PRELUDE TO MURDER
A new drama series tracks the months leading up to the Bain family killings, in what would become one of the country’s most infamous murder cases.
A new TV drama series tracks the months leading up to the Bain family killings.
Twenty-six years ago, on a freezing winter’s morning in Dunedin, 22-year-old David Bain called emergency services to his home at 65 Every St, telling the 111 operator: “They’re all dead”. Upon arrival at the run-down property, police encountered five deceased members of the Bain family. It was the scene of what would become New Zealand’s most infamous family murder case, leaving the nation polarised and perplexed.
Speculation, rumour and controversy would mar the case for years to come, but lost was the story of the Bains as a family of talented people whose lives were tragically cut short. A new TVNZ 1 series aims to show the family in a new light, taking the focus away from the dreadful circumstances of their deaths and the subsequent events that played out in the public eye.
Black Hands is a five-part drama series depicting the 16 months prior to the shootings, which took place on the morning of 20 June, 1994. The highly anticipated miniseries stars wellknown actors Joel Tobeck and Luanne Gordon as parents Robin Bain and Margaret Cullen respectively. A cast of newcomers is portraying the couple’s four children, with Richard Crouchley in his first leading role as David Bain.
While you’d be hard pressed to find a New Zealander who doesn’t have an opinion over the perpetrator of the murders, Tobeck explains that the Black Hands series is no ‘whodunit’. “It’s about a family being a family 16 months prior to something terrible happening,” he says. “At the end of the day, they’re just normal people trying to get by the best they can, which would speak to a lot of New Zealand.”
Crouchley hopes the series will show that the Bains are “a lot more relatable than most people realise”.
Considering the case has been tried twice with different results, it’s little wonder that much of the discussion around the shootings has been speculation over the culprit. There were only ever two suspects – father Robin Bain, and David Bain, the eldest son who was the only survivor. David was charged with five counts of murder and was convicted in 1995 of fatally shooting Robin, 58, mother Margaret, 50, and siblings Arawa, 19, Laniet, 18, and Stephen, 14. After an appeal to the Privy Council succeeded in 2007, David was retried in 2009 and acquitted on all charges. His defence team argued Robin had murdered four family members and then killed himself.
IN FAMILIAR HANDS
That Black Hands will focus on the lead-up to the murders through the eyes of the family members should indicate to fans of the record-breaking podcast of the same name that the two series will differ significantly. The podcast, written and narrated by journalist Martin van Beynen, has been dubbed ‘New Zealand’s version of Serial’ for its investigation of the murders and its laying out of the evidence. Despite the different take for the TV show, Van Beynen has very much had a hand in the adaptation.
The series was based on Van Beynen’s just-released book, Black Hands, which production company Warner Bros bought the rights to. Van Beynen worked as a script adviser on the series, assisting screenwriter Gavin Strawhan by suggesting scenes and checking the script for accuracy. “We had to come up with scenes that were more or less based on what actually happened and as depicted in the book, but obviously with some licence for a fictional portrayal, because that’s what it is,” explains Van Beynen. “This is a drama; it’s not a documentary, so there is some licence taken, but I think everyone’s trying to be reasonably faithful to what we know actually happened. And we do know a lot about the family in the couple of years before the murders.”
While a plethora of information about the real-life characters can be an advantage for the actors telling the story, it also creates a challenge in that viewers will have predetermined ideas of the people being portrayed. “How does one prepare to play such an iconic role?” says Tobeck of portraying Robin Bain. “For me, I just go on instinctually how I feel Robin was. I based that on what I had seen over the years through news, and I had to make sure that [director] David Stubbs and I were on the same page with what we think Robin was like as a person.”
Crouchley says the process was similar for him, but given the series is based on the months leading up to the murders, he made sure not to rely on the material that is available about David from after the tragedy. “When looking to the press that’s already out there about David, it’s all quite muddied and often from a particular
point of view, one way or the other,” says Crouchley. “So, to me, it was actually quite interesting to try and ignore almost everything that had happened after the incident to the trials.” As Tobeck notes, there is much more to acting as real people than simply mimicking their mannerisms. “We’re not doing impersonations of these people, which I think is a trap that some people can fall into when they’re making true-life stories,” Tobeck says. “We don’t want to do an impersonation of them because we owe them more than that.”
LIVES BEFORE DEATHS
The fact that David Bain has one of the most recognisable names and faces in New Zealand means portraying him is a big ask for any actor, not least one who is fresh out of drama school. Crouchley found out he had scored the role, his first major gig, just a week after graduating from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School. “As soon as I got the role I realised the responsibility of it, for the public, but also for the family and for David, who is still alive, and balancing the responsibility between all three.”
It’s fair for Crouchley to feel as though he has a duty to the person he is portraying and to living family members, but he is also right in acknowledging that the public will have high expectations for Black Hands. In 2009, the year of the retrial, David Bain was the most googled New Zealander and the trial was the third most-searched-for news story in the country. Van Beynen has, of course, scrutinised the case more than most, although he didn’t begin writing about the shootings until 1997, after the release of David and Goliath, the book penned by David’s long-time advocate, former All Black Joe Karam. In 2009, Van Beynen was assigned to cover David’s second trial in Christchurch for The Press newspaper. “It was very suspenseful; it was a very tense atmosphere,” he says. “There was so much at stake, and there was so much interest in it. David’s fate was in the jury’s hands, so you can imagine the anticipation and the tension there. And then, when he was acquitted, there was just an eruption from his supporters. That was quite interesting.”
The readiness of many to leap to David’s defence was one of the factors that piqued Van Beynen’s interest in the case and motivated him to sift through the evidence himself. “I wanted to see why so many people were prepared to vouch for him without really knowing that much about the case, so that was always an interesting aspect for me.” Believing the case was worthy of another book about the latest developments and evidence, Van Beynen spent years researching and writing a draft. After a major publisher who was interested pulled out for fear of court action, it was suggested to Van Beynen that he turn the book into a podcast. Now, Black Hands in book form has finally hit the shelves, and Van Beynen says it contains double the amount of detail contained within the podcast.
The Black Hands podcast, which was released in 2017, has racked up more than five million downloads and topped the podcast charts in NZ, Australia, Britain and Ireland – evidence that the Bain murders still capture the public’s attention here and even abroad. There are many factors that have contributed to the case’s high profile, not least of which is that it has been a drawn-out saga that stirs strong emotions over injustice. “The scale of the loss is huge; it’s a middle-class family drama; it’s a polarising case because people will opt for either side,” says Van Beynen. “There are so many elements that are at play in this case that you can really understand why it would galvanise a whole country – and polarise a whole country.”
Indeed, as Warner Bros producer Robin Scholes notes, “When you begin to read about the Bain family, the emphasis is on who murdered them – as opposed to who they were.” Van Beynen says the humanising portrayal of the Bains seen in the TV series will “bring home what a tragedy this whole thing was”, as it’s easy to forget that the characters of this story were talented people with lives ahead of them. Crouchley and Tobeck recall being offered a succinct explanation of the series: the show is about the Bains’ lives, not their deaths. “That really stuck for me,” says Tobeck. “It’s about people living their lives. It just so happens that at some point, it went one way.”
“THERE ARE SO MANY ELEMENTS THAT ARE AT PLAY.” MARTIN VAN BEYNEN