RedHanded - Episode 288 - Black Magic, Incest & Murder: The Bain Family Killings - Part 1

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

On 29 June 1994 the entire Bain family, except for eldest son David, were found murdered in their house in Dunedin. The investigation that followed would go on to become New Zealand’s most controversial, as allegations of black magic, incest and police corruption exploded… LAST CHANCE TO GET YOUR NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TICKETS: https://redhandedpodcast.com/ Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Sources available on redhandedpodcast.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where, if you are listening to this on the day of release, we are flying to Dublin tomorrow to do our first show of the North America plus Dublin tour. Yep, yep. Lots of panic, very little disco is happening.

We're starting to get a bit excited. By the time you're listening to this, you probably will be in some sort of panic-induced coma. And probably in the pub avoiding everything. The time has come. It has come. I can't wait. It's going to be so much fun. If you have got tickets already, we cannot wait to meet you on the road, guys. This North American tour specifically has been in the making for many a moon many a moon sun star everything and we are finally coming if you are yet to get

tickets and for some reason you've been on the fence about it if you are in la or new york they are probably your only bets at this point so head on over to redhanderpodcast.com, get your very last minute tickets, and we'll see you there. Someone sent me an Instagram DM that was like, do you want me to buy you a unbridled spirit t-shirt? And I was like, yes, obviously that is what I want. I've never wanted anything more in my life. Well, Hannah, I have actually got us tall sweatshirts. Have you?

They are arriving at some point. I'm hoping they are going to arrive in time. They're not specifically to do with the tour. Okay. But they are very funny. Did they say the black peril on them? They don't, but I wish that they'd said it on the back. Oh my God, how exciting.

So if they arrive in time, I will present you with one. You're so good at present. I'm excited. And I'll record the reaction for all the rest of you. But it is also a private joke, so you might not get it. But anyway, with that being said, we have got a fucking hell of a case today. Saru has been wrestling with this one for about two months. It's just a beast.

And if anyone knows this, you already know that to be the case. So let's get into it. I don't know why we're wasting time. At 7.09am on the 20th of June 1994, an emergency 111 call came through to authorities in Dunedin, New Zealand. They're all dead. What's the matter? They're all dead.

I came home and they're all dead. Where in bed, Sajid? In the street. They're all dead. I came home and they're all dead. Whereabouts are they? Every street. Every street? 65, every street. They're all dead. Who's all dead? My family. They're all dead. Hurry up. It's okay. Every street.

There's runs off Somerville Street. Yes. What number are you calling from? 454-2527. 454-2527. 2527. And your last name? Bain.

Bain. Okay. We're on our way. Okay, Mr. Bain? Yeah, we'll be there very shortly. The caller was 22-year-old David Cullen Bain. And when that call came in on that cold, ordinary Monday morning, no-one involved could have known just how big this case would go on to become.

And that still, today, almost 30 years later, the Bain family murders remain the most talked about, most controversial and most divisive case in New Zealand's criminal history. No doubt thanks to the shocking nature of an entire family being brutally murdered in cold blood, but also because of the accusations of incest, whispers of black magic, and countless legal proceedings surrounding this story. Now, before we get into it, this being part one of a two-parter,

we have to talk about Martin van Beenen. If you know this case already, there is no way you haven't heard of journalist Martin and his massive 10, maybe now 11 part deep dive podcast into the Bain case called Black Hands. It's one of the classics. It really, really is. If you haven't listened to Black Hands, what are you doing with your life? You have to go listen to it. I can't recommend it enough it is just fantastically done so do yourself a favor go check it out he knows his case better than anyone out there he interviews so many people in black hands who knew the family and he's also just got a great voice and a great accent it it's great it's i would say a cornerstone of podcasting it's one of the very first limited series that i ever listened to and i think that's

the same for a lot of people I think most people go serial black hands yeah and then like everything else then everything else in the world yeah the floodgates are open so yeah if you haven't listened to it you are in for a treat and that intro music if it doesn't give you goosebumps nothing ever will no I want to put the black hands bit on the soundboard yeah so we can just have it intermittently throughout our lives. I can't do it justice. Go listen to it. Yeah, it's impossible to do it. So following the emergency call that we all just heard together as a family,

police arrived within minutes to 65 Every Street in Anderson's Bay, Dunedin, the home of the Bain family. At 7.20am, detectives Kim Stevenson and Jeff Wiley were standing on the doorstep, unable to get inside. It seemed that David, the man who'd called them, had now locked himself inside the house and was refusing to open the door. Eventually, the officers had to break their way in. Like, they can see him. Because it's like a one-story house.

It has a basement level, but it's a one-story house. And so his bedroom, where he is lying, is on the ground floor. So they're looking at him through the window, but he's not opening the door. And once they got inside the large ramshackle house, they were hit with the overwhelming smell of rot and mould. I think, apart from the toilet snake, this is your worst nightmare. It's so much.

It's so much. It makes me really scared. Because the Bain house was absolute chaos. Not due to the mass killings, which might be the obvious response you might be having, but actually because the Baines, it would appear, were hoarders. Every nook and cranny of the house was filled with stuff.

Jars were piled up high, filled with what looked like preserved fruit. Danny Dyer's chocolate homunculus. Clothes were all over the place. And boxes upon boxes of random objects covered almost every inch of the floor. There are so many pictures of this house because the crime scene photos are out there. You can look at them. We'll post some of them on our social media. I make no exaggeration.

