Stephen Robin Bain

Stephen Bain was the youngest victim of the Bain family killed in their Dunedin home in 1994. Before his death, the 14-year-old showed his gutsy nature. Martin van Beynen reports for the Faces of Innocents series: In the last minutes of his short life, Stephen Bain, 14, showed the pluck which typified his character. Faced with a gunman determined to shoot him, he fought for his life. It was not enough and the gunman strangled him and then shot him in the top of his head with a .22 rifle. Stephen's body was the last found by police in the Bain house in Every Street in Dunedin early on June 20, 1994. Minutes earlier police found the bodies of Stephen's parents, Margaret, 50, and Robin, 58, and his sisters Laniet, 18, and Arawa, 19. His brother David, 22 at the time of the murders, was found guilty of the shootings in a jury trial in 1995 but was acquitted in a retrial in 2009. Stephen, born in Papua New Guinea (PNG) where Robin was a senior lecturer at a teachers' college, came from a troubled family dominated by his eccentric mother Margaret. In PNG, the family was mainly home-schooled by Margaret, without great success. Robin was a quiet, serious man who took a back seat in the running of the family. The family returned to Otago in 1988 to live in a rundown villa in Andersons Bay, Dunedin. The Bains' marriage deteriorated, and around the time of the murders, Robin was sleeping in an old caravan at the back of the property. Family and friends say Stephen was a cheerful boy who was starting to develop his musical talent by playing trumpet in the school band. He had many friends and an enthusiastic attitude to everything he did. "He had a smile that could light up the place and there was always a little bit of mischief. A funny, loving, happy, normal kid. He was a good swimmer and was playing water polo. His sisters just loved him," a relative, who asked not to be named, says. His physical education teacher at Bayfield High School, Paul Hewson, told the court in 2009, that Stephen was a "real livewire". "He was full of life and in physical education he was a strong and very robust boy. He wasn't a sportsman in the sense that he had really good ball skills, but he was very, very tenacious and very physical. He wasn't afraid of physical contact, he would really get stuck into things."Certainly in the fourth form he was springing up to at least my height and he – big hands and big feet ... He was all arms and legs and when he did physical education, he would certainly rip into things. "Quick-tempered as well ... not in a really nasty sense but I do recall twice, once in physical education and once in social studies having to break a little fracas up because he – like if someone did him an injustice, he would certainly stand up for himself. "Like, in social studies, someone pushed his book off the desk and wasn't really apologetic about it and he was up quick as a flash to – yeah quite a quick temper. But I didn't view that as necessarily a bad thing, he just stood his corner, he was quite a brave – a brave guy. That was my impression of him anyway." Stephen's body was covered in streaks and smears of blood, small cuts, grazes and bruises. Blood could be seen on the soles of his feet. He had a bullet wound at the bottom of his left hand, the bullet having passed through his hand to cause a deep gouge in his scalp which bled profusely. Another bullet had entered the top of his head. His room was crammed with a set of bunks, household items and his own bed. High up on some book shelves, he displayed his Asterix books, and on the wall above his bed, were pictures of attractive women in swimsuits. Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/81499657/faces-of-innocents-steph...