Queen St apartment homicide: Who was Herbert Bradley, the pensioner stabbed and killed in his Auckland home?

This week Sergio Williams was found guilty of murder after plunging a knife into the neck of pensioner Herbert Bradley in his Auckland apartment. Now, archival court documents and press clippings along with previously unpublished trial evidence have shed new light on the life and death of the loved and respected 70-year-old. George Block reports.

Herbert Bradley told an old friend last year he was worried he was going to be stabbed by a homeless person on Karangahape Rd around the corner from his Auckland apartment.

A week later, he was stabbed in the neck and killed by Sergio Williams, who had been living in his car when Bradley offered him a place to stay in what was described as a characteristic act of generosity.

Bradley has been remembered as a kind, funny and hospitable man and a good storyteller who loved his children.

He had a tough early life, including spending much of his teen years in custody or state care.

Bradley would later receive what was then the longest fixed-term prison sentence in New Zealand after an armed robbery in the 1970s.

That was despite the fact Bradley had not hurt anyone in the robbery. The Court of Appeal later criticised the sentence as “extreme”.

On Thursday, a jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict for murder following Williams’ week-and-half-long trial at the High Court at Auckland.

The jury rejected his argument that he should be acquitted as he was acting in self-defence. He claimed he was defending himself after Bradley, 70, came at him with a knife.

Prosecutors argued that even if Bradley had started the fight and brought the knife, the 35-year-old stabbing a man twice his age in the neck represented a level of force far beyond what was reasonable for self-defence.

The Crown’s star witness, a young woman also staying in the apartment, said Bradley came at Williams with a knife because the younger man was acting aggressively and threatening her. But prosecutors came to cast doubt on aspects of her account, suggesting a lingering loyalty, and Bradley’s family do not believe she was telling the truth.

Williams met Bradley via Bruce Samuels, the old friend who told the trial of the comment foreshadowing his death.

Samuels repaired cars at his place in New Lynn. Williams had taken his vehicle there to be fixed.

Herbert Bradley was killed in his Upper Queen St apartment on August 23, 2023. A jury found Sergio Williams guilty of murder.

Upon hearing he was living in the car, Bradley offered him a place to stay for a few days, which turned into a few weeks.

Williams invited a young woman from the South Island he’d met on Facebook to stay with him at Bradley’s flat. On the day of his death, Bradley had told Williams that his time was up and he had to leave.

The woman, Sophie Rutland, was originally jointly charged with murdering Bradley.

But the charge was dropped after she agreed to co-operate with the police and give evidence for the Crown at the trial.

Samuels, related to Bradley by marriage, was one of several witnesses to describe his generosity.

“If he only had 50c he’d give you 50c. That’s what he was like.”

Samuels said Bradley and his mother were tohunga, meaning a skilled or expert person, or a priest or healer, according to the Te Māhuri te reo textbook.

He believed Bradley and his mother both had an ability to see what was coming in the future.

“He had an idea what’s coming,” he said.

Samuels alluded to his friend’s colourful early life when he told the court Bradley’s mother had told her son of her own prediction about his future.

“He had no fear because his mother said to him he’d never die young.”

Court documents from the 1970s show Bradley had been before the courts in one way or another since the age of 12.

It is understood he spent time in state care and borstals during his early years.

A former Auckland detective who dealt with Bradley during his heyday, when he was involved in a string of armed robberies, spoke of having respect for him despite them being on different sides of the law.

A news clipping related to Herbert Bradley's armed robbery case. Photo / NZH Archive

The detective, who did not want to be named, said Bradley’s time in borstals may have contributed to his later armed robberies and long stints in prison.

A Court of Appeal judgment delivered on August 24, 1979, said Bradley had spent only 24 months in the community between the ages of 12 and 25.

In November 1978 he was released on parole after serving a five-year prison term for aggravated robbery.

“He soon embarked on a career of crime again, this time more seriously than before,” said Justice Robin Cooke in the judgment.

He had sold heroin to an undercover cop and later broke into a garage and stole a car which he and an accomplice used in a robbery of a post office.

They held up two security guards and a worker at the post office building in central Auckland then stole a box containing $278,346.

Bradley was armed with a loaded pistol fitted with a silencer but the only violence used in the robbery was by his accomplice, who hit one of the guards with a baseball bat.

He was sentenced to 10 years for the robbery and two concurrent six-year terms for the heroin. At the time, 16 years was a record-breaking finite sentence in New Zealand.

Justice Cooke found the sentence was excessive and reduced the term to 12 years.

“It is certainly of startling length by New Zealand standards,” Justice Cooke said of the initial sentence.

“While the case is undoubtedly a very bad one, we do not think it required the judge to go to such extreme lengths.

“We are satisfied that an unusually long sentence is called for, but not one so long as to be crushing or to deprive the prisoner of all hope.”

In 1992, Bradley stood trial alongside several others accused of involvement in several armed hold-ups, including the armed robbery of the Te Atatū South TAB and a robbery of the Pier 21 Tavern at Westhaven.

Partway through the trial the charges were dismissed against Bradley because of a lack of evidence.

Sophie Rutland and Sergio Williams flee the scene after Williams stabbed pensioner Herbert Bradley in the neck. They stepped over Bradley as he lay dying and made no effort to help him. Photo / CCTV via NZ Police

Bradley later married and spent several years in Northland raising his children before returning to Auckland after his wife died.