The house looks like the house of somebody who's moving out. Right. Because everything is everywhere. It looks like that transitional phase when you're getting everything out of your cupboards. But the cupboards are also full. There's just stuff everywhere as well. It is shocking, to be honest. I met a girl once who's a super paramedic.

She's on this team called Heart. And there's only two Heart teams in London, East and West. And they're super paramedics because they can parasail and stuff. And something that super paramedics have to do quite often and there's only two heart teams in london east and west and they're super paramedics they can like parasail and stuff and something that super paramedics have to do quite often is go into hoarders houses and check if they're still alive and she was like the worst one like the worst house i'd ever seen you're like crawling through all of this stuff like like tunneling like in the fucking great escape and then this person just comes out of the like mound and it's like why did you move my green jumper and then just like recedes back into the like god

it's terrifying it's terrifying and like obviously everybody watched hoarders when that was a thing i don't know if they still make that show but i have been watching sort your life out with stacy solomon on pbc I can highly recommend it. Do you know what? Stacey's done all right for herself, hasn't she? I really, really like her. I rate her, yeah. Like, I think before I watched the show,

I didn't really have too much of an opinion of her, positive or negative. But I really like her in this show. She's just like, clearly these are people who are really struggling. And she just like goes in and she's so nice to them. And like, she's just really empathetic she's just like a mum and i just really rate it's like a really nice show to watch it's people who

are hoarding but she comes in and she sorts your life out and she's nice about it and she's really nice she's not like exhibiting you like hoarders do no no no anyway despite the clutter the mess and the jars of fruit the investigators did make their way inside the house. And soon they found David Bain in his room, on the floor by the end of his bed, lying in the fetal position, sobbing. And when he saw the armed police enter, he began to cry. They're all dead. They're all dead. At this point, the police have no idea what they're walking into. The house is completely crammed. They've had a call that everybody's dead.

And here is David. He's got blood on him. And he won't stand up and he won't say anything other than they're all dead. So the police carefully make their way from room to room, not even knowing if the killer is still in the house or what the hell has even happened. Now the layout of the Bain family home is that there were three bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen on the ground floor. And on the lower floor, or like basement level, there was one more bedroom. But the police didn't know this at the time. They didn't even know how many all meant. When David said they're all dead,

how many bodies did that mean? I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy.

You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of

the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. So they left David's room and entered the room directly opposite. This was the lounge, and there they found their first body. It was David's 58-year-old father, Robin Bain. He had one gunshot wound to the temple, and a.22-calibre rifle lay by his body. In the next room, the one to the left of David's, the police found 18-year-old Laniat, David's sister.

She was under her duvet, but as soon as police moved it, they saw that she too was dead. She had three bullet wounds to the head, two close to her left ear, and one through the top of her skull. In the bedroom opposite, they found Margaret, the 50-year-old matriarch of the family. She was also in bed,

and had been shot just once above the left eye. With the sound of David's wailing and sobbing ringing through the house, police headed downstairs, where they found another bedroom and another body. It was 19-year-old Arawah, the eldest of the Bain girls. She was lying on her back, face up, on the floor in the middle of the room.

And she had a gunshot wound to the right side of her forehead. And her feet were tucked underneath her at an unnatural angle. I've been thinking about that. Is it her ankles are backwards? Yeah, basically what it looks like is, horrifyingly, it looks like she was on her knees. Oh God. Yeah, probably begging for her life. We will come on to that. But good question. This was the first room so far in the Bain hoarder house where there seemed to have been some kind of struggle. There was blood found smeared on the doorframe into Arowa's room as well as blood on the white net curtain hanging in the doorway.

They love a curtain over a doorway. Interesting. To the Bains. Is that an Antipodean thing? I don't know. Tell us, New Zealanders. Yeah, we don't do door covering much here. No, I'm not sure why that's there, but iters. We don't do door covering much. No, I'm not sure why that's there, but it is. And it's got blood on it.

I also think there's nothing that unnerves me more than a grubby neck curtain. Throughout all of the hoarding descriptions, Siru's been sweating. Do you know what? Curtains in general. You're not a big curtain fan. I just feel like curtains to me look dusty. They look dusty. Yeah. And I'm sure that's not true.

I'm sure if you have curtains, they're lovely and clean. But curtains do kind of freak me out a little bit. I'm a shutter girl. You can just wipe them down. I also don't like carpet. What is with, why carpet? And I know everybody's like, yeah, wood flooring downstairs, but carpet in the bedroom carpet in the bedroom I'm like no it's gross I just want wood flooring everywhere it upsets me no I only have carpet in my bedrooms for sound proof yes no that makes sense and I really didn't

want to do it my mom was like you need to carpet the bedrooms I was like do I I remember I steam clean my curtains with my. With my steam mop. Nice. Anyway, enough. Enough curtain chat. Oh, actually, a little bit more curtain chat, because there were two bullet holes in the curtain covering the door and also a bullet hole in the wall of Arawa's room. Someone had clearly shot multiple rounds,

though Arawa herself had only been shot the once. Arawa also, unlike the others, wasn't in bed, further proof that she had most likely not been asleep when her killer attacked. And in a miserable realisation, police could see that the odd way in which her body was positioned meant that Arowa had probably been down on her knees, begging for her life when she was shot. Yeah, pretty much bad stuff.

