Retired Det Sergeant Doyle's interview with Binnie

This interview has been in the public domain for a few months now and reveals some extraordinary information about the Bain case from new perspectives. Page 53.


Police don't tend to look at the motive if it's not clearly there as an issue. I n
this particu lar case , n o . I don't think at any stage we looked for a motive for
David killing his fam i ly. I think that to be very fair, I think the approach that we
p robably had taken at that point in time was that this was a you n g man who,
for whatever reason, had snapped and I know that myself and p robably a lot
20 of other police officers would have dearly hoped that there had been some
med ical condition become evident that wou ld have explained it but, aside from
that, no there was no q uestion of tryi ng to p u rsue a motive and I , I think in this
sort of a situation you'd never, ever be able to ascerta in what a motive wou ld
be.
25


Doyle is clearly saying that he 'dearly hoped' there was a 'medical condition' that made David 'snap.' On the surface that, I gather, would explain what happened and put everything in order in Doyle's mind - David had a medical condition but the fact he didn't wasn't necessary. But taking into account that David wasn't initially claimed to be a suspect that left only one person and I wonder why Doyle wasn't therefore hoping Robin had a 'medical condition' and why that was never investigated at the outset. Particularly so after police were told about the incest allegations. 'Hoping' for a medical condition seems incomparable to not investigating the prime suspect, as Robin was, at least according to Doyle, in the early days of the inquiry. Of course when looking for firm ground from the man ostensibly leading the investigation it might have been expected he would have reasons to subjecting the surviving victim to an intrusive strip search within hours of being sensitive to such an extent that he didn't test David for GSR. There are sharp conflicts in what Doyle says, and what is known to have happened.

David was being held under guard from the time police arrived. He was rightfully being treated as a suspect, it was clear that if it wasn't 'suicide murder' as it appeared to be then it was murder and David was the suspect. Taking into account that even 2 decades later nothing has changed from the morning the police arrived at the Bain household, it still holds true that it was one man or the other. Trying to pretend David was not a suspect but yet that he was under guard and strip searched is a frustrating observation. I'm surprised that Doyle continues with that theme all these years later. The invasive search was for clear reasons, that there might have been a sexual content to the murder of 3 women. The specific strip search was looking for injuries and the body chart was filled out in the prescribed manner. The police in their letter to the Minister para 535 - 539 regarding the Binnie report confirms that the examination (strip search) was thorough. A deflation for the hate-siters that have said firstly that the search never happened then later that it was limited, the police themselves say it was thorough and clearly imply they thought Binnie was offended by the fact a strip search took place and yet they were merely doing their job properly.

So accepting that the search was thorough and invasive why does Doyle feel the need to continue the theme that David was not a suspect. I can only think of one obvious reason, by Doyle claiming that David wasn't a suspect (when in fact he had to be as a survivor in a house of the dead) that it places an emphasis on David's 'guilt.' Or, 'at first we thought it was Robin (even though he was investigated) but then we discovered it was David.' About as persuasive as the 'paper run' alibi. I wonder if it ever occurred to Doyle that because there'd been a fight that the 'suspect' was likely to have blood on his hands or at least damage to his hands. Pryde reported that there was none to David on day 1 and Robin's body showed both damage and blood. I wonder how that could have been ignored by Doyle if Robin was the suspect and David 'wasn't.'


B I N N I E J :
And what I 'm talking about i s not the container that went back to the
(ina u d i b le 1 3 : 3 5 : 1 7) but I'm speaking of the samp les that were refrigerated?
MR DOYLE:
I appreciate that.
B I N N I E J :
25 And I don't believe that the destruction of those sam p les was the subject of a
letter to defence counse l .
30
MR DOYLE :
No i t wasn't.
B I N N I E J :
And therefore you wouldn't - h e had n't been i n touch with you about it, by the
same toke n , you had n't been i n touch with him to say, look, we have -

and earlier:


