Curtain comes down on evidence

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is the evidence in this trial."

With those words, Justice Graham Panckhurst yesterday brought down the curtain on evidence from 184 witnesses over 54 days of the landmark Bain murder retrial.

Justice Panckhurst thanked the jury for their work and attention to date. The case had been a "long haul", and will soon enter its final phases before the jury sits down with almost 4000 pages of evidence to consider if David Bain, 37, murdered his parents and three siblings on June 20, 1994.

The trial is on hold until after the long weekend, with the prosecution to give their closing address on Tuesday. Bain's defence team will give their closing on Wednesday, based on Bain's father Robin, 58, shooting dead the family and then himself.

Among the dramatic final evidence heard yesterday was statements read from a wanted man about Laniet Bain's intentions to come clean on her troubled life, and a dispute between experts over crucial fingerprints Bain left on the murder weapon.

Bain's uncle, John Boyd, and aunt, Jan Clark, also appeared yesterday to reject evidence from Robin's cousin Michael Mayson that a senior policeman, a day after Bain's arrest, had called Bain "the enemy" and stated that police were "going to get him".

Bain's defence team had sought to call Dean Cottle to give evidence in court. A warrant has been issued for this arrest, but the court heard yesterday that he had left the country.

In sworn statements to police in June 1994, after the killings, Mr Cottle said he had been friends with Laniet, although another witness says Mr Cottle was Laniet's pimp and was blackmailing her for sex.

Mr Cottle said Laniet told him she was a prostitute, and that her father had been having sex with her for years.

"She also told me that her sister Arawa had been involved in some prostitution."

Mr Cottle said he was surprised to learn, on the Friday three days before the murders, that Laniet had moved in with her father.

"She told me that she was going home that weekend to tell the family everything about what had been occurring. She also said: 'I'm going to put a stop to everything'. She actually used the term that she was sick of 'everyone getting up her'. She did not actually refer to the incest with her father."

"She said that she was going to tell them everything, and make a clean start of things. I thought by saying this, she was going to tell her parents about prostitution."

Mr Cottle said Laniet wanted to move back to Papua New Guinea (PNG), where she used to live with her family, but also spoke of something happening to her there that he presumed was sexual.

The court has previously heard that Laniet told people she had been raped in PNG and given birth to a "black" baby. One witness said Laniet stated she had given birth to her father's child in PNG.

Police fingerprint officer Kim Jones and British fingerprint expert Carl Lloyd gave their opposing views yesterday on whether blood was under the fingerprints Bain left on the rifle used in the killings.

Mr Jones, for the prosecution, maintained Bain's fingers were bloodied when he handled the rifle's wooden stock. But Mr Lloyd, for the defence, said the evidence did not back this up.

Mr Lloyd, giving evidence via video link from the United Kingdom, said the prints were in sweat, and possibly a contaminant like gun oil.

Black and white photographs taken of the fingerprints had shown the ridges of the prints as white. If the prints were in blood, they would absorb light and show up as black, Mr Lloyd said.

But Mr Jones said the blood in the prints had shown up as white under a special light setting from a device called a polilight.

He said he had been able to replicate the process using his own bloodied thumb on a wooden rifle stock, which when photographed under the same polilight showed white ridges.

Mr Jones rejected Mr Lloyd's suggestion that the prints had been chemically enhanced.

The prosecution say Bain put his bloodied fingers on the rifle when shooting his family, but the defence say the prints were left months earlier when Bain went hunting.