Time to die
Chilling words of doctor who killed himself and lover on paradise isle after stealing £400k of NHS cash from his GP practices
A DOCTOR who stole £400,000 from the NHS shot his girlfriend and then himself after writing on a note the Blade Runner line: ‘Time to die.’
Titus Bradley, 42, fled to the Cape Verde Islands with his partner Noemi Gergely after he embezzled the money from GP practices he ran in Britain.
An inquest heard that in the weeks before the murder-suicide, he told his mother he had cash troubles and regretted leaving his first wife and children two years before.
On the night of April 15 last year Bradley and Miss Gergely, 27, were heard arguing at a guesthouse on the island of Santo Antao.
Miss Gergely told a receptionist that Bradley had struck her but then returned to their room. After hearing strange noises, staff found the couple’s bodies slumped in the bathroom along with a 6.35mm pistol. Their pet rottweiler, Bobby, was still alive.
Police concluded that Bradley shot Hungarian Miss Gergely in the head before turning the gun on himself.
Officers found a note in his passport with the ‘time to die’ quote from the 1982 sci-fi movie Blade Runner. The line comes at the end of a monologue by a character before his death.
Richard Middleton, the assistant coroner for Bournemouth, said: ‘[The note] is dated March 1 and starts with the phrase, “Time to die”. It makes reference to him having an automatic gun, apologises for mistakes and makes reference to him knowing some day he would be caught.’
Bradley vanished in 2017 after about £400,000 of staff pay and pension cash went missing from his four practices around Hastings, East Sussex.
Sussex Police launched an investigation a month after Bradley failed to return from a fishing trip to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. The Cape Verde Islands are further north, about 350 miles off West Africa.
In a statement read to the inquest, Bradley’s mother Gail Seery said her son left the UK at very short notice.
He had been running a game fishing trip business on the island of Sao Vicente where he lived with former PR girl Miss Gergely on a yacht.
Mrs Seery said her son, formerly of Weymouth, Dorset, was a perfectionist but overworked himself to the point that he would suffer depression. She said his split from wife Lucy, with whom he had two children, was initially amicable but they became estranged after he met Miss Gergely.
Mrs Seery said: ‘ He suddenly announced he was moving to Cape Verde, which didn’t concern me as spear fishing had been his lifelong hobby, but he went at once, which did concern me. Shortly before he died he was in touch a great deal.
‘He said he and Noemi were no longer a couple. He was strangely furious with her. It was an on/off, like/hate relationship. He mentioned suicide and told me he had driven up to the Cape Verde mountains and had a gun but had “p****** out” and came back alive.
‘In other messages he said he had had a great life and done some wonderful things but kept thinking about what he had lost.
‘I took it to mean his children, but it may also have been his marriage. I knew he was angry with Noemi but I never thought he was capable of shooting her.’
Mrs Seery said on the day of her son’s death she had received an email from him saying he was feeling much better. Mr Middleton yesterday recorded a conclusion of suicide.
Speaking at the time of the deaths, Helder Bentub, manager at the Divin’ Art guesthouse in Ribeira Grande, said: ‘They were in their room but we could hear shouting and the banging of doors and windows. They went to the restaurant and argued again and the woman told one of our staff that her companion had hit her.
‘We heard the shots ring out a couple of minutes later when they were back in their room. The police took all their belongings away and I think it might have included a letter the man wrote.
‘Undertakers came to take their bodies along with a lawyer and someone who I believe was working for the British man on a boat.’
After Bradley vanished, his General Medical Council registration was suspended, meaning he was not allowed to practise. A former employee claimed that staff were not paid properly for ‘a good few months’ in 2017.
‘Drove to mountains with a gun’