B I N N I E J :
You see what concerned m e i s that the rules for appeal to the P rivy Council
seem to be q u ite flexible that you can't look at a calendar and say, right the
d ate for seeking leave from the Privy Council h as passed therefore the case is
DOYLE J O Le I NTERV I EW (1 9 J uly 201 2)
6 1
done, because they like to retain flexibility a s to whether they take appeals.
So that the o n ly way of determ i n i ng whether the matter would go to the
Privy Council wou l d be by contacting d efence cou nsel .
5 M R DOYLE:
At that stage , Sir, no ind ication had been g iven to us that the matter was going
past the New Zealand Court of Appeal. To that end , I had put it in writing to
the defence counsel of our i ntentions of dealing with the exh ibits notwith -
1 0 B I N N I E J :
Well , you put it - I th ink you put i n writing that you were dealing with a
container of stuff -
MR DOYLE:
1 5 Absolutely.
20


M R DOYLE:
1 5 It never happened , probably because it's not the normal process of the way
tria ls or post-trial i n my, my experience post-trial p rocesses. I 've neve r been
i nvolved in a trial that, in a case that had gone to P rivy Council from reca l l and
so once it had gone to the New Zealand Court of Appeal that seemed to be
the end of the matter for us.
20
BINNIE J :
But you were aware there was a potential for a n appeal -
M R DOYLE:
25 N o .
B I N N I E J :
- to the P rivy Council?
30 M R DOYLE:
No I was not. N ot at that point in time and the moment I found o ut that there
was a potential and in fact it may have been M r Karam that b rought this to the
pol ice notice or M r Guest. It was not until J u n e of that year that counsel came
- that's J u ne that we' re d ealing with '96?





Looking back it's difficult to accept that Doyle might not have considered that a further appeal might have gone to the Privy Council, but regardless surely the only option was to write to counsel regarding intention to destruct evidence. He did it in the case of the items inside the container but not the smaller, and no doubt more important specimens held in a fridge. I suspected that because Doyle was  quite frank about some of the aspects of the investigation being a shambles that he would have conceded on not only the 'destroyed' evidence material, but also that David was a suspect and even when Robin was a 'suspect' that he wasn't investigated, it's so plain to see.

After all, this was the man who after saying he was 'hoping' for a 'medical condition' and who went onto explain that 'motives' were not required and who refused to investigate Robin's alleged motive (exposure as a participant in incest or worse) sent his charges to discover what David might have been 'reading.


And lastly, j ust on this q uestion of motive. There was a d i rective, I believe you
sent o ut early o n in J u ne , about checking bookshops for what David Bain had
been read ing or viewing in an effort to perhaps identify his interests and
whether there was anything pecu liar or bizarre or d isturb i n g . Do you recall
1 0 that?

In either Doyle's evidence or that of Weir's to Binnie it is mentioned that police considered that there wasn't 'enough' blood on Robin for him to have been the murderer. On the basis that there wasn't enough blood on David therefore to be murderer unless he had 'washed up,' I can't see how if one man is 'clean' of blood and the other isn't it means that the first man 'cleaned up,' but of course that the second didn't. This was one of the fundamentals in deciding that David was guilty - ignoring the wounds and blood on Robin but prefer the no wounds and no blood on David. Going further that one man might wash up but that the other wouldn't. It's very easy to see that the fundamentals in this case were amiss, and that there was no vigorous debate going on. Somebody would reach a decision and others would simply follow, no body for example, appears to have said Robin has bruised hands and we need to eliminate those from the inquiry. Or that he has a red substance under his nails and that must be tested, or that we must find out whose blood is on the towel and so on. Instead we see it said 'David must have done it and then washed up' despite there being no proof.

If such short shortsightedness and lack of robust reason could be called remarkable then so too could Doyle's reliance on the timing of the washing machine. He was able to do this without reservations for the age of the machine (which when later tested showed to jump entire cycles) or that somebody having just killed members of their family would have the presence of mind to set a known unreliable machine exactly and expect an exact result. The subtext of Doyle's interview is clear they were looking for admissions from David throughout, they thought he was a 'spinner' and would fess up or display his 'medical condition.' That's why Doyle, or who ever gave the order, wanted him fully examined, and on the first morning from 'physical' proof of David's guilt then a confession would follow, or a consent for psychiatric examination and then that blood on Robin's palms would 'seemingly' no longer matter, and so  too the bruises to his hands that Doyle never oversaw being investigated - even if just to remove them as 'relevant' to Robin's obvious guilt.