Unfortunately, it's going to get a little bit worse, but then it's going to get loads worse and then it will be over. So detectives now had four bodies in the Bain house and they've got David, who's still alive. So they go back up to David's room, where he's still on the floor, being watched over by another officer, and they explain the situation. But David replied,

there are six of us. So where was the final member of the Bain family? Investigators went back over the house to check, when one of them remembered something. There had been another internal door in Mum Margaret's room and initially the police had thought it was just a wardrobe.

But when they went back to check, it was actually a door to yet another bedroom. And inside, not only did they discover the youngest member of the family, 14-year-old Stephen Bain, they also found the bloodiest of scenes so far in the house. Like his sister Arawah, Stephen had clearly not been killed in his sleep.

He had, in fact, put up one hell of a fight. The teenager was seriously bloodied from the attack, with blood smeared all over him, strangulation marks around his neck and three gunshot wounds to the body. One bullet had gone through the palm of his hand and then also hit him in the thigh, while the final wound, the one that had killed him, again like Laniat's, went straight through the top of his head. Upon finding Stephen, officers began shouting down the hall that they'd found another body. At which point, David, still in his room but now standing up, fell backwards and began to shake uncontrollably. He was having a seizure.

Officers quickly put him in the recovery position and called an ambulance. After this bout of fits, at about 9am, David began to speak in a disjointed, almost unintelligible trance-like way, talking about needing to get to uni because he was going to be late. It seemed like he was disassociating from the shock, which happens. By this point, investigators at the scene were sure that they were looking at a cut-and-dry murder-suicide family annihilation carried out by Robin Bain. And it makes sense.

Over 95% of such killings are committed by the father, and that father is typically a white male. Family annihilation killers are usually depressed, possibly worried about financial ruin or some life-changing secret, an affair for example, being exposed. We'll come back to talk motives later. But the very fact that Robin slept outside, in a caravan, rather than in the house with his family, told detectives that things were not the picture of domestic bliss at the Bain residence. And there's stuff everywhere, There's probably no room.

Quite. And in Robin's caravan, the police found yet more odd things. They discovered a dozen used shell casings for a.22 calibre rifle scattered around the top bunk of his bed, as well as one live round tucked away underneath a book. They also found a book of crime mysteries written by Agatha Christie. Nothing too weird about that. But one of the stories, Death of a Dolphin,

tells the tale of a family who were murdered. The father becomes the main suspect, but all along it was the son who had done it. And this thought that David, the surviving son, could be the real killer and that he was just framing his father Robin, had, of course, occurred to the police. Some of them say in later interviews that his sort of wailing and crying at the crime scene had made them slightly suspicious of him. And at this point, there were only really three options as far as the police could see.

Number one, it was indeed a murder-suicide, and the father, Robin, had killed his entire family before turning the gun on himself. Number two, David was the killer, and he had just killed everybody and then set the rifle next to his dad to put the blame on him. Or three, someone else had done it and then fled the scene. But the question with this possibility was,

why would a stranger bother trying to frame Robin? Why would you frame somebody for a crime that no one's looking at you for? It's not natural, I think, to try and frame somebody else in the house if you're an outside party. And also I think that's kind of where Stephen's room makes a little bit of an appearance for me because the police didn't realize that was a room if it was a stranger who wasn't familiar with the house good point how would they have known Stephen's room was in there now obviously there are other explanations like Stephen was making noise he was obviously awake when he was murdered it's not definitive but it's worth mentioning and really for the police the idea of it being

some unknown outsider quickly became even more unlikely when the police saw what was on the family computer. The Baines computer, because it's the 90s, was kept in the living room, cordoned off into a little alcove by a pair of green velvet curtains. Velvet. Why? I've seen pictures of them. They're just so pasto. And these curtains presumably were to give the user some privacy so you can watch porn in the living room with your family. You really want to question the person that was like, what we need, guys, is some green velvet curtains here.

I know! What are you doing? It's just for MSN, Mum. Robin's body was found right next to this porn computer alcove and his blood and tissue was sprayed all across those green curtains. And on the screen of the computer, which was on when the police arrived, they soon discovered a note. Or, well, a sentence, really. And that sentence said, Sorry, you are the only one who deserved to stay. Is that typed on the computer?

Yes. It's like opened up a document, and it's just one sentence that's typed onto the screen. So when you move the mouse and the computer comes on, that's the first thing you see. Right. So it appeared that that was Robin's suicide note, written to his son David, the only survivor. And so, at around 10.30am, David was taken to Dunedin Police Station to be interviewed, whilst officers carried on working their way through the chaos of the scene at Every Street.

And what they'd find there would shape the investigation, the controversy and the confusion around who the killer really was. Was it Robin or was it David? But before we get to that, we're going to get to know the Bain family a little bit better so we can understand the dynamics at play and the secrets and the tensions which lay just below the green velvet curtained surface so 33 year old robin irving bain and 25 year old margaret arrow a cullen met through their presbyterian church in dunedin red flag Red flag Green curtain They were very different with David being described as good-natured if a bit serious but Margaret was very much an extrovert

known to be loud and with a sharp and sometimes cruel tongue But in August 1969 the pair got married despite their differences and started their lives together They had their first child, David, in 1972. And at this time, Robin taught in small Maori schools.

