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Story: Fires and fire services

Burning the Bain home

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Burning the Bain home

In 1994 the large ramshackle home of the Bain family, in Dunedin, was burned down by the Fire Service at the request of relatives of the five people who had been killed there. The fire helped erase horrific memories, but it may also have destroyed evidence that could have been important in the later trials of David Bain, who was convicted of murder in 1995 and acquitted in 2009 after a retrial.

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Otago Daily Times

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How to cite this page

Nancy Swarbrick, Fires and fire services – Causes of fires, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/21863/burning-the-bain-home (accessed 14 June 2026).

Story by Nancy Swarbrick, published 10 March 2010.