karam can show the footprints were made by Robin Bain, then he is home and dry. This is because Robin’s socks, when he was found, had no blood on them, showing he must have changed them between shooting the family and then himself.

Robin’s foot was 270mm long and David’s 300mm. A bloodied footprint in the house measured 280mm, but the scientist who did the testing stressed the footprint might not show the “extremities of the heel and toe”.

Karam hangs his hat on testing done by both defence and prosecution experts who had subjects dip their feet in a tray of pig’s blood and then walk on various surfaces.

These tests showed it was very unlikely a person with a foot of David’s size would make a 280mm print under luminol testing (it is usually larger). As with most reconstructions, this testing was flawed from the start. The variables were huge. Were the socks the same? Was weight put on the feet the same? Did the carpet in the tests match the Every St carpet? Was the amount of blood on the socks the same?

…

At the trial I counted at least 20 items of important evidence which, in my view, pointed to Bain’s guilt. According to the book, they all have innocent and logical explanations, but key points such as the damaged glasses found in Bain’s room, sister Laniet’s gurgling, the fingerprints on the rifle, the blood on Bain’s clothes and the bruises on his face are formidable although admittedly not unimpeachable pieces of evidence.

Interestingly, Karam does not mention the bizarre if not ludicrous scenario that would have played out if Robin had been the killer. This involves Robin putting his bloodied clothes in the washing basket and then changing his clothes and socks before killing himself in a highly unusual way.

The trial-by-ambush scenario as trumpeted by the title of the book is not sustained. I had to wonder if this was because the defence was not immune to springing things on the prosecution and had to be counselled by the judge on several occasions.

…

Karam is right about many things in the Bain case. Some of the police bungles were inexcusable, but neither was it the shoddy inquiry he makes it out to be. It’s true some tests, if done, might have exonerated Bain, but also they might have supported his alleged guilt.

I doubt this book will change many minds. Karam has once again done a superb job for David Bain. Perhaps more debatable, in my opinion, is whether he has done such a fine job for justice.

I’ve been known to change my mind before, on many thing’s, and I’ve read the books, read various web pages, articles, Wikipedia entries, and pro and anti sentiments. The family was dysfunctional and Robin was a “strange egg” but whilst it’s not unusual for the police to get the wrong man, for me in the case they didn’t and we’ve had an ongoing tragedy played out before us.

I wish David well, I have no personal malice or desire to cause him hurt harm or distress, only he knows for sure, and only him, and he had the chance to say, and he chose not to.

I rest my case.

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Aug 23 2011

Murder Most Foul #2 in a series


I could add Scott Watson, and  David Tamihere, as cases that raise eyebrows.

Scott Watson currently serving time for the murder of Ben Hope and Olivia Smart. There appears to be so much wrong with the case, with no bodies and identification of the offending boat difficult to ascertain.  In deed there are mystery men, secret witnesses and all the associated conspiracy.

David Tamihere, convicted in 1990 of the double murder of Heidi Paakonaan and Urban Hoglan. The body of Urban was found nearly a year later, but not that of Heidi. Tamihere is currently on release as he’s terminally ill.

These are cases that test the patience of many people. I’ve no first hand knowledge of either of Watson or Tamihere, but I have enough faith to say that if they weren’t inside for this these crimes they would be for another.  However being a bad sort shouldn’t be enough of a reason to be in prison. And you’d think that with the high profile re-trial of Bain that Watson and Tamihere would at least be mounting a charge. As far as I am aware they aren’t.

Tamihere will take his secret to the grave with him, Watson will get out of prison, take up on his boat again and live out his life. Or at least we can hope. Having done time they’ve paid their price. It might not be closure to the parents and friends but it is what we call justice served.

Aug 21 2011

If you could get away with committing one crime, what would you do?


in the darkness of the evening who  wouldn’t have thought alongs these lines.

Perhaps it’s the bazillion dollar robbery, or perhaps it’s a murder.

Most murders, not all, are committed by acquaintances or are people known to each other in some way. Not all. Of course murder is fascinating. As is death. But committing the perfect crime? I used to read a lot of non-fiction books about serial killers and about cases of murder. Most of them of course are about known killers.