And both he and Margaret volunteered with the church on a regular basis. Are they Maori? They're not. Okay. No, no. So the Bains are white. White Christian, but Robin. He does spend a lot of time teaching in Maori schools or

indigenous schools. He's very passionate about being a teacher and he does spend a lot of his career doing that. So they've got a very normal life in New Zealand at this point. Then in January 1974, with a toddler in tow, the pair decided to take the huge step of moving to Papua New Guinea. Robin, who was very much a dedicated Christian, wanted to work as a missionary and also had been offered a job out there at a teacher training college. So the job is very good. He's going to be like principal of this teacher training college. Like he's going to do that. But he is also like a fervent Christian. That's how it's described.

And he wanted to try his hand at some missionary work. And Margaret, who had studied anthropology at Otago University, was also keen to go. In Papua New Guinea, the family first lived on the island of New Britain. It's rural. It's very isolated, it's outback Papua New Guinea, which in Papua New Guinea is outback, outback. Oh, very much so.

And out there, the population was mainly made up of the Tolai and the Baining tribes. These are two rival clans who still live a very indigenous hunter-gatherer type lifestyle. And the move to Papua New Guinea is not something that everyone would be able to cope with, especially since you're Sarita Bar. But the Cullen Baines absolutely loved it. Like, I cannot stress enough, they moved to an island of PNG. They are not in like one of the big cities. They are fucking in bumfuck nowhere PNG. Like, I tried to Google images of these villages and it's just like,

it's tribes. It's just tribal. Like, there is nothing. No electricity, nothing kind of life. So definitely not for everyone. Margaret seems to be the most embarrassing

kind of anthropologist. Absolutely in her element. She completely immersed herself in the local culture and even embraced the idea of spirits and traditional healing, which in anthropological circles we call going native. It's so hard, isn't it? Because like, on one hand, I think the good thing is that they didn't go there and really try and impose their Christian beliefs on people. I think one of the things to say about Robin and Margaret is that they weren't overly sort of pious, narrow-minded people. Right.

Like, that's how all of their friends described them. They weren't the sort of, like, let me Christian the savage out of you types. Okay, okay. They were hippies. They were fucking proper old school hippies. And apparently, Margaret, really throwing herself at this, was particularly taken by the power and influence of an old woman in the village who people thought had supernatural powers. I think definitely with Margaret and Robin, they went to PNG and they really wanted to learn about the sort of local beliefs and they truly,

this is also very important to point out because I don't want people to get the wrong impression of their missionary work. They actually read a lot of books that were specifically talking about the philosophy of how all religions should be and are united, so the unity of all religions. They really don't seem to have believed that Christianity was in any way superior to anybody else. They're just kind of curious hippies. That's how I would describe it. Though Margaret definitely adopted more of the local flavor, shall I say, than Robin did, who, although interested, very much stuck with the big JC. Now during their time in New Britain, Margaret and Robin had two more children, two girls,

Arowa, who was born in 1974, and Laniat, who was born in 1976. And by the time their family left New Britain to move to Port Moresby, the capital of PNG, in 1979, Margaret was all in on their spirituality. Apparently she would do things like dangle her key ring around like a pendulum, asking God for guidance before making any decisions. God. You know things like when missionaries do go to other countries and then you get that sort of merging of Christian beliefs with things like animism or the local traditions. Margaret does it to herself because she still believes in God. She still believes in Jesus and Christianity. But she takes on all of the sort of more traditional beliefs from the PNG culture and incorporates the two into her belief system. So she's like dangling her pendulum around, even in things like the supermarket, to decide what to buy for dinner.

Oh, God. Like she goes fully into it. And Robin did not like this. But Margaret, as we will go on to find out, was definitely the more dominant one in the couple. And I think that Robin just pretty much had to go along with it. Life in the city of Port Moresby was markedly different for the Baines. Robin had landed a job as a lecturer at the government teacher's college, and the family were given a big,

colonial-style house to live in. Within months of arriving, in 1980, their fourth and final child, Stephen, was born. But all the while, Margaret was becoming more and more obsessed with things like mysticism, spirituality, astrology and reincarnation. Which, fine, I obviously can't say anything, but it kind of seems like she became so obsessed with it that it got in the way of everything else. It's not like a little interest, it's not a hobby, it rules her life. It's an obsession.

It's an all-consuming obsession for her. And on top of that, we've got another red flag, another green curtain. Margaret, who had been a kindergarten teacher back in New Zealand, was homeschooling her children. But their progress was painfully slow. And the house in Port Moresby was also dirty and was starting to show the unmistakable signs of clutter and chaos

that would follow the Baines all the way back to New Zealand. This is the thing. Her obsession with all of these things like reincarnation, spirituality, mysticism, etc., etc., basically impact the family's life to the point that Robin has to go to work, Margaret's at home with the kids and she is a, she knows how to teach children that young because she was a kindergarten teacher in New Zealand. But like, they can't even read or write because she's not spending any time doing that. So when David was 11, still unable to read, Robin enrolled him in a nearby international school.

