Robin Bain - how was it they charged his son?

Somebody recently wrote to myself and 3 others with the question:
What do you think is the most serious issue with the investigation and history of the Bain case?

The 4 people asked comprised an informed (as to the case) lay person, and equally informed Scientist and Psychologist and of course myself. The question was actually for 10 answers on a level of importance 1 to 10 and was qualified that the question(s) should be 'That is, one thing had it been done differently might have changed the whole thing and found the truth.'

Here are the answers which ironically were contained to a single answer rather than the need for a graduated 10.

1 says...A full investigation into Robin.

Answered by questionnaire: Mmm - that's what I think to.
My feeling is that everything else over the years is just built on that foundation.

2 says...In my opinion, it would be treating the crime scene as such from the start, and extensive photos taken before it was treated as a scenic tour by so many Police and personnel. If I can have 2, the second which is as important as the first was to let the pathologist into the house as early as possible.

Answered by the questionnaire: There might have been extensive photos taken before the scenic tours. No-one knows when the photos were taken. Some were obviously taken before 10.30; the video was started at 10:30 then more photos later. Trouble is no-one made any record of the photos. Weir should have done, and possibly the photographers too, but when the records were kept they have disappeared. That's what Schollum's stuff was trying to do - trying to stop it looking as slack as it was. Oh, and trying to  make it look like Weir was right about the lens. Schollum did the work for an earlier investigation and - get this - the police dismissed it as rubbish then.

3 says...Hi all. I reckon the most serious issue was that very early they allowed a theory to become a creed, at which point they started to only focus on anything, no matter how insignificant, that put David in a bad light. At the same time the ignored the glaring evidence against Robin - in fact they not only ignored it they threw it out.
So the one thing they could have done different, as 1 says, they should have investigated Robin.

Answered by questionnaire...Reassuring.

3 adds....The police got caught up in some kind of confirmation bias trap. It effectively gin-trapped their ability to properly investigate the tragedy. You would think they would learn to watch out for this sort of thing when they train to become a detective.

Answered by questionnaire.....According toan ex-senior detective I know, they are taught the opposite - to go with their gut feeling and set out to prove it.

1 says...Actually I'm probably too generous with my #1. Perhaps should be 'final death scene' as I use to call it. Blood on his hands, including his palms, damaged hands, the scene looking like suicide, the family difficulties, upward trajectory, no spatter shielding, the blood inside the barrel = suicide. They were actually down that track, had information coming in about incest - the changed course, why?

Answered by questionnaire.....That 'why' is something that has bugged me all along, and I think I have found the answer. I thought the answer was more likely to be something banal, because life tends to governed by the banal!
You listen to the 111 call: the way when David says 'hurry up' Dempsey (call centre) replies 'alright' in a very aggrieved tone. That tone of voice has always worried me: It's not not an appropriate response. Anyway, turns out Dempsey, at the end of the long shift, tired and wanting to get home, was convinced David's call was fake. He told his bosses and the other emergency staff so. Then the get to the scene and it's not. So I think they (the ambos) were primed by that to thinking it was   a fake. And because of that mindset, they saw fakes everywhere the looked - David's faint wasn't recognised as a faint but seen as fake fit. His distress was seen as fake because he was so hyper-alert (as he would be, but they were clearly not great psychologists). The cops not on the scene much - Robinson and the others - take the scene at face value: murder suicide. But Weir and Doyle, on the scene, talking to the ambos...they get infected with the fake mindset. Once that has happened, the rest is just a domino cascade.

Finish

To summarise the above, all four including the questionnaire agree in two different ways, the key is the non-investigation of Robin, person 2 confirming this by raising the death scene integrity which clearly to this day confirms Robin as the killer.

Before continuing I must make it clear that the Crown were never able to reduce or delete any of the following recorded above...Blood on his hands, including his palms, damaged hands, the scene looking like suicide, the family difficulties, upward trajectory, no spatter shielding, the blood inside the barrel = suicide. They were actually down that track, had information coming in about incest - the changed course, why?
None of these points of evidence were able to be reduced or deleted by the Crown or investigating officers, there was an attempt to distance the rifle from Robin's head at the 2nd trial, with 3 different Pathologists increasing the distance, but the original pathologist, Dempster,  who was at the scene maintaining the distance as contact or close contact. On that point, distancing the silencer tip from Robin's head was counter productive to his blood and dna found deep inside the barrel and counter productive to the evidence of an upward trajectory shot. All the evidence in the world could not delete from murder-suicide. Equally, the lack of spatter shield signified that there was no one else in the room at the time of Robin's death. The damage to Robin's hands, including the smears inside his palms corroborated his involvement in the murders, passive victims to homicide do not have bloody and bruised hands, certainly not smears on their palms, nor do they rest their heads against the barrel. For me this is one of the most disturbing issues of the Bain case - that the evidence always indicated suicide, indeed the investigation was heading down that track. Equally disturbing is the fact that David Bain need go through this Royal Prerogative nonsense despite being found not guilty.

Anyway, as to two points recorded in the dialogue between those above which bear examination.
The direction to go with 'gut feeling.' Really, this can have no place in modern policing. 'Gut feeling,' doesn't even have a scientific or any other realistic basis and when you consider it - there is an introduction of immediate bias. For example their was a 'gut feeling' about Scott Watson's guilt that has also resulted in a conviction the basis of which is eroded. 'Gut feeling' in my opinion is an open invitation that allows a prejudice against the way a suspect looks, what record they may or may not have, the 'feeling' an investigating officer might have about the suspect - none of these evaluations are evidence, but what follows from them is the 'opportunity' to exclude evidence that doesn't fit the 'gut feeling' and to look only for evidence compatible with that 'feeling.'

