Grace Millane

Case background and investigation

Grace Millane, a university graduate from Essex, England, was travelling through New Zealand as part of a round-the-world trip when she was killed in Auckland. According to a timeline published by RNZ, she arrived in the country on November 20, 2018. On December 1, the day before her 22nd birthday, she sent her family a photograph of a Christmas tree at Sky City, which was the last contact they had with her.

That evening she met a man she had matched with on the dating app Tinder. RNZ's court reporting says police later assembled CCTV footage showing the pair visiting bars in the central city before going to his apartment in the CityLife Hotel. Wikipedia's summary of the evidence puts the last footage of her at 9:41 pm. When birthday messages went unanswered, her family reported her missing on December 5, and her father travelled to Auckland to appeal for information.

Police announced a homicide inquiry on December 8, 2018, and arrested and charged a 26-year-old man the same day. According to RNZ, he first told detectives they had parted at about 10 pm, then said she had died in his apartment and that he had moved her body. Her remains were found on December 9 in a suitcase in a shallow grave in the Waitākere Ranges, west of Auckland. CCTV shown at trial recorded him wheeling a suitcase out of the hotel about 24 hours after she had entered it.

The trial opened in the High Court at Auckland on November 4, 2019. The prosecution said he strangled her; the defence said her death was an accident during consensual sexual activity. A pathologist told the court that the neck bruising would have required sustained force. After about five hours of deliberation the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on November 22, 2019. On February 21, 2020, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.

The defendant's name was suppressed in New Zealand throughout the trial because he faced further charges. RNZ reported that in two judge-alone trials in October and November 2020 he was found guilty of eight charges of violent and sexual offending against a former partner and of raping another woman, and received prison terms of seven and a half years and three and a half years.

The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal against the murder conviction and sentence on December 18, 2020. On December 22, 2020, the Supreme Court declined a further application and name suppression lapsed, allowing New Zealand media to identify him as Jesse Shane Kempson. According to Wikipedia, the Supreme Court refused leave to appeal the murder conviction in June 2021.