But there, David was bullied and desperately unhappy. So Margaret pulled him out and basically just let him do as he pleased. So David would just wander around the housing compound that the family lived in alone. But eventually, after 14 years in Papua New Guinea, the Baines returned to Dunedin in December 1988, moving into the house on every street. Now each of the family managed this move back to New Zealand quite differently. The older kids, so David, Arowa and Laniat, joined the local high school, where Arowa, desperate to just be

normal and fit in, threw herself into her studies and school life. And soon she was a straight-A student with a strong group of friends. And she even went on to become head girl. But David and Laniere, who as teenagers still couldn't really read properly, struggled. David was teased a lot in those first few years after the family returned to New Zealand. Though things did improve for him when he joined the local choir and started getting more involved in the school's theatre productions. But at home, things were just getting worse. Unfortunately, the every street house was old. It was cold and dilapidated. Margaret, who didn't work and regularly stayed in bed until midday, didn't care to clean it. Not bothered. Too busy looking at the stars.

I think it's an interesting thing. I always equate it to not looking after... I can be quite messy, especially in my bedroom. I think it's the precursor to not keeping yourself clean. I think it's one of the first things to go when people are having a little bit of a mental health struggle. You're just like, I don't care that my room's a mess. And then it becomes, I don't care that I'm a mess. It's so hard to motivate yourself, though, when you're struggling.

And like, we will go on to find out that Margaret is definitely going through a lot, mentally speaking. But the house is bad. The officers who attended the scene of the murders said that maggots infested the carpet in large areas of the house. While dirty plates were piled high in the sink and grease and fat dripped from the walls in the kitchen. So like they've sprayed from cooking and then just been left there. Yeah. No, no. And Margaret, not only was she not cleaning cleaning anything she absolutely refused to spend any money

fixing up the freezing falling down house because she was set on knocking the entire house down and building a spiritual commune yeah it's like that joke when you're like my house is such a mess i'm just gonna just gonna move she's i'm going to fucking knock it down and build a commune. Yeah, it's like buying new pants because you can't be bothered to wash them. Precisely. Precisely. So her idea was that her spiritual commune, New Build, would be a refuge for outsiders wanting to escape the craziness of modern life

so they could come and meditate, find peace and recover. It would also serve as a home for her family and but it doesn't seem like they had much say in what was gonna go on it's quite outlandish it's serving a lot of purposes and it was meant to be absolutely fucking huge it's such a such a classic move like well when i was in papua new guinea uh and i just had the spiritual awake and we've just got it all wrong in the West, you know, like we've just got it all wrong. That's everyone I went to university with and also Margaret Bain. So David probably wouldn't have mattered if he had anything to say about it. He did seem to be the family member who was most on board with this spiritual commune plan. Margaret had even designed the house in a way that meant David's room

and her room would be next door to each other on the top floor with an adjoining bathroom. Side eye. Yeah. When I lived, literally, when I was in Costa Rica, anyway, the first place I stayed was a homestay, and I had no idea, I spoke no Spanish, I had no idea that it wasn homestay. And I had no idea. I spoke no Spanish.

I had no idea that it wasn't just me. And I opened the door to the bathroom in the morning and there's a girl in there. Just like doing her hair in the mirror. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And it was an adjoining bathroom. But I had no idea that she was there. I mean, it could have been much worse. And she was like, hi, I'm Claire.

So yes, very intimate yes and margaret and david were gonna have that in the new spiritual commune according to the plans right the blueprints yes that margaret obsessively poured over on a daily basis right david would later say that this adjoining bathroom was just a joke. Odd joke. Yeah. The thing is with David, as we'll go on to find out, he and Margaret have a very weird relationship. And I think he's all for it when it's just him and her in the house.

Right. But it's like when other people find out about it, he's like, it's just a joke, it's not real. But I'm like, it kind of really looks like it's real, David. So people who heard about this plan for building this retreat were a bit confused, though. The family didn't look like they had the money to pull off such a big grand design situation of a house. After all, they only had $500 a week coming in from Robin, the sole breadwinner. And even this money wasn't stable, because Robin, since coming back to New Zealand, had really struggled to find a permanent teaching job,

eventually taking the role of principal at a tiny rural primary school in Tyree Beach, about 20 miles from Dunedin. But this is the thing. The family's house is like super ramshackle, and like everything's a mess, and so people think they've got no money. But they did have assets they just didn't spend it. The couple actually owned a couple of plots of land and had about $50,000 squirreled away in a savings account. However to get this money and to sell the land that they had Margaret needed Robin's agreement because it's in both of their names. And it doesn't seem that Robin was quite so keen on the whole building a giant fucking spiritual sanctuary idea. And by 1990, Margaret and Robin's marriage was deteriorating fast. Robin was unhappy with how

Margaret kept the house. He hated her crazy rituals and beliefs. And Margaret wanted Robin to agree to the commune plans and stop blocking her at every turn. Margaret even moved out and started sleeping in a caravan in the garden for a few months. But when the temperature dropped, she quickly came back inside and kicked Robin out to the caravan. She's a character.

There's not many people you'll find who say positive things about Margaret. Right. That's just a fact. She's clearly not well, but she's who say positive things about Margaret. Right. That's just a fact. She's clearly not well, but she's also not a very nice person. Okay. Sir Robin would actually spend the week at Tyree Beach in a camper van parked near his school and then come home for weekends only to be forced to sleep in the caravan. Though he still ate in the house with the family and like showered in there etc. And as this friction between Margaret and Robin grew, some of the

children took sides. Stephen was just a kid and Arowa, as we'll go on to discover, just wanted out. Laniat was firmly team dad. She felt like the rest of the family unfairly ostracised him. And David is another story altogether. It appears that he couldn't stand his dad, and he used to tell his friends that Robin wasn't involved in the commune and that no-one in the family wanted him around anymore. But it was up to Robin to figure out that he wasn't wanted. No-one was going to tell him, he just had to sort it out himself.

