‘Psycho next door’ to be sentenced for murdering woman while on parole for rape

Friends of murdered Colombian woman Juliana Herrera say they would have reacted differently to her fears if Corrections had disclosed she was living next door to a “psycho” with a past as a violent rapist.

Herrera’s neighbour Joseph James Brider, 35, had been out of jail on parole for only 72 days when he raped and murdered Herrera in her Addington flat on January 22 last year. He had previously been jailed for a violent kidnapping and rape in Taranaki where he worked on a farm and drove a delivery van.

After stalking her for weeks, he stabbed Herrera to death at the Grove Rd flat while he was on a reintegration programme with a provider who cannot be named due to name suppression. The provider owned the flat Brider moved into at the end of November 2021. His living situation was apparently approved by Corrections.

Brider was electronically monitored and had access to a computer, visiting pornographic sites on the night of the offending.

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He will be sentenced in the High Court in Christchurch on Wednesday.

Herrera, 37, who had lived in her flat since 2017, was used to having former prison inmates living next door, but Brider rattled her. Over the holiday break, she moved in with a friend to avoid being alone in the flat.

“Around Christmas (2021) she was telling us she was scared of the guy,” said her former boyfriend, Tiju Joseph, who moved to Australia about a month before her death.

They remained very close and she would ring him often.

“She felt insecure because when she went to work and when she came back he was there watching her from the unit. I tried to be positive, saying, ‘We had these guys before. Give it one more month, and it will be OK’,” the logistics worker said.

“You don’t expect the authorities to put a psycho next door. Not in an area like this.

“If they had told us Brider was different to others, then when Julie mentioned it, we would all have reacted differently to her fears.”

He moved in with Herrera in 2018 when the flat’s leaseholder left. It was no secret the unit next door was used by former prison inmates reintegrating into the community.

“I saw about five or six people come and go. They all looked pretty scary. They had big builds and maybe tattoos, rough-looking,” he said. “But when you talked to them and got to know them a bit, they were super pleasant, super sweet, and they would even do our lawns for us.

“We didn’t talk about personal history. We assumed the offending was not particularly serious, so no murderers or serious sexual offenders. And no-one from any authority came to see us or left a phone number in case we had any trouble. No-one told us what to do or how to prepare.

“Every time a new person came in, we would be really on alert, thinking ‘how is this new guy going to be’.”

He couldn’t remember much about Brider and left to look for job opportunities in Australia a few weeks after Brider moved into the reintegration flat.

“I encouraged Julie to leave even before I left for Aussie. The lease for the flat went to April and she was supposed to take a break in Colombia in February. She was thinking of coming to Aussie.

“I was not really that comfortable about it, but we were there for a long time and no problems.”

Friends rang him about Herrera’s murder the day her body was found.

“I just couldn’t believe it. How did this happen? Our friends knew about the flat but thought no-one who was a serious threat would be placed there. That’s when people starting saying the public should be aware of this.”

On the night she died, Herrera had gone on a dinner date with a friend and asked him to drive down her driveway and drop her at the door. She later sent the friend a text saying Brider had the music turned up loud and she couldn’t sleep.

The friend was haunted by the fact that if he gone back he might have prevented the tragedy, Joseph said. “He feels he should have gone there straight away”.

He was surprised how little monitoring probation did of the flat and its occupants.

“No-one seemed to come around to check, so we thought they must be relatively minor criminals.”

He sometimes tortured himself with whether he could have prevented the tragedy had he stayed, but he believed Brider, who planned the killing carefully, would have found a way.

Joseph said he and Herrera had so many similarities the relationship had turned into more of a close family thing, and they decided to part but remained close.

He remembered Herrera as a kind, caring and reserved person who was quiet in a group but different one to one. She was close to her family, sent them money and encouraged them to study.

Like him, she preferred the company of older people.

Addington community advocate Allan Hudson said he was disappointed at Corrections’ failure to properly inform surrounding residents of Brider’s presence and to closely monitor Brider’s movements and computer usage.

“The consequences of not following those common sense steps have been horrendous for Juliana and her family. It was also a great shock to the Addington community. If Corrections had done some basic things, it would have helped reduce some of the risks a person like Brider presents to a community like ours.”

The organisation that housed Brider did not want to comment.

A probation review will be released after his sentencing on Wednesday.

Corrections national commissioner Leigh Marsh said he expected the report of chief probation officer Darius Fagan to be released after the sentencing.

Fagan and the southern regional commissioner were meeting with members of the Herrera family before the sentencing “to talk through the review and its findings”, assisted by a translator.

Marsh said Corrections did not want to prejudice the outcome of the sentencing by releasing a review that might contain information that could be seen to influence sentencing and introduce evidence not previously provided by the prosecution or defence.

Asked why an independent person had not reviewed Corrections’ performance, he said that “given the exceptional circumstances surrounding this case, a chief probation officer review was most appropriate in reviewing the management of Mr Brider. Our chief probation officer has the requisite knowledge and skills to provide a fully impartial review of everything that is involved in a managing a person in the community”.

The review has prompted a further review of Corrections’ policy in notifying parties of the release of an offender.