“On behalf of New Zealand, I want to apologize to Grace’s family. Your daughter should have been safe here, and she wasn’t, and I’m sorry for that.” Grace Emmy Rose Millane was born in Essex, England in 1996. Born to parents David and Jillian, she was the youngest of three siblings and had two older brothers, Michael and Declan.
She was sociable, lively, family-orientated, and loved all things creative and artistic. Grace attended the University of Lincoln and graduated with a degree in advertising and marketing. She was excited for a new adventure before she started the next phase of her life. She had saved up for a year-long backpacking tour after her graduation.
Grace was described as compassionate and caring, and before she left for her trip, she cut her long hair off and donated it to the Little Princess Trust so it could be turned into wigs for children with cancer. In October 2018, Grace left her family home and set off on her travels. The adventurous and outgoing graduate traveled to Peru before spending 6 weeks in South America.
She met up with other travelers along the way and was keen to share her journey with everyone back home. On November 19th, 21-year-old Grace arrived in New Zealand alone, and 11 days later, she reached Auckland. She checked into a hostel called The Base Backpackers on Queen Street, sharing a room with some other travelers.
Saturday evening, December 1st, 2018. Grace left the hostel just before 6 p.m. and headed out into the city center. Dressed in a knee-length black dress, white shoes, and carrying a small handbag, she had made plans to meet someone she had matched with on Tinder. Initially, Grace didn’t seem too sure on meeting up, but after some more talking, her and her date eventually made a plan to get some drinks.
Grace met her date at a place called Sky City, an entertainment complex with bars, restaurants, and a casino. Grace had been sending messages to her friend Amina back home saying, “I click with him so well. He’s an oil manager. He lives in a hotel.” By all accounts, the evening appeared to be going well. About an hour later, they visited a place called the Blue Stone Room. At one point, Grace got up from the table and the mystery man, for some reason, picked up her handbag and started searching it. But just after 9:30 p.m., they both left the bar arm in arm and headed down the street.
The next day was Sunday, December 2nd, and it was Grace’s 22nd birthday. Her family and friends at home were sending messages and reaching out to her over social media, but Grace unusually wasn’t responding to anyone, and her two phones were going straight to voicemail. Her brother Declan said she had been bombarding them with details and pictures of her trip so far, and no response from her on her birthday was immediately alarming. Grace was a homebird, and this was a red flag. Her parents contacted the Auckland police and reported her as missing on December 5th. Police reached out to the hostel Grace was staying at and they confirmed that she had not checked back in on the night of December 1st.
Initially, the police didn’t suspect any foul play. The majority of her belongings were still at her hostel. Maybe she had just stayed with some new friends and forgotten to contact people. Fortunately for detectives, it didn’t take long to track down where Grace had been on that Saturday evening due to the vast amounts of CCTV from around the city. The mystery man she was spotted with that night was quickly identified. The very night Grace was last seen, she had changed her profile picture on Facebook. A comment was posted underneath the picture saying, “Beautiful, very radiant.” The person that commented was also the Tinder date seen drinking with Grace. This man was Jesse Kempson who was currently residing at the City Life Hotel in Auckland.
Jesse had written a post prior to the comments which caught more attention. Extracts of the post stated, “He was sorry for his mistakes, his arrogance, and his selfishness.” But who was Jesse Kempson? 26-year-old Jesse was born in Wellington and had moved several times as a child after his parents split up. He had been partially raised by his grandparents and was virtually estranged from a lot of his family. Jesse was described by everyone who knew him as a pathological liar. He claimed everything from being the cousin of a famous All Blacks rugby player to telling people he was dying of cancer. He lied to employers, landlords, partners, and his family and friends.