We're just going to treat you like shit and you should just get it and leave. Presumably this was because Margaret couldn't just divorce Robin because then she would risk losing half of all of the assets, money she and David needed for their adjoining bathroom commune dream. The relationship between Margaret and David is very, very bizarre. Yeah. And it's definitely at the core of this story, I think. The relationship between the two of them is absolutely at the centre of this. And it's all punctuated with parental alienation and weird emotional incest.

It really, really is. Like, Margaret, as we'll go on to discover, absolutely alienates David. She tries to alienate all the children from Robin, but she absolutely succeeds in alienating David from his father. And the weird emotional incest, like, this is quite a common thing that I don't think we've ever really spoken about on the show before. So there's a book for people who sort of suffered emotional incest as a child, and it's called The Chosen Child Syndrome. And it's basically where a parent relies on a child for emotional support,

almost like that child is their spouse. So it's not physical incest, it's not sexual, but it will be telling that child inappropriate things that are going on in that adult's life it'll be telling them oh you know your dad's like this that and the other this is going on and like i need you to support me i need you to help me you need to step up and be the man of this house but obviously far more extreme so it is placing an unnatural emotional burden on a child that cannot handle it as a parent who should be in a position of power. And that is here in spades.

And the relationship between Margaret and David would only intensify over the next two years. In 91, David flopped out of uni and signed on to the Dole. He spent the next couple of years at home with his mum, working on the garden in preparation for the new build. He did a paper round and he also did some singing and acting with the local opera group. Seeing his nephew floundering, David's uncle offered him a job in his business, but David said no. He wanted to stay at home instead. Because he wants to build this commune. This is important because David later goes on to talk about it like he was never that into it. He is making active life choices as a 20-year-old to stay there and get the sanctuary built.

He is very much into it. So by 1994, things had gotten better for David. He'd enrolled at university again to do classics and music. And he'd even made some new friends. Got a girlfriend, and he was working on a new production of Oedipus Rex. And if you don't know what Oedipus Rex is, it is, of course, the Athenian tragedy about a man who kills his own father and marries his mother. And pokes his eyes out. Absolutely.

With his mother's brooch, no less. No less. Saw Ralph Fiennes do it at the National once, yeah. God, that was years ago. I think I must have been at school. Anyway. And it is, of course, where the phrase Oedipus Complex comes from. Absolutely. So, again,

it's all there. But, even though things were getting better for David, and even though by this point, you know, he's in his early twenties, he still refused to move out saying that if he left the new house wouldn't get built and the tension between him and his father Robin only got worse. David regularly got into fights about things like tools and things like Robin interfering with the gardening. And Margaret even used to tell people, and fucking get your green velvet curtain flags out for this,

because she would even tell people that David had taken over as head of the family since Robin was incapable. Oh no. Yeah. Emotional incest klaxon here. So the fights between David and Robin seem possibly more to do with david trying to assert his dominance over his father rather than like an outright hatred for something robin has done and david used to accuse his dad all the time of trying to rule the roost it's his

roost it's his roost he's's his roost. He's the only one earning any money or doing anything in the house. He's literally the rooster. And it's just like here is David who is being alienated

by his mum to try and take over that man of the house position so he fights with Robin constantly. And there is just a constant power battle between the two of them.

And the thing is this kind of thing these kind of issues might be relatively normal within a family. Like say one or two of them and the thing is this kind of thing these kind of issues might be relatively normal within a family like say one or two of these issues yeah the kind of infighting people taking sides with different parents marital issues money troubles like they are part and parcel of like people having a normal life but there is a lot more to the story with the pains because if it just ended there, pretty standard really. And the way in which it becomes so much worse with the Baines

and how we know about it is because Margaret had been keeping a diary since they were in Papua New Guinea. And these diaries were discovered after her death. And they make for some pretty shocking reading. Margaret was obsessed

with Danny Dyer's chocolate homunculus, bottling fruit, and also with the devil. Margaret seems to have been absolutely convinced that the devil and demons were everywhere. She saw them in her house, and she saw them in every member of her family. Margaret had even taken to scoring each of the family for how bell they were that day, from most to least. Bell was the word that she used for the devil, taken from Belial, which is from the Hebrew Bible, and that becomes Satan in Christian texts a bit later on. Margaret typically scored Robin as being the most filled with Belle, but even David clearly her favourite. If you look at her diaries, he doesn't escape the demonic divination. She really believes that they are in all of us all the time. Margaret's writings really, really point to a woman completely disconnected from her family in every meaningful way.

And reality. Yes. She literally believed that she was in a form of spiritual warfare with Belle. And Belle had infiltrated Robin and the children, presumably to try and get at her. So is she Gabriel in this idea? It's hard to know, but she absolutely does see herself as the one to fight Belle. Okay. So she sees Belle in all of the family.

She sees Belle just in the house. Like different corners of the house can be filled with Belle at different points. And she carries out exorcisms. Like she is totally on another planet by this point. So yeah, deeply psychologically unhealthy situation at home. Robin was also a pushover. He couldn't stand up to Margaret, even though she was clearly extremely unwell.

