Blood on sock 'matched dead family'

David Bain had blood on his sock and shorts that could match his dead family, and his own blood may have been on the rifle said to have been used in the killings, a court has been told.

The High Court at Christchurch heard scientific evidence yesterday that blood on one of the socks Bain was wearing could have come from his sister Laniet or brother Stephen, who were both shot dead in their bedrooms.

Bain, 37, told police he came home from his paper run on June 20, 1994, and found his mother Margaret and father Robin dead and called 111, but did not enter his siblings' bedrooms.

He is on trial for shooting dead his parents and three siblings. The Crown prosecutors say he left bloody sockprints as he walked in the house.

Bain's defence team said Robin Bain murdered the rest of the family before shooting himself with the .22 rifle, and the bloody prints were his.

Peter Cropp, who worked as a forensic scientist for the ESR in 1994, told the court he analysed blood on the rifle and various items of clothing from the Bain family, first to confirm it was human blood, and then to establish who it came from.

He tested for blood on socks worn by David Bain and found human blood present in stains on the bottom of one of the socks.

Further testing showed this blood could have come from either Stephen or Laniet Bain. It was likely this blood had dropped on the sock and soaked through it. Staining was seen on the second sock, but could not be confirmed as human blood.

The black shorts David Bain wore were examined and a human blood stain found in the crotch area, Dr Cropp said. The blood could have come from Stephen, Laniet, Margaret, or his sister Arawa, but not from David or Robin.

Dr Cropp said he was also given five plastic tubes with blood samples scraped from the rifle, which was found lying next to Robin Bain's body in the lounge of the family home.

His testing confirmed the five samples were human blood and four of them were of one particular type. The blood could have come from David, Stephen or Laniet, but not from the rest of the family.

Stephen Gutowski, a scientist at the Victorian Police Forensic Science Centre in Australia, said he was sent blood samples from the Bain house in 1997.

He studied blood on the clothing of Robin Bain and told the court he found that DNA he extracted from some of the blood matched that of Robin, but there was also a mix of DNA from someone else.

Blood from gloves found in Stephen's bedroom after a violent struggle matched Stephen's DNA.

Peter Hentschel, a retired ESR scientist who helped police with scientific analysis in the Bain house, had to defend his work yesterday as Bain's lawyer, Michael Reed, QC, put to him that his record-keeping was below what is expected of a scientist.

Mr Hentschel: "What I recorded in those days were what the procedure was. Nowadays it would be quite different."

Mr Reed also put it to him that he gave misleading evidence in Bain's first murder trial in 1995 by saying he took blood samples from under fingerprints found on the rifle.

Mr Hentschel said he stated only that the blood was taken from the area of the rifle where the fingerprints were found.

Mr Reed asked him why he did not mention any blood smearing between the fingerprints on the rifle when he examined it, when two other scientists later reported finding smearing there.

Mr Hentschel: "I would have to accept when they examined the rifle there were smears there.

"But I still maintain that in 1994 when I first saw that firearm, there was no smearing there."

The trial continues.