Widow tells of dreams stolen by landlord who killed her husband (2025)

Queensland landlord Brett Gordon Williams thought it was his $2.1 million payday.

The 60-year-old was about to show a developer through the industrial complex he had just signed a contract on.

But when he looked across the car park and saw his tenant Craig Dunn cutting up scrap metal, he feared his chance at a new start in life was at risk.

Hours later the man with whom he had been in disputes for about a year was found beaten to death.

On Friday Williams was found guilty of the manslaughter of Mr Dunn following a three-week trial in the Supreme Court at Maryborough.

The pair lived as neighbours in an unassuming industrial complex in the Hervey Bay suburb of Urangan, known for having one of the longest piers in Australia.

Mr Dunn, 62, operated a gas-fitting business and Williams lived in and managed the complex from a nearby shed.

Mr Dunn had moved to Hervey Bay from Brisbane about 12 months earlier to get his business established so that he and his wife, Kate, could move on to the next phase of their lives.

"He just wanted to get the business happening so that we could have a good retirement," Mrs Dunn said.

Mrs Dunn said her husband was an avid Rabbitohs fan who "would do anything for anyone".

"He was very kind," she said.

"He loved his family, he loved working around the house.

"He loved Australia Day — every single year he would put on this huge Australia Day party."

The court heard the men were hostile towards each other in the year before Mr Dunn was found dead on April 4, 2022.

Mr Dunn was upset that Williams did not allow him to park his truck in the complex and had a plan to annoy Williams until he let him out of the lease.

'I'm ready to bash him'

The court heard that one of Mr Dunn's friends, Paul Donohue, took Williams's cat from the complex three weeks before Mr Dunn's death.

In a text message, Mr Donohue told Mr Dunn he wanted to groom the cat because the "poor thing is riddled with fleas".

Mr Dunn asked his friend to keep the cat because "my landlord will lose his shit".

About a week later Mr Dunn sent text messages to his receptionist, Tamara Rasmussen, about recent argument with Williams.

"The landlord lost it about 10 minutes ago … I got a number of 'f*** offs,'" he wrote.

The jury heard that CCTV cameras Mr Dunn had in his shed that pointed directly towards Williams's unit were also a sore point.

Mr Dunn would often "badmouth" Williams to prospective tenants to discourage them from renting his units, the court was told.

A few weeks before Mr Dunn's death another tenant heard Williams make a comment suggesting Mr Dunn's plan might backfire.

"'I'm going to get fit so it won't happen again.'"

'Nothing you can f***ing do'

The court heard that on the day the developer was due to inspect the property, Williams looked across the car park to see Mr Dunn working on a steel gantry lying on its side outside his shed and went over to see what was happening.

"I started friendly, but he wasn't very friendly," Williams said during his testimony.

"He said he's cutting it up and getting the boys around."

Williams said he was worried the activity would disrupt the inspection and asked Mr Dunn to stop.

In response, Williams told the court, Mr Dunn said "there is nothing you can f***ing do about it" and clenched his fists.

Williams told the court he punched Mr Dunn twice in the face with his left and right fists, which caused him to fall to the ground, and stood over him saying "it's not funny, is it?"

A CCTV image shown in court showed Williams standing over Mr Dunn in the car park.

Crown prosecutor Stephen Muir said the image was "the last record of Craig Dunn as a living man".

Mr Dunn's body was found about 90 minutes later.

'You'll need an ambulance'

In Williams's version of events he took Mr Dunn's mobile phone from him and demanded they enter Mr Dunn's shed to remove the CCTV cameras before driving off to throw them in a wheelie bin off the site.

"I'm not having you call your friends and causing problems," Williams told the court he said to Mr Dunn.

Later that day police found Mr Dunn's phone under a pile of leaves at the nearby Hervey Bay Botanic Gardens.

The device was located by its ring tone, which was the sound of a car revving.

The CCTV cameras were not recovered and investigators did not have access to any footage of the incident.

Upon returning to the complex Williams said he saw Mr Dunn's bloody body on the ground, still alive, and knelt down beside him.

"I said, 'Craig' … he said, 'Yes' and blood spluttered out of his mouth," Mr Williams told the court.

Shortly before 8am Williams called triple-0, gave the address of the complex and told the operator "you'll need an ambulance", but ended the call abruptly when the operator asked for more details about what had happened.

Footage from the body-worn cameras of police officers who arrived at the complex about five minutes later showed Williams meeting them and letting them into the shed where Mr Dunn's body lay beneath the first-floor mezzanine.

Senior Constable Danielle O'Rourke said Williams left quickly when she asked him to go outside.

"I didn't get to the end of the sentence and he was gone," she said.

Mr Dunn was confirmed dead by paramedics at the scene soon afterwards.

The autopsy found Mr Dunn had sustained a broken nose, facial lacerations and broken ribs, which caused his right lung to collapse.

"Those injuries to the right side of the ribs and lungs are the most rapidly life-ending injuries," Rebecca Williams, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, told the court.

"At the end of the day, all of these injuries mount up and cumulatively lead to his death."

'A complete and utter cluster'

Police found Williams's blood-stained shorts and socks in his washing machine, covered in laundry powder but still dry.

A DNA analysis found the blood likely belonged to both Williams and Mr Dunn.

But no DNA belonging to Williams was found in the shed where Mr Dunn's body was found.

Hair found in Mr Dunn's hand was not sent for DNA testing, nor was a sample taken from a back door leading out to bushland behind the shed.

Williams's barrister Craig Eberhardt KC said the investigation was not thorough enough and failed to exclude the possibility that Mr Dunn was assaulted by an unidentified third person or accidentally fell from the mezzanine.

"This is what is colloquially referred to as a complete and utter cluster," Mr Eberhardt told the court.

"The Crown doesn't say this was premeditated, nor could they, because this would be absurd.

"If you've got some incredibly important property inspection at nine o'clock, you're not going to get in a fight at 6:30 with one of your tenants who presumably is going to be there later on when the inspection occurs.

"Dunn was just about to be out of [Williams's] life.

But Mr Muir said Williams hiding the phone and CCTV cameras was evidence he had killed Mr Dunn and that his guilt was the only "commonsense" explanation in support of the evidence.

"Reasonable explanation requires more than speculation," Mr Muir said.

"It requires more than sheer possibility — there's no other reasonable explanation."

More than 10 hours after retiring to consider the verdict the jury announced it had been unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the charge of murder.

But the 12 jurors agreed Williams was guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter and Justice Peter Davis convicted him accordingly.

After hugging the family and friends who had been present throughout the trial, Williams was led away into custody.

A sentencing hearing will be held next month.