Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
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 socialble lively family orientated and loved all things creative and artistic. Grace attended The Univeristy of Lincoln and graduated with a degree in advertising and marketing . she was exited 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 gaduation.Grace was descbried as compassionate and caring and before she left for her trip she cut her long hair off and donated it to ” the litllte princess trust”.so it could be turned into wigs for children with cancer.
In october 2018 grace left her family home and set of on her travels the adventures and outgoing graduate travelled to Peru
before spending six week in south of america. she met up with other travellers along the way and was keen to share her with everyone back home.
On november 19,21 year old grace arrived in new zealand alone and 11 days later she reached auckland. she checked into a hostel called. called the backpackers on Queen street sharing a room with some other travellers .
saturday evening december 2st 2018 ,grace left the hostel just before 6 pm and headed out into the city center. dressed in a kneww- length black dress white shoes and carrying a small handbag ,she made plans to meet someone she had matched with on Tinder
Initally grace didn´t seem too sure meeting up but after some more talking her and her date evantually made a plan to gets some drinks.
Grac e met her date ata plece called sky city an entertaiment complex with bars, resturants and casinos.
Gace had been sending messsages 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 plce called the ” the blusteone room. at one point grace got up from the the table
and the mystery man for some reason picked up her handbag. and starting searching it.
but just after 9:30 pm they both left the bar atm 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 where sending messages and reaching out to her over social media. but grace unusually wasnt 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 home bird and this wa a red flag.her parents contacted the Aukland 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 on 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 didin´t take long for track down where grace had been on that saturday evening.
Du to the vast amounts of CCTV from around the city. the mystery man she was spotted with that night was quickly identified.
the 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 seeing drinking with grace.
This man was jesse kempson ,who was currently residing at the city life hotel in aukland. 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 selfshness.
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 lier. he claimed everything from beeing 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 and time and again jesse´s fake world caught up with him and he was frequently evidted 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 the black sox. he lie and say he was waiting on contract money but after eight 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 ws 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 an this all happened on the very day he mate grace millsane on december 1st.
jesse was the last known person seen with grace that night and piolice 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 in to the station to answer some routine questions.
detective:tell us about grace.
jesse: so , i …was talking to grace on Tinder .and we´s matched on frideay , i saw that we´d matched and the next day on saturday. um…and then we met at sky city and then we decided that we´re gojng up to andy´s burger bar.which is on the… the first floor
detective: whose idea was it to go to that particular burger place. ?
jesse: me. because i knew… i didn´t initially know that she was real
detective: what do you mean?
jesse: well ,there´s a lot of ..so have you heard of catfish?
detective: no.
jesse: so catfishing is where someone uses your profile or uses your photos and pretends to be you in the midst and you´re a completely diffrerent person.
detective: how does a.. how does meeting in a public place sor tof protect you from meeting someone whos´not as good looking as …
jesse: well there´s the security there. so if she wasn´t who she said she was. um at least in my mind id´ feel safe.
detective: mhm.
jesse: yeah ,that´s us.
detective: down there?
jesse:yep.so she ´s going that way and i ´m going across the street. and i go down Queen street at …no.i go down victoria street uh…straight down to the bottom and then hang a lift and i head towards the viaduct.
detective: you´ve kind of walked ina bit of funny direction if you were planning to go to the divider,is there a particular reason you were going to do that.
jesse: uh, i feel safer down that way.
detective: and we´re very very concerned for her safety obviously.
jesse:yeah.
detectiv: um..its entirely possible that shes been the victimof foul play.
jesse: okej.
detective: you understand what that means?
jesse: yeah.
detective: 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 to do that?
jesse: yeah, 100 procent, i mean .i know i haven´t done anything wrong so …i´m happy to do it
detective: okej. at this stage we dont know what´s happened to this girl.
jesse: okej.
detective: um,it´s possible that somebody has killed her.okej?
jesse: okej.
detective: you understand.
jesse: yeah.
detective: she might… when i say foul play i mean that someone might have murder her. don´t know if she´s been murdered or not yet . she may be alive and well.
jesse: okej.
detective: but she might also be dead.
jesse: okay
detective: okay and it could be that you ´ve done it.
He said nothing out of ordinary had happened t hat night.the date ended nicely with a hug and a kiss on the cheek and a plan for the following day before the pair eventually parted ways at around 10 pm.
He said he had tried to message her the next day on Tinder but noticed that grace had unmatched him and t hat was where his encounters with her abruptly ended.
but the officers hadn´t yet finished looking through the CCTV from the city life hoteland they were about to start gaining more answers to the remaining questions they had . a sisnister and disturbing picture was slowly put together and almost six terabytes of CCTV dsata were being analyzed.
Despite jesse saying they parted ways on the streets they were both seen arriving at the city life hotel arm in arm. they axited the lift together on jesses floor.but grace was never seen leaving the building.
sthe morning after on what was grace´s birthday cameras did pick up jese leaving the hotel.they followed him over the coming hours tracking his every move.
He went shopping to buy as 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 women he had engaged with on tinder. she later reported that he had some disturbing conversation with her. speaking about burying bodies and his friends that were police officers, his date said he feel so uneasy ,she declined jesse´s to get in his car and made her own way home never talking to him again.
after this jesse went out into the cit centre again, this time h ie a rug doctor carpet cleaning machine ,explaining to staff that he had some red wine staine that needed ckeaning up.
later on at half nine in the evening jesse loaded two sutcases on to a hotel trolley
and off loaded this into the toyota he rented earlier.
