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Joseph James Brider, who murdered Colombian woman Juliana Bonilla Herrera, will spend at least the next 23 years behind bars.
Parole Board chairman Sir Ron Young has claimed Corrections gave the board wrong information, causing it to approve Brider living next to a vulnerable 37-year-old woman he would brutally murder 72 days after his release.
Juliana Bonilla Herrera, a New Zealand resident originally from Colombia, was brutally murdered by Brider, then 35, on January 22, last year, when he broke into her Addington, Christchruch flat and – after subjecting her to a sadistic ordeal – stabbed her to death as she tried to escape. He was living next door.
Brider was on Wednesday sentenced to life and preventive detention with a non-parole period of 23 years.
Young said he had spoken to Herrera’s family in Colombia conveying information he received from Corrections that the Salisbury Street Foundation, a residential reintegration centre the Parole Board preferred as the best accommodation option for Brider, did not have a bed available.
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Salisbury Street was discussed extensively at Brider’s June 2021 parole hearing, Young said.
“I now believe the information provided to the board by Corrections (at its October meeting) that there was no room available at the Salisbury Street Foundation for a release on parole was not correct,” he said on Friday.
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Juliana Bonilla Herrera, 37, was found dead inside her home on Grove Road, Addington, Christchurch on January 22, 2022.
He understood that in August 2021, “when it was clearly intended that Mr Brider would be released to the Salisbury Street Foundation”, Corrections contacted the foundation and cancelled the referral.
The Parole Board was not made aware of the change in the release plan by Corrections at any time before Brider’s release on parole, Young said.
“The Salisbury Street Foundation have now told the board that they had a bed available for Mr Brider if he had been released in June and would have still made a room available for him following the October parole hearing.”
The failure to inform the board about the cancellation was “very serious”.
“It is the Parole Board and not Corrections that decides where an offender may be released to on parole. To do that effectively the board relies on accurate information from Corrections.
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Joseph James Brider who murdered Colombian woman Juliana Bonilla Herrera will spend at least the next 23 years behind bars.
“Corrections had no authority from the board to withdraw the application to the Salisbury Street Foundation when it was aware that was the board’s preferred address and that a bed was available for Mr Brider.
“It is clear to me that Corrections’ failure to provide this vital information compromised the board’s decision-making.”
The board would most definitely have released Brider to the Salisbury Street Foundation if it had known the correct facts, Young said.
Corrections Chief Executive Jeremy Lightfoot said he had not yet been able to substantiate whether Young’s claim was correct.
“That’s why I have called for an independent review into this claim. I am determined to understand exactly what has occurred here so Juliana’s family have the clarity they so rightly deserve. I would like to apologise for any distress this has caused them during what has already been a difficult and traumatic week.”
He released an excerpt provided to the board from a Parole Assessment Report for the October 2021 parole hearing which said the release to the Salisbury Street Foundation (SSF) had been changed because Corrections were advised the foundation could not guarantee a bed would be available for Brider “alongside concerns raised around an insufficient time remaining on his sentence to fully engage in SSF’s intensive programme”.
