Hey Weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.
it sure is today is surely morbid today is the most morbid day one could have yeah it hasn't been a great day but you know what um this probably won't make it better because i'm sure it's a very sad tale it is so there's that but you guys are here and that's exciting duty calls i can feel your presence here and you you it makes me happy yay you know love and positivity and also mikey made lemon uh champagne cupcakes and they are literally the yummiest thing i have ever put in my face they are really fucking good you can't have the rest i know i'm just kidding you can't have you can't have the recipe
they're delicious and refreshing and i'm sorry that you're not eating one right now me too i want to be eating one right now i just you know it's been a crazy day it has my head's going to explode a little bit yeah pick up the pieces pick up the pieces you know you know like it happens it happens it happens everything's okay we just just have like family stuff going on yeah we're fine you know but we're okay we're fine we're gonna be just fine we're swell all right well honestly i have a pretty sad tale to tell you great so let's get into it this is um an example of a tinder murder oh so very
sad those are those are sad and scary they are very scary they are cautionary tales for sure let's go in early Early October of 2018, Grace Mullane left her home in Wickford, Essex, United Kingdom, and headed to South America.
She had this really big plan.
She was going to spend six months traveling around the area, and then she was going to head to Auckland, New Zealand.
Ooh. She wanted to travel the world.
Damn. She just graduated from the University of Lincoln.
She got her bachelor's degree in advertising and marketing as well.
It was like a month earlier.
And this trip was going to be the beginning to her gap year.
Okay. And she wanted to spend it backpacking across the world.
And she was super duper excited just to learn about, you know, all the different cultures and experience them.
And basically she was having a little eat, pray, love situation.
Get it. You know? Now, while she was in Peru, Grace was obviously making it a point to keep in regular contact with her friends and family back home.
She would send them daily updates through tech. She was posting to social media so everybody could see the cool stuff she was experiencing.
experiencing uh her best friend amina ashcroft later told reporters grace was really loving her travels and i could feel her positivity i think grace was happy in her life because she was achieving her long -term goals and realizing her dreams good for her she's like so beautiful and actually what made this even more special is that grace's mom had done a similar trip during her own uh gap year so it had even more of a special meaning to her because she was retracing her her mom's footsteps i love that that's really cool right so after six weeks in peru where she'd been traveling with a group of other
young tourists and backpackers she left south america and this was when she made her way to new zealand and she spent a little over a week traveling around the northland region before moving on to auckland on november 30th now during the first 10 days of her trip around the northland grace was still sending regular messages to her family to her friends still posting pictures of the trip sharing that with everybody and just ensuring everybody she was really having the time of her life her brother michael later said she was just sightseeing and traveling around new zealand she was in good spirits
and was enjoying herself good for her this sounds great so far which is really upsetting me yeah it's yeah because i don't i know it's not going to continue that way it's not unfortunately so on december 1st 2018 which which was the day before her 22nd birthday.
Oh, man. Which makes this even worse.
And also, she's a Sagittarius, which, like, of course she's traveling the world.
Oh, yeah. You're always saying that Sagittarius humans just want to get out of here.
We just want to explore.
We just want to go crazy.
And that makes sense that she was one of them.
So, Grace texted her best friend, Amina, from Auckland to let her know, actually on December 1st, that she was going out on a date with this guy that she had met through Tinder.
her she said he was the manager of an oil company all right and amina thought to herself she was like it's kind of weird that you're like looking for a date on a dating app on what is essentially a vacation but whatever yeah and just a stop along the way exactly and amina had just gotten off a long flight herself and she was like i'm not gonna like ruin grace's night by being like what the heck are you doing and i'm not gonna complicate things she's just having fun so as the night went on grace would text amina updates about the date whenever she could if he headed it off to the bathroom or if she
did she was like it's going great you know she told amina that he was also spending time traveling and he was currently living in a hotel in auckland the guy that she was on a date with in a few months she said he actually had plans to travel to london and in her last text message to amina grace wrote literally i click so i click with him so well i'll let you know what happens tomorrow but that would be the last text that she sent oh my goodness to anyone.
Now the next day her family and friends because again it's her birthday now are all sending her birthday wishes like happy birthday hope you're having the best day.
Everyone's texting her everybody's DMing her sending her message alerts on Facebook but hours and hours and hours are going by and nobody's getting a response from her.
So at first her family was like okay I mean she literally just got to New Zealand maybe she's getting settled maybe she's out celebrating so at first they didn't see any cause for concern but the next day the day after her birthday all the birthday messages grace had gotten were still going unacknowledged and that was just totally out of character for her her brother told reporters on monday it was weird that we hadn't heard from her so yesterday we started to make inquire inquiries down the right channels and realized the last time she was seen was on saturday by one of her roommates in a a hostel
so they're starting to like fully panic i was just looking at pictures of her she is so beautiful oh my god she's gorgeous oh it's like oh it just kills me it's so sad and i'm just like feeling the panic for her loved ones here especially on her birthday yeah seriously she's just about to turn 22 like has the whole rest of her life ahead of her wild so two more days went by with absolutely nothing from grace and that was when her family really started to lose it yeah so they decided to contact the british consulate in wellington and an official missing persons report was filed now with the auckland police
so now there was going to be an investigation into this disappearance and with that grace's father hopped on the first plane he to auckland so that he could aid the investigation in any way possible that's a dad right there dad now a day later auckland police detective scott beard told the press since receiving a missing persons report around lunchtime yesterday police have been piecing together grace's last known movements with the last sighting being on saturday night using the extensive cctv footage captured from cameras around the city so luckily there's like so much cctv i feel like in other
parts of the world oh yeah i know we have it here but i feel like it's way more it's everywhere seriously so luckily they were being able to like put together her night through this footage And investigators also released an image of her that had been captured from a camera at Auckland's Sky City Entertainment Complex on the night of December 1st, the last night she'd been seen.
Okay. And that image luckily generated a ton of leads from the public.
In one instance, a resident told police that she had seen Grace standing on the side of the Southern Motorway in Manukau, I think is how you say it, which was about 14 miles outside of Auckland.
the woman told police i can honestly say 100 i saw a young girl absolutely so close to her description that it's not funny and no there was no way i was going to stop she was in a very unusual place to stand i looked at the photo and i was quite adamant i had seen that girl she had like a raincoat she had a bigger sort of jacket not a fashion -like one what was weird is like i don't really think that tip led to much but oh that's weird super super super adamant that she had seen grace and described what she was that she had a jacket on that's so wild to me because i think about it i could never
tell you if i saw somebody or not i don't know i'm so unobservant what i wore yesterday yeah i have like i don't remember like i'm observant in the moment but like it's not sticking around sometimes i'm i think it just depends on like where i'm at that day i think there was something that you changed recently maybe like in your kitchen or something and me and drew were talking about it like and we were like oh like did you change that and you were like no we've had that for a while like oh i was like i'm sorry we're not very observant yeah i just think about it and i'm like if somebody put up
a picture of somebody and they were like did you see this person in boston yesterday i'd be like i don't fucking know i have no idea maybe seriously like who knows how many people you passed throughout the day that i'm always amazed so you're not paying that much attention thank goodness some Some people do.
Honestly. But then what sucks is that other people who don't actually pay attention say they do.
Yeah. And then they give you like a false tip.
Exactly. But investigators also discovered that all of Grace's belongings were still in her room at the hostel, which indicated to them that she hadn't left the country at least. Yeah.
Detective Beard told the press, we've spoken to a number of people at the backpackers hostel because she was in a room where there was at least four people staying.
Okay. Okay. Now the thing was, the sad thing was that none of those people she was staying with had any additional information.
Yeah. They were like she went on a date and that's the last we saw.
Yeah. But back in Essex, Grace's family was working to aid the investigation themselves.
They were able to access her social media and they saw that still she hadn't read any of the messages that had been sent to her since December 1st, which again, very out of character for her.
and in addition to that they also found that her itinerary this is a quote her itinerary had been changed from her original bookings and she planned to stay in auckland until the 8th and had paid for the hostel until the 8th which she hadn't reported to anybody so that was kind of strange yeah now at the time of the press conference which was five days after grace had gone missing police were not totally ready to assume foul play but between the unread social message and the abandoned belongings and no contact there was cause for alarm they weren't ready to go right to foul play but they were tiptoeing
that line essentially a day later investigators released additional cctv footage that was captured from a camera at city life hotel in auckland and it was recorded about two hours after that original footage from sky city city and in that new footage grace is seen with a man getting off an elevator on a higher floor investigators reported having spoken to the man and they said that they quote conducted forensic tests at an apartment at the city life hotel so things were starting to get yeah but still they said they didn't have any other information that they were willing to share but the case
was not going to go cold because on the night of december 8th auckland police made an arrest at the time his name was being suppressed but they had arrested a man the one that grace had just gone out with on the night before her birthday 26 year old jesse kemson according to 26 and wait until you hear what this fucker had done in his 26 years of life according to detective beard Beard Kempson had come to their attention because of that CCTV footage and said that, quote, an examination of Kempson's vehicle and of a room at the hotel where Miss Malene was last seen had led officers to conclude that she
was dead. Oh, no. She'd been murdered.
So in his statement.
Like this. Yeah. Yeah.
This kills me. So in his statement to the press, Beard said, we still do not know where Grace is, but we are determined to find her and return her to her to her family oh that changed the next day because grace's body was found oh no she was found in a suitcase are you kidding me along an access um road in the waitakere ranges which is a popular hiking area just like 12 miles about outside of auckland piece of shit piece of fucking garbage garbage.
So obviously the discovery of Grace's body was completely devastating for her family.
They were hopeful throughout the investigation that they were going to find Grace alive, and this was literally their worst fucking nightmare.
Luckily, their community rallied around them, and the memorials and outpouring of support began literally as soon as the discovery was reported.
Actually, the mayor of Wellington at the time, Justin Lester, tweeted about what what a terrible nightmare this murder was, and similar sentiments were also shared by the New Zealand Prime Minister at the time, Jacinda Ardern, I think it is.
In a public statement, she said that Grace's murder caused quote, an overwhelming sense of hurt and shame that this has happened in our country.
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.
Oh, that's awful. Also, why we need more woman leaders.
Yeah, right? They get it.
They get Get it. Like, the fact that she took the time to actually, like, apologize that this happened in a place that she was in charge of.
And to say, like, she should have been safe here and she wasn't.
And, like, that's on us.
And I'm sorry. So investigators, they were able to find Jessie while they were scanning Grace's social media pages for any indication of her whereabouts.
Auckland detective Diana Levinson was scrolling through the comments on Grace's photos.
She was on Facebook and she saw one from Jessie Kempson.
the night that grace disappeared he left a comment on one of her pictures that said beautiful very radiant are you shitting me nope what the fuck the night she disappeared like very clearly did that after he did what we will find out he did wow so the detective reached out to kempson and explained they were trying to locate grace which is then when they learned that he had had met her through tinder and that the two of them had gone on a date saturday and the saturday that grace went missing so he told the police and this is a quote we drunk a lot of cocktails at the burger bar and we were having
good conversations but he said the date ended a little after 9 30 and that the two went their separate ways and that he ended up meeting up with a colleague from work false liar not true liar and the thing was to the detectives to beard and levenson the fact that grace mysteriously disappeared less than an hour after supposedly parting ways with this guy yeah like shut up they were like no way so they kept him in mind as a potential suspect and they continued to chase down other leads but he was at the forefront of their mind you know those photos sitting in your phone the ones that make you smile
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she? Now, using CCTV footage, the credit card receipts, and then of course the communications like the ones between Grace and her friends, investigators were able to put together a pretty thorough timeline of events on the night she disappeared.
On November 30th, she used the Tinder app and that was when she matched with Jesse Kempson.
They chatted pretty briefly and And then they arranged to meet for a date the next day at 545 outside of a Christmas display in downtown Auckland.
Oh, God. They just met up in front of a Christmas display.
Now, as far as anybody could tell, between 545 and when she was last seen at 940 p .m., Grace and Jesse seemed to be enjoying each other's company.
They drank at the Bluestone Room, which was a bar near the City Life Hotel where he was living.
And Amina told a reporter from Radio New Zealand, I sensed Grace was having a good time, and she seemed to be pretty drunk and really enjoying herself.
That's so scary. Like, she just thought that she was having a good date.
Because they were just having a good date.
Yeah. That's what's so scary about this.
Like, he wasn't, this sounds like it was just, you would have no way of knowing.
No, absolutely no way.
You're just having a good date, you're just texting your friend about your good date.
And it's also like, dude, like, it's even scarier because you're like did he know that she was texting her friend and it's like if you knew that she was texting people like if you like she's connecting with people as this is happening right and also you're still gonna do like what and you would also assume that like you're probably one of the last people that she matched with like like you're what is wrong with you like damn there is so much wrong with him now it was in the course of their investigation that detectives discovered that footage from city the city life hotel lobby and in that footage
grace can be seen going into the elevator with jesse kempson and getting off on the floor where his apartment was the pictures are chilling chilling because she has a smile like oh yeah they look super happy she thinks she's just going back to this guy's apartment that she's really hit it off with i mean i speak for myself how many fucking times have i done that it's a very it's a very normal thing to do like it is it's it's just so sad to think that like you can't hit it off with somebody anymore and go back to their place no you can't trust anyone you literally can't it's like how do people
date anymore i honestly don't know i wonder that all the time it's so true but the thing was the footage alone was proof that kemson had lied to the investigators when he said they parted ways around 9 30 so they went they went back to question him a second time and that's when they were given a very different and way more elaborate story than the one that he told them previously of course excuse me according to him everything he told the detectives about his night with grace up until 9 30 had been true but he was like you know what i was lying when i said we parted ways after dinner but now i'm
ready to tell you the whole story oh good that's real nice of you gee thank you for wasting our fucking time he said they met up a little before six on the night of the first of december they went to that sky city entertainment complex and then they moved on to the blue blue stone room for dinner and drinks and he said the date was going pretty good so around 9 40 once they finished up dinner he invited her back to his apartment and basically said that he implied that they would hook up okay and it's here that the story changes from the previous version when they got to back to his room he said
he put on a music channel on the television television and he and grace started kissing it gets a little graphic here just if you're listening with people you don't want to hear graphic things with okay um he said they were kissing and talking but things escalated and he told them this is a quote she asked me to turn off the tv she told me there's a few things she likes doing that she had done with an ex -partner we started having sex at first it was normal it was very placid and she then she started biting and she asked me to bite her so I did I stopped at first and said is this really something
you want to do and then at that point he claimed that they stopped having sex and they started discussing bondage and then he said it was at that point that grace mentioned the book 50 shades of gray and told him that she did have an interest in BDSM so he said she told him that she had been exploring that kind of sex with a previous boyfriend before they broke up okay and then jesse said after they had that like quick conversation about going through with that kind of sexual act, they kept having sex. And he went on to say, she was holding my arms above my head and just biting.
And then she hit my butt.
Then she held me around my neck and pushed down.
She indicated that it made me harder.
We swapped over. I got on top.
We started having more, I guess, violent sex. Then we ended up on the floor and then we kept going.
She told me to hold her arms tighter.
And then she told me to hold her throat and go harder.
So he said the two of them then took nude photographs of each other, which is not true.
And when they were done having sex, he said he went to the bathroom and he alleged that he fell asleep in the shower after all that.
Okay. Yep. According to him, he woke up still in the shower a few hours later.
A few hours? Oh, he took like a full nap.
Sir, you would have have drowned yep mm -hmm woke up in a few hours later and he said it was still dark so he crawled back into bed and he fell asleep again and did not wake up until the next morning he said to detectives i thought grace had left i woke up the next day and saw that she was lying on the floor i saw that she had blood coming from her nose i screamed i yelled out to her i tried to move her to see if she was awake i was in shock and i didn't know what to do i took a whole heap of tablets that i had i realized she wasn't alive and i just wanted to end it all literally not one part of that makes
sense none of it makes any sense not one part of that is believable whatsoever so clearly he was trying to say just like if you know that this was an accident gone wrong they had too rough of sex and that she had been killed in the process so he is trying to tell us us right now that they had this like violent whatever sex and that when they were done he just he just got up and went into the shower and she was dead yes but he just but he didn't realize he didn't notice that yeah yeah that yep that makes so much sense that you would just get up after having sex with someone and not realize that you
had killed them in the process us yeah and basically what we will try what we will see is that he is saying it happened while he was choking her like she died during that you would know if you killed someone like that you would know and also it takes a long time to manually strangle someone my guy we'll see exactly and it takes a long time with consistent pressure she would be showing pretty much what the medical exam yeah it would it would she would be showing a lot of signs of being in she'd be real distress she'd be struggling and you would be having to sit there with constant consistent pressure
that doesn't make literally any sense no and after minutes and minutes of doing that you don't know that she's dead no idea and then you just crawl back into bed and you don't see her on your like even if that had all happened and you had no idea that she was dead which like that didn't happen would but in the in an alternate universe where that was possible then you just walk back into your bedroom and you don't see her where you had just had sex and you just crawl into bed it literally nothing that is the stupidest fucking like story i have ever heard in my life and then he said he took the heap
of pills and tried to end his own life when he realized what he had done but then he also claimed that in a panic he went to the warehouse which is a store on Elliot Street in Auckland, and that's where he bought a suitcase.
So you said that you just took this whole heap of pills, but then you're saying that you went to a store and purchased a suitcase.
Yeah. You did that on...
100%. After you took the amount of pills that you were saying you were using to end your own life?
Yeah. No. Yeah, it all adds up.
Like what? This is very, very legit.
What? He said, I went back, and at first I didn't know what to do.
I just put the suitcase on the bed, and I think I left again.
again couldn't remember it was literally a couple days ago love that you planned you went there and got a suitcase with a clear plan and then was like i didn't know what to do i didn't know what to do really you just bought a suitcase didn't really have any idea what you were gonna do with it he said i just was thinking that me and grace had such a great night oh we were talking about catching up in London shut the fuck up you fuck yeah you're not going anywhere idiot so detective uh Ewan Settle.
Oh, I love that name.
I know you do. Ewan Settle interrupted Kempson at one point to ask why, if the death had been accidental, did he not call for an ambulance once he realized she was dead?
Exactly. And he said he did put the number in his phone, but he didn't follow through with the call.
Oh, so close. He said, there's a dead person in my room.
I thought it looked terrible.
Yeah, I mean, it does.
It does look pretty fucking terrible.
That is the one thing I can say that you are correct about but you know it looks worse you purchasing a suitcase because that pretty much implies that that's how you're gonna get rid of the dead person in your room you fucking asshole so rather than call emergency services or literally any other person on this planet who could help him Kempson loaded Grace's body into that recently purchased suitcase he said I was just in shock the whole time I couldn't put her in it because it just didn't seem right it just didn't seem right so i left and grace was half in half out of the suitcase at that stage
i couldn't do it so that's worse i'm without words for this thing yeah me too so according to him he then left the apartment to buy cleaning supplies which is true it was captured again on cctv wow once again we're we're doing great with the uh not suspicious thing here Yeah, seriously.
And then when he returned, he texted a friend to chat.
Yeah. Because he said, I didn't think it was real.
Nope. I think you were just looking to make sure that you had some little paper trails here, there, and everywhere to make sure that you were like, what?
I was just talking to my friend.
I wouldn't be doing that after I killed someone.
This isn't even the kind of paper trail you want.
He was just trying to explain something away because through the course of their investigation, police would learn that the friend he was talking to was actually just another tinder match that he was planning to take on a date that night wow you just murdered a girl you said you really connected with in your room and you're so upset and distraught and you took so many pills and you don't want to be here anymore but you're planning a date for tonight after you dispose of your date's body from last night wow psychopath also imagine being that girl and finding that out later that's really funny because i
literally wrote imagine finding out you were the poor person on that date with him that night because he did go on a date oh my god he did yep when he returned home from his other date so this man is still claiming after the he went on a date that night he went on a date that night and he is still gonna claim later that that was an accident and he was devastated sadness all of it wow the stupidity a fucking fake ass wow so yeah when he got home home from his date, that was when he managed to get Grace's body into the suitcase.
And after cleaning his apartment, he took the suitcase down to the parking lot and loaded it into his car, which is also on CCTV.
So, you can literally, like, he's carrying the suitcase out of the hotel lobby.
Oh, yeah. I saw those pictures.
Fucking haunting. It's horrifying to look at, because you're just looking at that being like, Grace is in that.
Yeah, she never left that hotel.