This is the thing. Robin really is very, very passive. And he tells other people, but he says things to other people, like his friends, like, she's away with the fairies. And I'm like, that's putting it mildly yeah she needs to be in an institution she needs help she's moved in with the goblin king she's not away with the fairies no it's far far worse than that and i think it is difficult this isn't a case that's happening now even you know 30 years ago the conversations about things like mental health were completely different.

And I think Robin was poorly equipped to stand up to Margaret and also to know what to do. But she is not well. But she had successfully convinced David to be on her side. And we know that because she wrote in her diaries that David was the only one who really tried to please her by doing things like taking part in her hypnosis practices. He needs to be affirmed by her because of this emotional burden that she's put on him. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And so that's why, even though your mind does go to be like, why doesn't Robin do anything?

David is in his 20s. Like, the girls are older as well. Like, nobody is able to do anything to get Margaret help. And David is fully sort of in the flux with it. I do think there's like a folio due situation between Margaret and David. He really takes on a lot of her psychosis. And it only gets worse because Margaret was also doing things like mixing urine and phlegm to cure her cold. Oh, God.

She's just doing all sorts of crazy things. doing things like mixing urine and phlegm to cure her cold. Oh, God. She's just doing all sorts of crazy things. And again, from her diaries, you can see that David was apparently the one with the most motivation to, quote, commit to God and to put Satan behind him. So she really does score David as the only one really trying to get out of Belle's grasp. It's like she thought that the whole world was evil and filled with corruption and that she alone was trying to bring up her kids in this wonderful way and trying her hardest to protect them from the devil. That is very much

the vibe of Margaret Cullen's diaries. But she also screams of a woman with an intense persecution complex, some form of narcissism. It's hard to escape that feeling. Like, she's not well, there's some sort of delusion going on, but there's also something else. Because she writes things like, three days in bed and no drink offered, just much question asking. She even considered the mess and the condition of the house, so the absolute fucking state it's in,

to be down to a lack of care that the family had for her. Even though the kids were all in school and Robin was working all week and the only one bringing in a salary, she didn't see any of the house being a mess as like her role to sort out. It was because everybody else didn't care about her. That's why the house was a mess. like her role right to sort out it was because everybody else didn't care about her that's why the house was a mess yeah the classic i mean depression is quite a selfish disease it becomes everything happens to you it's very inward looking yes you're not an agent and

any of it is all just happening at you and it's you're not you're not playing any kind of role yeah and that's 100% Margaret to a T. Margaret was even known to stay in bed all day on Christmas Day, even though she's got four kids. And the weird thing about it is she doesn't keep any of it a secret. She tells friends and neighbours almost cheerfully about it, about things like staying in bed for six weeks at a time. And she does it like she's telling them she's doing it to punish the rest of the family or like they deserved it because they weren't good to her. And she also wrote in these diaries about how God had commanded that she build the sanctuary and that even if Robin left her and took half of the money with him, God would provide the funds to complete the work. And when you read the diary, it's really

hard to think of any way in which Margaret Bain's beliefs and quite obvious mental ill health don't play a significant role in the massacre of the entire family. It's very obvious from her diaries that Margaret was extremely delusional and totally detached from reality. Her delusions were underpinned by a mix of Judeo-Christian beliefs, but also very obviously informed by what she picked up during her 14 years in Papua New Guinea. That is not an insignificant amount of time. No, it's not. And I think that this is one of the points that we've talked about before

when we've talked about people with delusions, that it is formed by the things that you are exposed to yes if she had never gone to papa new guinea her delusions would be different because she would have only been exposed to the presbyterian church when she went there and you know and met these people who had more traditional beliefs more like indigenous ideas around spiritualism and astrology and reincarnation. She absorbed all of those things and they became a part of her delusion. And I think like PNG, we can't stress this enough, it is a fascinating place. I did not know this, but genetic testing shows that the inhabitants of PNG seem to have lived and evolved separately from the rest of the world for over 50,000 years.

That's why anthropologists love it. Absolutely. It's very much an anthropological like treasure trove. And this sort of like complete isolation from the rest of the world makes their cultures, languages and traditions very, very unique. But some of the beliefs prevalent in PNG, specifically that of Sangama, which is the local term for black magic, can be highly dangerous. The majority of the population of PNG believe in Sangama. which is the local term for black magic, can be highly dangerous. The majority of the population of PNG believe in Sangama and up to 85% of the population live in some of the most remote conditions on earth. Living in the highlands or on one of the many islands scattered around the mainland, people live with no access to electricity, no running water, no access to real education,

and almost no access to any sort of adequate health care. And also, there is no law and order in the form of like an organized police force. Rather, you see what you typically see in places like this, which is kind of like village elders overseeing tribal courts and dishing out verdicts and punishments as they see fit. And the most dangerous of rulings is, of course, that of somebody accusing you of being a witch. I know it sounds like we're going off track, but we're not. I promise you, we are very much needing to talk about this. And the idea of being accused of being a witch is apparently not a rare occurrence. Aid agencies working in PNG say that they evacuate on average 15 people a week at risk of being tortured and murdered because of

accusations of black magic. And those are the ones they know about or find out about. And in fact, over the years, the violence has just gotten worse and worse. The PNG Constitutional and Law Reform Commission reported in 2013 that as many as 150 people accused of sangama are killed each year in just one of PNG's 20 provinces, Chimbu. In 2013, Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, was burned to death on a pyre made of tyres, wood and rubbish in Papua New Guinea's second largest city, Mount Hagen. According to eyewitnesses, they got Kipari, who had already been tortured with a hot iron rod

and had been bound and gagged. They tied her up and then they dumped her onto a rubbish pile in the middle of the city and then they covered her with large black tyres which were set alight. Mobile phone footage taken by people at the scene showed Kafari burning on the pyre screaming for help for 30 minutes before she died. A lot of news reports talking about the issue of Sangoma in Papua New Guinea use the terms sorcery and sanguma interchangeably. But we read an article by the South China Morning Post. In that article, Douglas Young is interviewed. He's the Archbishop of Mount Hagen, and he explains that there are actually key differences between sorcery and sanguma. Differences that actually are quite important to the Bain case.