Time and again, Jesse’s fake world caught up with him, and he was frequently evicted from his flats and lost jobs due to his compulsive lying. A former landlord of Jesse said he had claimed to be a professional softball player who had been signed up by New Zealand’s national softball team, the Black Socks. He’d lie and say he was waiting on contract money. But after 8 weeks of excuses, the landlord contacted the Black Sox management. And again, Jesse’s lies were exposed. He told his landlord at the City Life Hotel that he was a top manager for Woolworths. In reality, his rent was being paid by state benefits. Jesse’s last job was in telephone sales. This also ended in a dismissal due to his lies. And this all happened on the very day he met Grace Millane on December 1st. Jesse was the last known person seen with Grace that night, and police knew he was the man they needed to help fill in the gaps. The same day Grace was reported missing on December 5th, Jesse was asked to come into the station to answer some routine questions.
“Tell us about Grace.” “Uh, so I was talking to Grace on Tinder.” “Yeah.” “Um, we had matched on Friday. I saw that we’d matched um the next day on Saturday. Um and then uh we met at Sky City and then we decided that we were going up to Andy’s Burger Bar um which is on the first floor.” “Whose idea was it to go to that particular burger place?” “Me because I knew I didn’t initially know that she was real.” “What do you mean?” “Well, there’s a lot of… So, have you heard of catfish?” “No.” “So catfishing is where someone uses your profile or uses your photos and pretends to be you and then meets and you’re a completely different person.” “How does a… how does meeting in a public place sort of protect you from meeting someone who’s not as good-looking as well?” “There’s security there. So if she wasn’t who she said she was, um at least in my mind I’d feel safe.” “Mhm.” “Yeah, that’s us down there. Yep. So, she’s going that way and I’m going across the street. Uh, I go down Queen Street. Uh, no, I go down Victoria Street. Uh, straight down to the bottom and then hang a left and I head towards the viaduct.” “you you’ve kind of walked in a bit of a funny direction if you were planning to go to the viaduct. Is there a particular reason you were going to do that?” “Uh I feel safer down that way.” “And we’re very very concerned for her safety obviously. Um, it’s entirely possible that she’s been the victim of foul play. Okay. You understand what that means?” “Yeah.” “What would your feelings be about providing us with a voluntary DNA sample in the event that we can compare that against something? Would you be happy with that?” “100%. I mean, I know I haven’t done anything wrong, so I’m happy to do it.” “Okay. At this stage, we don’t know what’s happened to this girl. Okay. Um, it’s possible that somebody has killed her. Okay. You understand that?” “Yeah.” “She might… she might, when I say foul play, I mean that someone might have murdered her. You don’t know if she’s been murdered or not yet. She may be alive and well. Okay. But she might also be dead. Okay. Okay. And it could be that you’ve died.” “Hey, I just want to ask a question. Am I being arrested for something I didn’t do? You haven’t been arrested?” “Oh, no. Holy.”
He said nothing out of the ordinary had happened that night. The date had ended nicely with a hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a plan for the following day before the pair eventually parted ways at around 10 p.m. He said he had tried to message her the next day on Tinder, but noticed that Grace had unmatched him, and that was where his encounters with her abruptly ended. But the officers hadn’t yet finished looking through the CCTV from the City Life Hotel, and they were about to start gaining more answers to the remaining questions they had.
A sinister and disturbing picture was slowly being put together, and almost 6 terabytes of CCTV data were being analyzed. Despite Jesse saying they parted ways on the street, they were both seen arriving at the City Life Hotel arm-in-arm. They exited the lift together on Jesse’s floor, but Grace was never seen leaving the building.
The morning after, on what was Grace’s birthday, cameras did pick up Jesse leaving the hotel. They followed him over the coming hours, tracking his every move. He left the hotel in the morning and went shopping to buy a suitcase. He then went to buy some cleaning supplies and just before noon he headed over in a taxi to a car rental company and rented a red Toyota Corolla.
Several hours later, Jesse met with another woman he had engaged with on Tinder. She later reported that he had some disturbing conversations with her, speaking about burying bodies and his friends that were police officers. His date said he made her feel so uneasy, she declined Jesse’s offer to get in his car and made her own way home, never talking to him again.
