The Murder of Grace Millane
Grace Emmie Rose Millane was a 22-year-old British tourist travelling in New Zealand, she had studied advertising and marketing at university. A talented artist, Grace was on a gap year and backpacking around the world.
When Grace failed to reply to birthday messages from her family on 2nd December they became worried, it was unlike Grace not to keep in touch and they contacted the local police in New Zealand. The hotel she had been staying at told officers she had not returned to her room and the investigation was quickly treated as a homicide.
Grace was seen on CCTV in town on 1st December, and was then seen entering the CityLife Hotel on Queen Street with 26-year-old Jesse Shane Kempson, a man she had met on Tinder and agreed to go on a date with. Kempson murdered Grace that night, then the next day purchased a suitcase, put the body inside and left it in a shallow grave in a remote bushland area.
Grace’s murderer claimed she died during consensual sex, a claim which was widely reported along Grace’s online dating profiles, sexual interests, details of what she had drunk and intimate reports of her personal life leading to criticisms of victim blaming and questions over suggestions it was possible for Grace to consent to her death. After strangling Grace, Kempson conducted several Internet searches on how to dispose of bodies and viewed pornography. Intimate photographs were taken of Grace after the killer searched for the Waitakere Ranges and hottest fires in New Zealand suggesting either he had made these searches before the murder and therefore intended to kill Grace and hide her body there or that the photographs were taken post mortem showing his fetishisation of her death. Kempson also continued to go on dates after Grace’s death. He even told one date that there were bodies in Waitakere Ranges and that police could not find them. Kempson also told the same date about a friend he knew who had consensual sex in which he killed a girl by strangling her and went to prison. Prosecutors claimed this was the killers way of testing his defence in advance.
Grace’s body was found in the Waitakere Ranges, West Auckland. Kempson was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. New Zealand laws meant Kempson’s name was initially suppressed however some international media outlets published his name and photographs. The decision not to publish the murderer’s name until after he was found guilty was also been criticised especially due to the media scrutiny of the victim. Kempson was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. It emerged that Kempson had also been convicted of 9 charges of rape, sexual violation, threatening to kill, and assault in two sexual violence trials in 2020, not of which related to the charges concerning Grace.