Around 7 am the nexy day he ,he was picked up on camera again, this time buying a shovel.
two hours later ,he was spotted power washing the car, he then returned the car to the rental company and i twas 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 jessey 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 baught him for questioning. desspite jesse denying anything had happened ,police still began a thorough search of his hotel room
on December 6th david graces father was now in aukland he made an emotional plea for help
im david malone ,graces dad.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 this amount of time. she´s usually in daily contact with either her 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 ´re all extremely upset it´s very difficult at this time to fully describe the range of emotions we are going through.
The investigaton was moving quickly, allthough police didn´t name him they revealed they had spoken to jesse and that he was a person of interest.
Them more time ticked by the more fearful people became and the police stated that they had ha grave concerns for grace. On december 8.as more and more evidence was coming to light. jesse was eventully taken into custody and interviewed again.his story had now drastically changed.
detective:okay, your indicated that your´re willing to speak to us about the events last saturday is that correct?
jesse:yes.
detective: tell me what happened last saturday.
jesse: she started talking to me about fifty shades of grey. we started having sex at first it was just normal 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 and then she told me to hold her throat and so i went into the shower um…and then all i remember is falling asleep in the shower …
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
jesse: i didn´t know what to do um…i went downstairs and i was just …i don´t know i was all over the place.
detective: you come out of the shower,light´s been on on the shower ,your´ve 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 you´re bed and at that point when you exit the shower you don´t look around at but your assumption from the silence….
jesse: i thought that she´d gone.i thought she had left um..
detective: we´re going to head out of here very soon and you´re going to take us as to where you´ve buried her uhm… she will likely be exhumed tomorrow.
jesse: okej.
detective: at some point and after that they´ll …a pathologist a specialist will perform a post-mortem, they´revery skilled at establishing people´s causes of death ,do you understand that
jesse: yeah
detective: did you kill grace millane?
jesse:no.
detective: okej.
The forensic search of jesses´ room added more to the already disturbing story.
despite jesse´s attempts to clean up grace´s blood covered the floor of t he hotelroom
Given what jesse had told them it didn´t take long for the police to start searching an area on scenic drive near the waitakere reservour. shortly after 4 pm that day officers found a body around 10 yards from the road.
DI Scott beard : ” the remains was identifed last night as 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 hwo came to new zealand on her own.obviously this brings in a search for grace to an end.it isan unbearable time for the millane´s family and out hearts go out to them.
The greif 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 graces parents and offered hers and her counytry´s full support.
” your daughter should have been safe here and she wasn´t and i´m sorry for that “
following this jesse kempson was formaly charged with the murder of grace millane on december 10 th just five days after grace was reported missing jesse appeared in court in aukland he was granted an interim name suppression to ensure a fair trail .
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 wtih being pinned down.considerable force would have been reqiured and th epressure from her neck must have lasted between four and five minutes to be enough to kill her.
around 1 :30 am on sundsay 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 rangers,the location where he later try to bury grace´s body.
after this he look at some pornography site . he then took several intim photos of graces dead body.
just over a month after grace was found hundreds of people turned out for her funural at brentwood cathedral in Essex.
detective inspector scott beard who had been looking after the case flew to england to pay his respect and support the millane´s family .
six days after grace was laid to rest .jesse appeared in in the high court and he pled not guilty. his trial began in november later that year, the trial would last just tthree weeks and for much of it jesse remained stoney face showing no emotion. he occasionally glanced down at court papers or held his head in his hands. jess´s defense team argued although tragic grace´s death was cause by nothing more than consensual rough sex. that had gone horribly wrong.
they claimed that grace had engaged in sexual encounters like this before metting jesse. and this time had been a tragic case of sexual misadventure.
they said that jesse had simply panicked and attempted to hide gracés body after he realized the sexual enounter had accidentally taken her life.
But the prosecution were already armed with 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 they he had calmy and callously set about covering his tracks.creating what they called a labyrinth of storytelling and lies as he went .
Despite his protests of innocence on the 22nd of december 2019 after just five 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 .
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 then placing the blame on the murderer himself.
Jesse´s familt branded him a pathetic fantasist.his step-brother said he lied over pointless things all the time and continued to lie
until the point where he´s got no 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 sen the blurred images of jesse after he was arrested for grace´s murder they knew instantly i t was him. and both had horrific stories to tell the officers about jesse.
in the first of this two trials in october 2020 an ex-partner spoke of the physical sexual emotional and financial abuse she had suffered whlie with him. jesse would hold knives to her throat ,choke her ,force her to perform sex acts and dreain her account of ten thousand dollars
Jesse was found guilty of eight charges and jailed for seven and a half years
In november 2020 ,he was put on trial again, this time for raping a young british tourist he had met on tinder eight month before he had murdered grace millane.
he forced himself on her and said:
He was then found guilty and given another three and a half years in jail for this crime.
this bought the total to an additional 11 years which will run concurrently alongside the sentence he receivedfor the murder of grace.
when justicw geoffrey vening found him guilty of rape ,it prompted an aggressive outburst from jesse.
jesse:” you are so full of *** ! you have no reason to convict me . you are full of ****!
tragecally in november 2020 graces dad 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 -ditch appeal against his sentence in grace´s murder.
it is alleged that jesses 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 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 tomake a stand against violence and challenge behaviours
Grace´s family and friends raised over 11.00 pounds in her name
the love grace campagne wa also set up in grace´s honor , the campaing asks for donations of handbags filled with essential items to help provide support for women seeking refuge from harmful and abusive relatiosnhips.
