My brother Robin Bain
It was a pleasant, sunny morning in Ōtaki on Monday, June 20, 1994, when my 82-year-old mother, Marion Bain, went out to her letter box and, to her delight, found a letter from her 14-year-old grandson Stephen. “Dear Nani, … the most amazing thing has just happened to me, I don’t have any jokes to send you this time! Lots of love, Stephen.”
So ended the cheerful and carefree letter, posted from Dunedin the previous Friday. What Marion did not know, and could not have known as she read the letter from the boy she loved so much, was that it was the last he would ever write. Even before she had taken it from her letter box, Stephen was dead. His letter was still lying on her table when her second son, my brother Peter, arrived at her door with news that was almost too much for her to bear. The bodies of her eldest son, Robin, Robin’s wife, Margaret, their two daughters, Arawa and Laniet, and Stephen himself had been found that morning inside their family home in Every St, Dunedin. All had died of gunshot wounds.
Our family totally rejected the hearsay allegations made against Robin … Nothing has occurred since to change our minds.
Five months before that terrible day, Robin spent a peaceful and relaxing three weeks with Marion in Ōtaki, swimming, sunbathing, reading and having a companionable time at the family home. She loved having her oldest son there, just to herself for the first time in many years.
She missed her Dunedin family very much and loved them all. She wanted to see more of them, but they had always been far away.
Robin and his family had spent 15 years in Papua New Guinea,