Yeah. Like, we see her walk in, and we never see her walk out.
so fucked so he takes the suitcase down to the parking lot loads it into the car which uh again also captured and the next morning he drove it out to the waitaki i think that's how you say it waitakari excuse me ranges and he took the suitcase out of the trunk he said that he went to the brush and started digging and then he said he took 20 maybe 30 paracetamol tablets because i didn't want to be around if grace wasn't there and i didn't think i deserved to be around because of what happened i love that he's like yeah i just keep taking pills they just don't affect me yeah it's wild i'm just taking
so many pills and also you know what you don't deserve to be around oh you're murdered someone you fucking asshole so he dug a hole and then placed the suitcase inside and covered it up and then drove over to a nearby reservoir and he claims he sat there and waited for the overdose of drugs he'd taken to end his life but it just didn't just didn't so he drove drove back to the city and went to his apartment like so now he has taken two overdoses of pills and neither has done nothing nothing he's been able to drive function all of that it's like i think you're lying like a liar i think you are now
when detectives asked why he decided to change his story until this new version he said because i want her family to know that it wasn't intentional but i also want her family to have closure and the other night when i was questioned by police least i was still shocked and i apologize for misleading wow you put a woman in a suitcase and buried it and you think that's giving the family closure yeah closure what and then he still claimed that he had absolutely no intention to kill grace but it didn't matter he had killed her and now he was officially being arrested on murder charges and taken into
custody wow so it did not take the investigators long to poke holes in his story and conclude that he was not being completely truthful no they were able to theorize that grace had been murdered sometime between 9 40 p .m when she's seen getting off that elevator and 129 a .m when he logged into his computer to use the internet directly after what had happened what his first search was for those waitakere ranges followed by a second search six minutes later for hottest fire and also he spelled held Hottest wrong.
Wow. And then he made further searches to find out whether there were flesh eating birds in the Waitakere ranges.
That's not real. That's real.
He wanted to know if there was flesh eating birds.
He searched for flesh eating birds in that range.
Are there flesh eating birds in the Waitakere ranges?
I'm without words. Yeah.
He has an explanation for for that later don't worry oh good i'm eager to hear that or his lawyers do which like i was like even better wow that was a reach but he signed out about 20 minutes later at 1 46 p .m and then spent three minutes uh taking intimate photographs of miss melaine's body are you fucking kidding me yeah no i'm not but that is exactly why he said they had taken photos of each other while being intimate he obviously knew that police were going to find his phone search it find these photos and apparently he didn't realize that the detectives were going to know whether or not she
was alive when the photos were taken you dumb fuck you think people can't tell if she's alive or dead you idiot you sick holy shit he took photos of her he's and tried to say that that was like something they did in the course of their bdsm disgusting like that's not bdsm at all wow now a search of his apartment turned up even more evidence during their initial search crime scene technicians found traces of blood quote on the foot of the bed in the footprints walking towards the bathroom and in small splatters on the fridge oh yeah and if you they have pictures online of the luminol yeah light
up that's lit up like a christmas tree that's a lot according to the technicians Quote, somebody had walked in with blood, had walked in blood with their left foot and transferred blood around the room.
And then they believed that the smaller strain stains were likely spillover from a bucket like somebody would use to clean a mess.
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Now, because the body had been left undiscovered for nearly a week, the autopsy technicians couldn't be precise in the measurements and conclusions, but the medical examiner was able to conclude that the cause of death was manual strangulation.
Holy shit. they estimated that the killer had quote applied sustained strength and unrelenting pressure for somewhere between five and 10 minutes this is why that's like the stupidest fucking story he could have told five five to ten minutes of sustained strong pressure while somebody struggles and he's claiming that like fuck off like even right now i just thinking about that i had to take a breath yeah five to ten minutes there's no way she wasn't struggling and they also noted that there were burst blood vessels in grace's face but t and petechial hemorrhaging in her left eye deep bruising
on her upper arms neck and left shoulder that is described as being quote typical of restraint this was not no sex no no drugs were found in her system but due to the time that had passed the medical examiner also couldn't determine her blood alcohol level at the time of her death which in this case to me it doesn't really matter yeah Now, digging into Kempson's personal life, detectives found a tangled, confusing web of lies, half -truths, and oddities, I guess you could say, that provided very little insight into who Jesse was, what his personal story really was.
But this is what we do know.
Okay. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1992, and he was raised in and around Wainuiouta and Paorirua.
I really tried, and I literally put phonetic spelling.
Wow. He was raised around there.
But when he was nine, his parents divorced, and his mother ended up moving away from the family, and she moved overseas.
Okay. And after that, he had little to no contact with her.
And eventually, his father met and married a woman, and they kind of blended families.
Okay. From what investigators could tell, he had a very poor relationship with his family.
According to one former acquaintance, they were all, quote, appalled by his constant dishonesty and thievery.
Makes sense. