WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - The man who murdered British backpacker Grace Millane in New Zealand two years ago was on Tuesday identified as multiple sex offender Jesse Shane Kempson.
The New Zealand Supreme Court lifted a suppression order that has kept Kempson’s identity secret since he strangled the tourist in his Auckland apartment on her 22nd birthday in December 2018.
He stuffed her body into a suitcase, drove to the Waitakere Ranges forest and buried her in a shallow grave, where police found her body a week later.
Media can also now report that Kempson, 28, had also been convicted of attacking two women who reported him to police after his arrest over Millane’s disappearance.
Millane met Kempson through the dating app Tinder and they went out for drinks before returning to his apartment. Prosecutors said he strangled Millane. Defense lawyers claimed her death was accidental, but the jury convicted him of murder in November last year.
Kempson was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
Kempson faced two other trials before judges without juries last year for crimes against two women, who cannot be named.
After the first trial, he was found guilty of sexual, physical and financial abuse of a former girlfriend. He was sentenced to 7½ years in prison.
After the second trial, he was found guilty of raping another woman whom, like Millane, he met on Tinder. He was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.
Millane had been traveling through New Zealand as part of a planned yearlong trip abroad after graduating from university. Her death shocked many in New Zealand, which prides itself on welcoming tourists and where many people travel abroad as well.
The suppression order that has kept Kempson’s identity secret is a restriction that is sometimes imposed by the New Zealand judicial system for reasons such to prevent prejudicing jurors in another trial that a defendant might face.
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