A next door neighbour saw the words ''hang Bain'' on a wall of the Maori Hill home of a former Dunedin police officer in 2002, the Christchurch High Court jury hearing David Bain's retrial was told today.
Milton Weir, a detective sergeant involved in the investigation into the 1994 shooting of five members of the Bain family agreed the two words had been painted on a board on one wall of his house.
It was a wall marked for demolition and the words were there for only a day, Mr Weir told Michael Reed QC, one of Bain's defence lawyers in the retrial.
He agreed it had been ''inappropriate'' to paint the words on the board. It had been his response to a small social function after a Court of Appeal ruling that Bain's case could go no further.
Questioned again about how long the words were visible, given the next door neighbour had pointed them out to her daughter some time after noticing them herself, Mr Weir said if it was not a day it was ''a very short time''.
Bain (37) was convicted at his first trial in 1995 of the June 1994 murders of his parents and three siblings. the previous year. During the years after the trial, his case went through a series of appeals culminating in a Privy Council decision two years ago that he should have a retrial.
The case is now into its fourth week of hearing before Justice Graham Panckhurst.
Mr Reed today put it to Mr Weir that he had planted a glasses lens in bedroom of David's brother Stephen, that has since become important in the case, because police say it came from glasses worn by David when he struggled with Stephen on the morning of the killings.
Mr Weir "categorically" denied it.
"There is no way that I planted the lens in that room."
