STORY: "Why the David Bain story needed to be told one more time," by reporter Adam Dudding, published by Stuff on July 22, 2017.
GIST: "Black Hands, a 10-part podcast series examining the
complex and controversial Bain family murders by award-winning Stuff
journalist Martin van Beynen is launching on July 24. The slaughter at Every St, Dunedin, was 23 years ago. There have been
two trials, numerous reviews, half a dozen books, a guilty verdict and a
not-guilty verdict, millions of dollars spent and millions of litres of
newspaper ink spilt since then. Seriously, is there anything left to
say about the Bain family murders?
Actually, says veteran journalist Martin van Beynen, there is. Loads. So much in fact that on Monday, Stuff will
release a 10-part podcast series, written and narrated by van Beynen,
which will tell the strange story of the Bain family murders and their
aftermath once again, starting with that disturbing 111 call of June 20
1994, when David Bain announced that his family – father Robin, mother
Margaret and siblings Arawa, Laniet and Stephen – were "all dead". The series is called Black Hands,
a reference to something Bain said to his aunt and uncle soon after the
murders, when he read a news report and grew distressed, putting his
head in his hands and repeatedly talking about "black hands taking them
away". The Bain case, says van Beynen, is just one of those
stories that is so complex and so unusual that the public fascination
never ends, even after all those books and the wall-to-wall trial
coverage including a famous TV fist-pump, and the sequels concerning judges who disagreed, a payout that wasn't a payout and, most recently, a name-change and emigration. He's
been following the Bain case in one way or another for two decades, and
the podcast in particular has consumed a phenomenal amount of his time
and attention. But he says it's wrong to assume he's obsessed with the
case. People don't believe him when he says it, but "it's never been
under my skin".Martin van Beynen, veteran print journo and now a podcaster, has been following the Bain case for 20 years.
This is just something that sometimes happens in journalism: you
follow a case, and you develop some understanding of it so you keep
getting asked to follow it, and then one day, without really meaning to,
you discover you've become some kind of expert. Van
Beynen's home is in Diamond Harbour on the south shore of Lyttelton
Harbour, 45 winding minutes' drive south of central Christchurch. Upstairs, the bedroom that used to belong to van Beynen's oldest son
Jack (himself a Stuff journalist) is now Bain HQ. The single bed is
covered in ringbinders of court transcripts and evidence files. A
bookshelf contains five Bain-related titles, including three by Bain's
longtime supporter Joe Karam. A pinboard by the bed holds a diagram of
65 Every Street complete with body outlines, an aerial photo of suburban
Dunedin, and a blown-up photo of the Bain victims' joint headstone. Pinned alongside are van Beynen's scribbled notes to himself: "Why the
keys in the red anorak?"; "Alibi – out on my round as normal"; "wash
hands, clean up, 111". Van Beynen was aware, of course, of the
sensational 1994 murder and the 1995 trial that found David guilty of
killing his family. He was working at the Press in Christchurch and knew Dunedin from his days at the Otago Daily Times. But he didn't engage with the case journalistically until 1997, after former All Black Karam published David and Goliath, laying out the case for Bain's innocence. Van Beynen says he was assigned the Karam interview mainly because he
happened to have a law degree, which meant he often got the
justice-related yarns. The pair had a drink at the Crowne Plaza and at
one point went to Karam's room so he could change. "I remember
seeing him in his underpants in his hotel room, and I thought, this guy
is really quite confident. No qualms about that at all." He was
also impressed with Karam's book, but he did his own research and
talked to reporters who'd covered the trial and were convinced of Bain's
guilt, "so I balanced that against what Joe was saying." After the piece ran, Karam "said I was the 'most conscientious journalist in New Zealand'. He wouldn't say that now." Then in 2009, the Bain retrial came to Christchurch, and van Beynen was
sent to cover all 12 weeks. It was a national obsession, and feeding
the demand was a hard slog: online updates six times a day, something
fresh for the daily print story, plus a weekend feature wrap-up. He wasn't the only reporter there for the entire retrial, but once it
was over, and Bain was found not guilty, he did something out of the
ordinary. He'd been chatting with Fairfax's then-executive
editor Paul Thompson about how the jury seemed to get it wrong second
time around. Van Beynen had gone in with a reasonably open mind; he'd
listened to all the same evidence as the jury, and as far as he was
concerned, the evidence clearly pointed to Bain's guilt. "And Paul said, 'Why don't you write something for us?' So
he did, and the response, says van Beynen, was amazing: hundreds of
emails and phone calls and letters, mostly along the lines of: "This
needed to be said." Van Beynen says he is in no way a
campaigner or a crusader. "I was just a journalist who tried to cover
the case in an honest way, and I came up with some conclusions.".........Because that's how this
podcast began its life: from 2014 to 2016 van Beynen researched and
wrote a 100,000 word manuscript that contained significant new research
and told, for the first time, the entire Bain story. When a publishing
deal fell through van Beynen thought it was destined for a bottom
drawer, but Fairfax's South Island editor-in-chief Joanna Norris
reckoned it might make a great podcast. Van Beynen said yes, and the rest – including a horrifying
realisation that podcasts are totally different from books, a
50,000-word trim, a total rewrite, many hours in a recording studio,
battles with Bain's legal team over access to the courtroom audio from
the trials, more edits and fresh interviews with sources – is history. He
wasn't a podcast listener before, but he's listened to many now, and
reckons this one's pretty good. He doesn't want to give too much away,
but there's some fascinating new material from the diaries of Bain's
mother Margaret and new interviews from people who knew David well........."This is New Zealand's most talked-about case, maybe its most
sensational case and yet I'm not sure that people really understand what
the facts are. That was one of the reasons – to make sure there was a
balanced account out there somewhere."
The story can be found at:'
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/93827727/martin-van-beynen-why-the-david-bain-story-needed-to-be-told-one-more-time PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the
Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my
previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put
considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith
and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic
pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses
on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please
send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest
to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy;
Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