A relative by marriage said he spoiled his children. In recent years he enjoyed spending time at the TAB, cooking and cleaning.

“He was always trying to help people,” his in-law said.

“He loved telling stories.”

Bradley’s health had begun to decline in recent years and relatives said he was becoming forgetful and repeating stories.

Early in 2023, he moved into his daughter’s flat in Uptown Apartments in Upper Queen St, on the fourth floor overlooking Symonds St cemetery. She would later move out.

His growing difficulty getting around and unsteadiness on his feet was one pillar of the Crown case. Prosecutors Claire Paterson and Rebekah Thompson argued against the defence claim Williams needed to stab Bradley in the neck to protect himself after the older man came at him with a knife.

His daughter told the trial Bradley liked to keep the apartment clean and he was always up before her to do the bins.

She remembered he also liked to stand at the intersection of Queen St and Karangahape Rd or to sit at a nearby park watching people go past.

On the morning of August 23 last year, there were tensions inside the flat. By this point his daughter had moved out and Williams and Rutland had been living in one bedroom for about three weeks, with Bradley in the other.

Rutland said she and Williams had smoked meth together about three times after she came to Auckland for a fresh start, a substantial reduction on the amount she had been using in the South Island.

The night before Bradley’s death, Williams had taken issue with how Rutland was talking to his male friends at a party.

The following morning, he emerged from the shower to find Rutland and Bradley sitting and laughing together on the couch, and seemed to become angry, Rutland said.

Rutland told the trial Bradley had been nothing but kind, respectful and hospitable to her during her stay.

Sensing Williams’ anger, Bradley had gone to the kitchen and grabbed a knife before concealing it, she claimed.

Police arrived at the scene in Upper Queen St to find Sergio Williams and Sophie Rutland in his van in the carpark at the Uptown Apartments. They had forgotten to take the keys with them when they fled the scene.

Williams went back into the bathroom as Bradley approached the door and began telling him he had overstayed his welcome and it was time to go.

Bradley later went out on to the balcony to cool off but returned to the room after he saw Williams trying to push Rutland off the couch while telling her to come to the bedroom with him, the witness said.

She was refusing as she did not want to be alone with him.

Bradley presented the knife at Williams and told him to leave the woman alone, according to Rutland, who said Bradley then went at him with the knife.

Williams claimed Bradley lunged at him and tried to stab him. The younger man then grabbed the blade, cutting his hand but managing to wrest control of the knife from Bradley.

He then plunged the knife into Bradley’s neck, up to the hilt.

Bradley, bleeding profusely from his carotid artery, stumbled out of the apartment and managed to take the elevator down to the ground floor, where he collapsed outside the building manager’s office.

Meanwhile, Williams and Rutland did not attempt to help Bradley, instead packing their belongings and rushing from the apartment. They were captured on CCTV stepping over the dying man as he lay in the hallway.

They made their way to Williams’ van and dumped the knife under another vehicle. But they had forgotten their keys and were arrested by police soon after.

During her evidence, delivered via a video link from Christchurch, Rutland said that during a struggle between the men over the knife, the hands of both men were on its handle when it went into Bradley’s neck up to the hilt.

After the trial, a family member of Bradley’s told the Herald they do not think he ever had the knife, and they do not believe Rutland’s version of events.

The family member said they think Bradley intervened to stop Williams attacking Rutland and saved her life before he was stabbed.

Sergio Williams during his trial this month at the High Court at Auckland. He was found guilty of murder by a jury on Thursday. Photo / Michael Craig

“It was Sophie or Herbie,” the family member said. She questioned why police did not test the knife for DNA.

But Detective Sergeant Ewen Settle, the officer in charge of the case, told the trial identity wasn’t an issue in the case, because as there was no dispute over who had stabbed whom. As a result, there was little value in using police’s limited resources for DNA testing, he said.

Bradley’s death was one of six homicides in Auckland in about two weeks, and police have a limited budget for Environmental Science and Research work, the trial heard.

Aspects of Rutland’s evidence tended to support the self-defence argument advanced by Williams’ lawyers Philip Hamlin, Lorraine Smith and Sarah Hames.

But the pathology evidence showed three stab wounds rather than the one described by Rutland, the Crown said, with prosecutors suggesting a lingering loyalty to him could have caused omissions or inaccuracies in her account.

Towards the end of her evidence, as her behaviour became increasingly erratic, Rutland asked if she could speak to Williams and was heard saying, “Hope he’s all right”.

The prosecution argued a 9.5cm stab wound to a person’s neck did not happen accidentally.

Paterson, in her closing address for the prosecution, said Williams had disarmed Bradley before inflicting a deep downward stab wound in retaliation for Bradley coming at him with the knife.

Justice Jane Anderson told the jury in her summing up that force used in self-defence had to be proportional and the law did not write a blank cheque for anyone who was attacked to use lethal force.

The jury asked several questions during their deliberations and at one stage, a few hours after retiring, came back to say they were not unanimous and unable to move forward.

Justice Anderson told them to persevere and the following afternoon they returned a unanimous guilty verdict for murder.

Some of Bradley’s children and other whānau were in the public gallery and called out to thank the jury as they left court for the final time.

Williams will be sentenced on March 11.

George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.