He and a fellow officer checked the other rooms in the dank, musty smelling Every St house and found five dead bodies, Sergeant Murray Stapp told the seven women and five men hearing the retrial of 36-year-old David Cullen Bain in the High Court at Christchurch.
Bain, who served 12 years of a 16-year non-parole life sentence, denies murdering the five, who were his father Robin Irving Bain (58), mother Margaret Arawa Cullen-Bain (50), sisters Arawa Mary Cullen-Bain (19) and Laniet Margaret Cullen-Bain (18), and 14-year-old schoolboy brother Stephen Robin Cullen-Bain.
His second trial on the five charges began last Friday, yesterday being the third day of Crown evidence in the case.
Sgt Stapp is the 18th of 150 Crown witnesses in the hearing before Justice Graham Panckhurst and the jury.
Bain is represented by Queen's counsel Michael Reed and Helen Cull, and Paul Morten and Matthew Karam, while Kieran Raftery, Cameron Mander and Robin Bates are prosecuting in the trial, expected to take about 12 weeks.
Sgt Stapp said he arrived at 65 Every St about 7.28am on June 20, 1994.
Three constables were with him when he arrived in the dark and found an ambulance already parked outside and both ends of the street blocked by police cars.
He took his revolver with him as he walked quickly to the house with Constables Wyllie, Stephenson and Andrew.
He could see a light in a window to the left of the front door in the room where they found David Bain.
A light was also on in the hall, as was one in the window on the right side of the house.
Const Geoff Wyllie spoke to Bain through the left-hand window but Bain seemed reluctant to come to the door.
Before they broke a pane of glass so they could unlock the front door, Const Kim Stephenson stated he could see a body in the right-hand front room, Sgt Stapp said.
Because of that, he asked for more revolvers, then he and Constables Wyllie and Stephenson went inside.
He saw David Bain in a fetal position on the floor at the end of a bed.
"He was crying, `They're all dead; they're all dead,' or something like that."
He told one officer to stay with Bain and he and Const Wyllie went down the hallway, almost shoulder to shoulder.
When they got to room C (Laniet's bedroom), Const Wyllie said he could see a body in there.
Sgt Stapp then looked into room E (Margaret Bain's bedroom) and saw a woman on the bed and a dog beside the bed.
The dog barked at him but he spoke to it and it calmed down.
He and Const Wyllie checked a room at the back of the house and found it filled with books, bookcases, furniture and other items.
Asked by Justice Panckhurst if it looked like a storage room, Sgt Stapp said: "No, an over-cluttered lounge room."
The two men then went down the stairs, checked the kitchen, laundry and toilet area and another bedroom where Const Wyllie found another body.
Asked about any noises in the house, Sgt Stapp said his hearing was "acutely heightened" because he did not know if there was any threat to him or to David Bain.
His other senses were also on high alert, as was usual in situations of stress where it was not known what was happening.
He said he had heard no noises while he was upstairs other than from David Bain and the dog barking.
And while he and Const Wyllie were downstairs, he could hear the muffled sound of Bain and Const Andrew talking.
When they went back upstairs and called out that they had found four bodies, including the one Const Stephenson had found in the room across the hall from David Bain's bedroom, they were told there were meant to be six people in total, so he decided they needed to start again and search the house.
Returning back downstairs, they went through the kitchen area and walked round towards room G (Arawa's bedroom) where he parted a bead curtain and saw the body of a female on the floor.
"I didn't go into the room. I could see her head ... I didn't need to touch her; she was clearly dead," Sgt Stapp said.
After re-checking the laundry and outside the house, the two men then went back upstairs.
He stepped into the doorway of room C and saw a body in the bed with lot of blood round the head.
Returning to Margaret Bain's bedroom (room E), where the dog was still beside the bed, he stepped through a door he previously thought went into a wardrobe and went through to room F, where he leaned in and saw Stephen Bain's body on the floor.
"I couldn't see his face because of the way he was lying but he was quite clearly dead," Sgt Stapp said.
Like the rest of the house, the room was very untidy, and although he had not thought about it then, it was apparent there had been a struggle in the room.
There was "a lot of blood".
After reporting to Const Stephenson that they had found the five bodies, he took a couple of steps into room A and saw the body of Robin Bain.
He could see his face and a bullet wound to the left side of his forehead.
A rifle was beside him and a spare magazine was upright on carpet beside his right hand.
When he went into David Bain's room, the accused was still in a fetal position.
He was not saying much and appeared to have a "grand mal" seizure before he fainted.
Sgt Stapp said he knew ambulance staff were on the street and he arranged for them to be allowed in to attend to David Bain. Two entered.
Cross-examined by defence counsel Ms Cull QC, Sgt Stapp agreed that when they first arrived, because of what they had been told about people being dead, they had to initially treat the scene as hostile.
And although he had described Bain as "reluctant" to open the door, he agreed the fairest he could say was that Bain, who was hysterical and crying, was not responding to the police request to open the door.
Although Const Andrew tried three times to kick the door open, before he (Sgt Stapp) picked up a piece of wood and broke the window, he said he did not believe it was as late as 7.35am when they entered the house.
Sgt Stapp's cross-examination continues today.
