Bradley Bell found not guilty of murder of Kelly Wilkinson
The man who drove wife killer Brian Johnston to his victim’s home just hours before her death has walked away from court a free man after spending more than three years in custody on a murder charge.
Police & Courts
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Bradley Bell has walked away from court a free man after spending over three years in custody on remand accused of helping Brian Johnston kill his estranged wife, Kelly Wilkinson.
A Brisbane jury acquitted the 29-year-old of murder after a five-day trial and six hours of deliberation.
Bell, who has spent nearly three years and two months on remand in custody since his arrest, walked freely out the doors of Brisbane’s Supreme Court on Friday afternoon.
Co-accused Brian Earl Johnston pleaded guilty in March to murdering Ms Wilkinson by stabbing and burning her to death in her Arundel backyard on April 20, 2021.
Johnston was sentenced to the mandatory life imprisonment, which he is now serving out at Wolston Correctional Centre.
Throughout Bell’s trial this week, the court heard how he drove Johnston to Ms Wilkinson’s home at 3.37am, just hours before her death.
Bell had stopped at a petrol station along the way and filled a 20L jerry can of fuel – which was later used by Johnston to douse and burn Ms Wilkinson to death, the jury was told.
It was alleged by the Crown that Bell had known that Johnston, his former boss and colleague, had intended to kill Ms Wilkinson at the time.
Bell had given varying accounts of events to police in the months following Ms Wilkinson’s death, including claims in one interview that he had known Johnston intended to kill his wife.
“I knew his intentions but I just genuinely did not think Brian would have done what he had done,” Bell told police in his third interview, on the day of his arrest.
But after pleading not guilty to the murder on Monday, Bell told the jury that these had been lies designed to improve his standing with police.
“If I had sort of helped the detectives convict Brian, I wouldn’t be in trouble, they wouldn’t need me,” Bell explained his thinking to the court.
“I was confused and scared … I didn’t know I was confessing for a murder.”
He claimed his decision to lie was affected by his use of marijuana that morning, which Crown prosecutor David Nardone dismissed as an “excuse” during his closing statements.
Mr Nardone claimed Bell was a “self-interested manipulator of information” who told a “fanciful story” in the witness box on Wednesday.
But defence barrister Ed Whitton told the jury his client was “not a cold-blooded killer indifferent to a woman’s life”.
“He’s a scared stoned kid who finds himself in an unimaginable position and makes some very very stupid decisions about lying to the police,” Mr Whitton said.
The jury was told throughout the trial that to convict Bell of murder, they would need to be convinced that Bell had knowledge or expectation that Johnston was going to kill his wife when he bought the fuel and dropped him at her home.
Justice Michael Copley said during his summing up on Thursday that the alternate charge of manslaughter was available to the jury if they were convinced Bell had believed Johnston was going to assault his wife by burning or setting fire to her.
After the jury delivered their “not guilty” verdict to both murder and manslaughter at 2.45pm on Friday afternoon, Bell walked freely from the dock to join his defence team at the bar table.
He gave no comment to the media as he walked free from the building and out into the city.
Ms Wilkinson’s friends and family, who had attended court throughout the week to watch the trial, spoke briefly with the media outside court.
Sister Danielle Carroll said they were “lost for words”.
“Bradley Bell has proven to be a free man – a man who has lied repetitively to police,” she said.
Since her sister’s death, Ms Carroll founded The Kelly Wilkinson Foundation, which supports families affected by domestic violence homicide.
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