Forensic pathologist Alex Dempster has told the Bain retrial jury today Stephen Bain was strangled with his own t-shirt to the point where he was unable to fight and was then shot through the top of the head.
From a wound to the youth's left hand, Dr Dempster said if appeared a bullet had passed through the hand then creased along the top of the scalp before lodging in a pillow.
That laceration wound to the head would have ''bled vigorously'', Dr Dempster said. It would have accounted for a lot of the blood in the room - ''but it wouldn't have disabled him''.
Dr Dempster who is giving evidence at 37-year-old David Cullen Bain's retrial for the murders of his parents, two sisters and younger brother Stephen, on June 20, 1994 has told the court about viewing the five bodies where they lay in the Every St house and of his subsequent examinations of them.
He also said that when he was checking the body of Robin Bain where it lay alongside a rifle in the front room, he heard a sound from behind curtains to an alcove and asked police officers with him what it was.
Because he was nearest to the curtains, he carefully parted them and looked in the alcove. He saw a computer running and a line of typing on the screen.
That was the message ''you are the only one who deserved to stay'', Dr Dempster said.
His approach at scenes was to ''keep my hands to myself and not do anything to disturb the scene'', the witness told Crown counsel Robin Bates. ''But in this case, it was so extraordinary, and I was the closest to the curtains......,' he said.