One thing these mojs are teaching the public, and hopefully the police alike, is that 'gut feeling' has no place in modern policing, and additionally, they lead to a closed mind situation which isn't even a poor substitute for Justice. Additionally, within the prosecuting authorities and the Courts there should be eternal shame that there are efforts to uphold 'gut feelings' when the so obviously result in mojs, and that looking for 'other' evidence, when critical evidence is proven as failed, provides a 'second bite at the cherry' that true Justice would never allow. If it sucks and stinks, throw the whole case out and don't waste millions on dollars on a pile of shit that began as a 'gut feeling.'

The second point of interest from the dialogue above, 'the priming' for the 'fake' call that turned out not to be fake. It might surprise some but I found some relief in this answer, something which I had long thought about, and which had me at times reaching for conspiracy theories. One of which included the fact that Robin Bain was a Freemason and my suspicions that the murder suicide was 'dissolved' as a protection of  'ones' own. I think now that it is far more likely that the priming for the 'fake' instigated the bias mindset, and although there might have been 'brothers' concerned that one of their own was accused of not only murder but of incest or worse, that it was not necessarily an influence in a poorly investigated murder-suicide.

Finally, I didn't know until yesterday the Police themselves rejected the efforts to 'place' the dusty lens in the relevant photo as anything more that a trick of light - how desperate of the Crown to revisit that at trial 2 and try to give it credibility.

For the deniers of Robin Bain's guilt - a similar case.

The hate-siters often fell about laughing, spitting out false teeth, laughing so hard that their wigs fell off, amused beyond reason of the explanation from the evidence that after killing his family Robin, washed and changed his clothes. Indeed they said he was praying in the lounge when he was shot.

Of course the finding of high-speed spatter going the wrong way on his right shoe put paid to that idea. The spatter was travelling  left to right, and not the required right to left that it needed to have been from his own wound. There was another big problem because had been praying in the manner described as being his custom, the top of his  feet and therefore tops of his shoes would have been tucked under him and blood travelling in any direction not able to spatter across his shoes.

Well, if he wasn't praying in the fashion described, apart from whispering a few words as he lent his left temple against the rifle, then he certainly wouldn't have washed in any fashion and changed his clothes. This despite trousers being found in his van with fresh blood on them. Nobody, if you listened to a hate-siter would clean up, change clothes after committing murder and before suiciding, the very idea would be preposterous. Yes, it would be if you didn't comprehend the evidence against  Robin and his unsound mind. He had 2 daughters both of whom had spoken to others of their fathers 'prevailence' upon them for sex from a very young age. We know of the problems Stephen was having, the sexual overtones of those and the anecdotal links to a fractured child-hood that may have lent toward that. We know that Robin saw limited scope left in his career as a teacher, his behaviour deteriorating to the point he was seen as needing to have help. Things at home were no better, he was excluded, left out of plans to redevelop the family home, a sharp tightening in the attitude of his wife toward him. Public recognition that one daughter had taken to prostituting herself and the younger son in conflict with the law, himself forced to sleep in his caravan far from the marital bed and his daughters.

Today is reported that a nz man living in England, Mark Barrett 48, having killed his wife in a stabbing frenzy, washed himself and dressed, even cleaned the knife before suiciding, giving an example as documented in many cases worldwide of a ritual cleansing, following a 'phsyical' cleansing before suicide. The problems Mark Barrett's perceived himself to be having were daunting but limited in his mind to a single figure, his partner Rosie Mayer. Robin Bain, looking at the anecdotal evidence, had problems in every area of his life, work, with his wife, his two daughters (one reported as preparing to lay a complaint against him,) a son at odds with the law in a disturbing way. Looking at the attempt of 'cleansing' that besets some troubled souls, Robin's was advanced on all fronts.

Considering the likelihood that his daughters were not simply being mischievous for some odd reason in their claims against him, then he was facing prison, ostracisation in his own community. It is said that he was a 'devout' man and one can assume that he could easily have considered that there were things he needed to hide from his God, clean up or put right in some way. He may have considered that he had let 'God' down, and like many perpetrators seen his victims as the 'true' cause of that. Overwhelming his life was distorted and he needed to distance himself from a life gone wrong, perhaps turn back the clock to the time when things had been 'normal' before things and people had gone bad. Robin was in a bad place, somewhere that made him feel 'dirty.'

But what could he put right? Nothing if he had a rational mind, other than to seek help. Seeking help though would have not brought relief from that which he couldn't bear, wouldn't resolve the relentless turmoil his life had become. Young Stephen is thought to have fought for his life, the reality is that probably out of pure fear he did, however his first wound was determined as going to be fatal.  But it was Laniet who the evidence suggests might have been deliberately wounded and later finished off who was apparently subjected to a less than 'clean or efficient' death. A pillow put over her head for the final shot, as her killer slowly found his anger and disgust sated. She whom there was evidence of being in a 'relationship' with her father that was going to be revealed to the police. Some of this is speculation of course, though based on compelling evidence in every aspect.

What Mark Barrett saw as needing to be put right was in context of a new relationship, what Robin saw as failed and stalled in his life was a complete marriage, place in the Community, and an aborted relationship with those his duty had been to protect. What both men shared was the need to wash and dress before arresting their own torment that had not been vanquished by the spilling of the blood of those they 'loved.'