So sorcery, as Douglas explains it, is the use of potions, prayers, chants and spells. These are performed and can be bought from somebody who's a practitioner in order to positively influence future outcomes, things like getting a good harvest or whatever. However, Sangama, it is believed, is the power that an individual holds within themselves. So it's not the making of potions or rituals. It's a power that they have within themselves. And that power comes from possession. It comes from being possessed by something called a Pesai.

And this possession makes the host inhuman. Like that is a fundamental difference and it is really, really, really important because Margaret talks a lot in her book about Belle possessing and taking over different members of the family. But since Sangama can't be proven to have taken place, the main way of identifying a witch in PNG is confession and that is why torture is an integral part of the process. And like I mentioned earlier, Margaret is said to have performed exorcisms on her husband Robin but she always wrote in her diary to no avail. Belle didn't leave and she would write things in her diaries like despite her best efforts Belle was still strong. Margaret also believed that different family members were being taken over or possessed by

Belle or Belial, the demon that she had identified as having attached itself to her family and in PNG when these kind of beings take possession of an individual and make them inhuman death and killing that person that's been possessed is the only answer. We'll come back to this idea of possession in next week's episode, but keep it at the midpoint of your minds for now, because it is important. It is important. Yeah, you'll need it next week. And because of the kind of people that we are, we did want to really dig into Sangama and the 1971 Sorcery Act

and loads of other horrific stories that Suri's been reading about this week. And also why the rate of that kind of violence is not only on the rise right now in PNG, but it's at epidemic levels, thanks to modernisation and probably China. But we don't have time in this episode and it will derail us too much from the Bain case because we can't stop ourselves. So as a little treat for ourselves, we've done a shorthand on Sangamon that's coming

out next week. But for now, let's get back to the Baines. Although the diaries only came out after her death, the issues around Margaret's behaviours and beliefs were not unknown to people at the time. Social services had visited her and they reported that they found her intense and controlling around the children. Margaret also really struggled to settle into life in Dunedin. The Baines neighbours thought that Robin was a nice guy,

but they found Margaret incredibly opinionated. And they found it hard to talk to her because she would just talk and talk and talk and talk at you. She didn't need you to respond. So how were the rest of the family coping? Badly, in short. Yeah, because as we have very clearly laid out for you, Margaret is very much

off her rocker and she's also incredibly dominant. Robin was only there at weekends and away all week and according to those who knew him he was suffering from a deep depression due to his inability to find a job matching his decades of teaching experience and basically what happened to Robin is he's like a really, really like competent teacher when he's in New Zealand. He goes to PNG for such a long time that by the time he comes back,

he isn't like at the level that New Zealand school revolution has gone through. So he can't get a job in a good New Zealand school again. And like that is a big burden for him. And he was also at his wits' end with Margaret. Like I said, telling his friends that she was fucking on one. Now, Arowa, who, like we said, was doing well in the outside world, was desperate to get out of the family home.

Can't blame her. No, not at all. She'd even started talking to her friends about wanting to move out and into, like, a flat-sharing town. David, however, was still very much in Margaret's thrall and seems to be totally committed to the building of the sanctuary. And Laniat? Well, in 1993, when she was just 16, she left home.

Laniat had wanted her parents' permission to sign up for the dole, but they refused, hoping that with no other choice or no more money, she would have to come home. Instead, Laniat turned to sex work. Her father Robin eventually did agree to help her with rent for a flat, but it was obvious to everyone where Laniat was getting the money to survive. Laniat becomes a very interesting and important character in this story, especially because she made a disclosure in the months before her murder,

an accusation that seems to provide a clear motive for her father, Robin, having been the real killer. According to a neighbour, one night Laniat revealed that her and her father had been having an incestuous relationship for years,

and she was planning on finally telling her family the truth. Yeah. So now, not only is there a mother at the heart of the Bain family who sees the literal devil in everyone and everything,

there is also now a father who has allegedly, apparently, been sexually abusing his own daughter since she was a child. It painted the picture of an incredibly troubled home, and a pressure cooker situation for Robin in particular. He'd been pushed out by his family, he was being ostracised, he was sick to death of Margaret, he couldn't get the job that he wanted,

and now his filthy secret of the incest was also going to be revealed and as we all know we have seen people carry out family annihilations for a lot less than that oh yeah so that is where we are going to leave it today guys because there is too much too much to talk about that is part one of the bane murders. We will be back next week with part two, which will be the final part, as well as our shorthand on Sangama. So we'll see you then. So by the time we see you next time,

you'll know all about Sangama and you can bore everyone's tits off with it. Precisely. We will see you for part two in seven days. Yes. Goodbye. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you a profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary.

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