Detective Senior Sergeant Jim Doyle, 2IC on the Bain murder investigation. TVNZ/EYEWITNESS
sex with her then tried to get her to smoke a cannabis joint with him. “He had a big bag of this dope, a huge bag. When he went to the toilet I reached across for an ordinary cigarette and accidentally knocked some of his papers on the side table, and I saw he had an invitation to the police ball.” In return for enjoying free sex with prostitutes, police officers turned a blind eye to offences such as using underage schoolgirls in the parlours. Which brings us to yet another twist in this increasingly serious story: in late 1993, perhaps early 1994, Bayfield High School dropout Laniet Bain began working part time at the Reflections massage parlour. She would have been aged just 17. It is extremely likely that part of her “initiation” involved being forced to have sex with Dunedin police officers. And one of those officers was quite likely Detective Sergeant Milton Weir – the man who later controversially spearheaded the Bain family murder investigation and allegedly planted evidence to implicate David Bain. In a statement dictated to Colin Withnall QC in his presence but left unsigned amid fears for her life, Dunedin woman Susan Sutton recounts a conversation where one of her friends told her about Milton Weir’s behaviour. “Joyce has also told me about what Milton used to do when he was in the squad that was in charge of the Dunedin massage parlours. She said he would insist on having sex with the new young girls at the parlours as a perk of the job, and that Jack 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, June 2007
Det Sgt Milton Weir. NZHERALD
and Winnie Ingersoll would arrange it for him. “Also, some of the girls who were under age or had a drug conviction and accordingly weren’t allowed to work in the parlour would be allowed to work in parlours provided that they gave Weir free sex, not only for him but for his mates.” Let that sink in for a moment. Susan Sutton’s statement confirms what Investigate had already heard from Megan. But there’s even more corroboration – Megan doesn’t know either Sutton or her friend Joyce Conwell (aka Joyce Blondell); she’d already quit the parlours to work as a private escort before their time there. Were senior Dunedin police officers sexual clients of underage prostitute Laniet Bain? Did that have a bearing on how the police conducted their investigation into the Bain homicides of June 20, 1994? One man who knows something is Dean Cottle, who told police he’d met Laniet in a bar in Dunedin in August 1993. Cottle’s statement was taken by Detective Malcolm Inglis, who later worked on the David Benson-Pope tennis balls investigation. The statement is intriguing for both its explosive content, and the apparent lack of interest of police in what Cottle was telling them. For example, he reveals: “About the family, she told me that her father Robin had been having sex with her and this had been happening for year [sic]. That he was still doing this as I believed it...she didn’t want it coming out what had happened to her, I wasn’t to tell anyone.”