There are books about unsolved murders. There are indeed unsolved murders a quick google finds these;

  • The Kirsty Bentley Murder Case. Kirsty Bentley’s murder and the ongoing police investigation.
  • Jennifer Mary Beard. On the last day of 1969, Jennifer Beard was brutally murdered and left under a bridge in a remote part of the South Island. Despite an intensive investigation the identity of her murderer has never been ascertained.
  • Ray Mills.  Ray Mills, entrepreneur, was brutally attacked and left for dead, in a case that was never solved.
  • Kirsa Jensen. Kirsa Jensen’s disappearance is still one of New Zealand’s biggest unsolved cases.
  • Albert Anderson. Albert was found murdered in his own home in 1983
And there are plenty of missing people. People that drop out for one reason or another, sometimes on their own, sometimes assisted. But a perfect murder? If you’re dark enough to be thinking about it then you’d have contemplated it. What you may not have thought about is would it be enough. Would one be enough. It would be like stealing the mona lisa and having it locked away so only you could see it. It might bring you pleasure but not to be able to share?
In a country like New Zealand, sparsely populated and lots of wilderness it lends itself to a notion that you could hide a lot of things in the bush. Perhaps you could. The one off murder most foul.
I’m sure that the police have a strong idea, or suspect in mind for each of the above cases, and a fair few of the missing people reports where they suspect foul play. After all it’s pretty unusual for someone to out an murder someone just like that, and carry on their lives. I’d bet that there have been the totally random out of the blue murders that haven’t been or can’t be solved because they are random, with a couple of billion people on the planet and a few thousand years of history I think I’m onto a winner with that thought.
So would it be that idea of a perfect crime of murder, or would it be the thought that in New Zealand that there are so few murders, that getting away with murder would be the thing that rocked your boat?
I might be pretty naive but I’m leaning towards that the police got the right person for the Bain’s, Smart and Hope, paakkonen and hoogland, and the Lundy cases. And if you’re contemplating, in your dark hours, the perfect murder, you’d better keep thinking.
Aug 1 2011

Murder Most Foul #1 in a series


There are many murders that get your attention and pique your interest. Fortunately there aren’t that many that go unsolved. And even the solved ones can twist like a snake when you take what is mostly a superficial look at them. But we have to have an opinion and we have to have questions, it’s the human condition, and you can believe one way or the other that justice was served, or that by your own view it hasn’t.  I can think immediately of two that I have a view on.

Away: Peter Falconio.  (20 September 1972 – c. 14 July 2001)  disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees and is now presumed dead. It’s rather contentious and tonight (1st August) it was again alleged on TV that Peter Falconio did a runner and is still alive, and has been seen by 4 people no less, since he was allegedly killed. There was a bit of twitterage about this and seems that there is more than a little doubt that he was killed and that he chose to be disappeared. The whole story seems a little improbable, and they did convict someone of a murder.

It’s not possible to put your own reasonings on this, you probably wouldn’t stage your own murder/disappearance. Can you imagine living ‘on the lam’ as it were for what is now a decade? I’m not an expert on this, but how would you survive with a foreign accent in a foreign country, It is possible, people have done it, and will do it again, but I don’t recall any background that would indicate Peter F had a bag of cash and the means to get away with it. Improbable but not impossible.

Home: David Bain. Convicted in May 1995 of the murders of his parents and siblings in Dunedin on 20 June 1994. He was acquitted when retried on the same charges 14 years later.

Never has an event really split people so widely. It is my opinion only that the truth hasn’t been told in this. The police really stuffed it up from the get go. But after a re-trial where the only possible witness, David Bain, didn’t testify what can you conclude?

My two favorite things that are wrong so wrong are; Problems with “index time” that is a central time piece against which everything is timed. What should happen is the lead detective declares the time, and everything you do should be based on the time of that watch/clock/device despite what your watch says. Your watch, my watch, the computer time, the oven, the microwave, the dvd player they all have different times on them, you therefore need a central time clock where you reference too. The police didn’t. Big mistake.

And some really weird way in which you can tell when a computer was turned on. Even if you could, and I still don’t know how you can, particularly if you turn the computer off and then back on again, what use is forensically diagnosing the time, if the time you arbitrarily decide does not match any reference time, it’s just the time you decide on your watch, and not the reference watch. So the forensic test of time will return a time, which is completely arbitrary since there is no way of knowing what time that really is, it could be 10 minutes fast or slow, who knows? Big mistake.