After this, Jesse went out into the city center again, this time to hire a Rug Doctor carpet cleaning machine, explaining to staff that he had some red wine stains that needed cleaning up. Later on, at half 9 in the evening, Jesse loaded two suitcases onto a hotel trolley and offloaded these into the Toyota he had rented earlier.
At around 7:00 a.m. the next day, he was picked up on camera again, this time buying a shovel. And two hours later he was spotted powerwashing the car. He then returned the car to the rental company and it was subsequently rented out by someone else. On the 5th of December, the day Grace was reported missing, Jesse was seen visiting various locations and dumping things in bins. Police arrived at the City Life Hotel looking to talk to him. Just as they reached the front desk, Jesse returned to the hotel himself. The minute he saw the police, he quickly turned around and began walking away with his head firmly facing the opposite direction. The police clocked him, chased after him, and brought him in for questioning.
Despite Jesse denying anything had happened, police still began a thorough search of his hotel room.
“Tonight with a public appeal for missing British backpacker Grace Millane. A short time ago, police held a press conference to appeal for sightings of the 22-year-old who has not been seen since 7:15 p.m. on Saturday night.” On December 7th, David, Grace’s father, was now in Auckland. He made an emotional plea for help. “I’m David Millane, Grace’s dad. Thank you for… Thank you for coming today. As you know, Grace has been missing for several days. We last had contact with her on Saturday the 1st of December, and as a family, we’ve been extremely concerned for her welfare. Grace is a lovely, outgoing, fun-loving, family-orientated daughter. Grace has never been out of contact for this amount of time. She’s usually in daily contact with either mother, myself, her two brothers, members of the family on social media. She arrived here on the 20th of November and has been bombarding us with numerous photographs and messages of her adventures. We are all extremely upset and it is very difficult at this time to fully describe the range of emotions we are going through.”
The investigation was moving quickly and although police didn’t name him, they revealed they had spoken to Jesse and that he was a person of interest. The more time ticked by, the more fearful people became, and the police stated that they had grave concerns for Grace.
On December 8th, as more and more evidence was coming to light, Jesse was eventually taken into custody and interviewed again. His story had now drastically changed. “That you’re willing to speak to us about the events of last Saturday. Is that correct?” “Yes.” “Tell me what happened last Saturday.” “She started talking to me about… uh Fifty Shades of Grey. We started having sex. At first it was… it was just normal. Um… um and then she asked me if we could get into… uh bondage having I guess more violent sex. Um we ended up on the floor. Um and then she told me to hold her throat. Um, so I went into the shower. Um, and then all I remember is falling asleep in the shower. I… I need… I need to stop. I need to go.”
Jesse said that when he had awoken the next morning and realized Grace was dead, he went into shock. He panicked and put her body in a suitcase and drove out to bury her. He still denied any guilt. “However, I didn’t know what to do. Um, up… downstairs and I was just… I don’t know. I was all over the place.” “You come out of the shower. Yep. The lights been on the shower. Yep. You put a towel around you. You’ve turned the light off and then you’ve returned to your bed and you’ve gone to sleep in your bed. And at that point when you exit the shower, you don’t look around, but your assumption from the silence…” “I… I thought that she’d gone. I… I thought she had left.” “Um, we’re going to head out of here very very soon. And you’re going to take us to where you buried her?” “Yeah. Um, she will likely be exumed tomorrow. Okay. At some point. And after that they will… a pathologist specialist doctor will perform a postmortem.” “Yeah. They’re very skilled at establishing people’s causes of death. Do you understand that?” “Yeah. Did you kill Grace Millane? Okay. Jesse Kempson, you’re under arrest for the murder of Grace Millane.”
The forensic search of Jesse’s room added more to the already disturbing story. Despite Jesse’s attempts to clean up, Grace’s blood covered the floor of the hotel room. Given what Jesse had told them, it didn’t take long for police to start searching an area on Scenic Drive near the Waitakere Reservoir. Shortly after 4:00 p.m. that day, officers found a body around 10 yards from the road. “Area was identified late last night as a location of interest as a result of our investigative work. I can now advise that a short time ago, we located a body which we believe to be Grace. The formal identification process will now take place. However, based on the evidence we have gathered over the past few days, we expect that this is Grace. The focus now is to piece together exactly what happened to a young girl who came to New Zealand on her OE. Obviously, this brings a a search for Grace to an end. It is an unbearable time for the Millane family and our hearts go out to them.”
“Any father, any parent in this situation will struggle. Yeah, I feel I have a daughter in her 20s. Um, so yeah, we putting a lot of support around him. It’s difficult cuz he’s here with a brother from England and the rest of the family are back home.” DI Scott Beard had been heading the investigation and was working closely with the Millane family. For him and his team that had been hoping to find Grace safe and well and bring good news to the family, it was clear how much of a painful moment this was for everyone involved in the search. The grief was shared throughout the nation. Thousands of people paid tribute to Grace and held vigils. The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, publicly apologized to Grace’s parents and offered hers and her country’s full support.
“See, I cannot imagine the grief of her family and what they will be experiencing and feeling right now. And my thoughts and prayers are with her father David, um, who is in the country; um, her mother Jillian who cannot be here; and her wider family, friends, and loved ones and so on behalf of New Zealand, I want to apologize to Grace’s family. Your daughter should have been safe here and she wasn’t and I’m sorry for that. I’ve advised the family through the police that if there is anything we can do to assist, we are here to help with that.”
Following this, Jesse Kempson was formally charged with the murder of Grace Millane. On December 10th, just 5 days after Grace was reported missing, Jesse appeared in court in Auckland. He was granted an interim name suppression to ensure a fair trial, which is why so much of his interview footage was blurred out for a long time. Following an autopsy, a pathologist confirmed that Grace had been strangled and had bruises on her arms and chest, consistent with being pinned down. Considerable force would have been required, and the pressure on her neck must have lasted between 4 and 5 minutes to be enough to kill her. At around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, as Grace lay dead in his room, Jesse carried out a number of internet searches. Using his phone, he looked up “hottest fire,” “flesh-eating birds,” and “Waitakere Ranges,” the location where he would later try to bury Grace’s body. After this, he trolled through a pornography site. He then took several intimate photos of Grace’s dead body.
Just over a month after Grace was found, hundreds of people turned out for her funeral at Brentwood Cathedral in Essex. Detective Inspector Scott Beard, who had been looking after the case, flew to England to pay his respects and support the Millane family. 6 days after Grace was laid to rest, Jesse appeared in the high court and he pled not guilty. His trial began in November later that year. The trial would last just 3 weeks and for much of it, Jesse remained stony-faced, showing no emotion. He occasionally glanced down at court papers or held his head in his hands. Jesse’s defense team argued that although tragic, Grace’s death was caused by nothing more than consensual rough sex that had gone horribly wrong. They claimed that Grace had engaged in sexual encounters like this before meeting Jesse. And this time, it had been a tragic case of sexual misadventure. They said that Jesse had simply panicked and attempted to hide Grace’s body after he realized the sexual encounter had accidentally taken her life. “The defense case is that this is not a murder. And that’s still what I say to you now. Nothing has changed. It was an accidental death that took place in the context of sexual activities that if done incorrectly by inexperienced and/or intoxicated people can go wrong.”
But the prosecution were already armed with a mountain of strong evidence and witnesses. They argued that Jesse did not panic and this was not simply something that went wrong. It was very clearly deliberate and intentional. They said that he had calmly and callously set about covering his tracks, creating what they called a “labyrinth of storytelling and lies” as he went. “In this case, to have killed Grace Millane, the defendant, gentleman over here at the back behind me, had to have had her under his grip, suffocating her, strangling her is probably the correct term, for a total of five to 10 minutes, at some point of which she lost consciousness and would have become under his hand whole unconscious and limp and lifeless and he had to carry on. And if that’s not reckless murder in this country, ladies and gentlemen, somebody will have to explain to me what is.” “Do you find the defendant Jesse Shane Kempson guilty or not guilty?” “Guilty.”
Despite his protests of innocence, on the 22nd of December 2019, after just 5 hours of deliberations, Jesse Kempson was found guilty of the murder of Grace Millane. Jesse was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. “You are a large and powerful man. She was diminutive. In those circumstances, Ms. Millane was particularly vulnerable. You are in a position of total physical dominance.” “On a daily basis, I torment myself over what you did to my Grace. The terror and pain he must have experienced at your hands. As a mother, I would have done anything to change places with her. I sit full of guilt knowing I couldn’t help her, that I should have been there. She died terrified and alone in a room with you.” “The verdict of murder today will be welcomed by every member of the Millane family and friends of Grace. It will not reduce the pain, the suffering that we’ve had to endure over the past year. Grace was taken away from us in the most brutal fashion a year ago and our lives have been and family have been ripped apart. This will be with us for the rest of our lives.” “We would like to thank several people. Auckland Police Force been professional, diligent, and thorough all through this investigation. Last but not least, we would love to thank the people of New Zealand. They’ve opened their hearts to Grace and their family. I cannot express our gratitude enough for all the offers and gifts of kindness that we’ve received over the last year.” “I’ve always thought that if it wasn’t Grace, it was going to be someone. Um, now I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t talk about psychological profile, but what we do know is he’s a liar. You know, a number of times we proved he lied to the police. He lied to others.”
The case prompted many people to express their anger at how Grace’s life had been presented during the trial and how her death had been explained away by her killer. Many feeling it was shameful and grotesque victim-blaming. Rather than placing the blame on the murderer himself, Jesse’s family branded him a “pathetic fantasist.” His stepbrother said he lied over pointless things all the time and continued to lie “until the point where he’s got no out. And then he breaks down, cries, and runs away.”
After he was found guilty of murdering Grace in the highly publicized trial, Jesse faced a further two trials the following year. These were judge-alone trials and no jury was present. Two women had gone to the police when they had seen the blurred images of Jesse after he was arrested for Grace’s murder. They knew instantly it was him, and they both had horrific stories to tell the officers about Jesse. In the first of these two trials in October 2020, an ex-partner spoke of the physical, sexual, emotional, and financial abuse she had suffered while with him. Jesse would hold knives to her throat, choke her, force her to perform sex acts, and drain her account of $10,000. Jesse was found guilty of eight charges, and jailed for 7 and 1/2 years.
In November 2020, he was put on trial again, this time for raping a young British tourist he had met on Tinder 8 months before he had murdered Grace Millane. He forced himself on her and said, “If you don’t do this, I will kill you and I will kill your family and you know I will.” He was then found guilty and given another 3 and 1/2 years in jail for this crime. This brought the total to an additional 11 years, which will run concurrently alongside the sentence he received for the murder of Grace. When Justice Jeffrey Venning found him guilty of rape, it prompted an aggressive outburst from Jesse. “You’re so full of… You have no reason to convict me. You’re full of…”
Tragically in November 2020, Grace’s dad, David Millane, passed away after a battle with cancer. In December 2020, the name suppression concealing Jesse’s identity finally lapsed when the Supreme Court denied his last-stitch appeal against his sentence in Grace’s murder. It is alleged that Jesse is working on appeals in both of the sentences for the 2020 trials as well. To honor Grace’s memory, her family and friends raised a record amount of money for the White Ribbon Campaign. The White Ribbon Campaign is a charity looking to end male violence against women by engaging with men and boys to make a stand against violence and challenge behaviors. Grace’s family and friends raised over £11,000 in her name. The Love Grace campaign was also set up in Grace’s honor. The campaign asks for donations of handbags filled with essential items to help provide support for women seeking refuge from harmful and abusive relationships. I’ve left links to these and a few more resources in the description box below.
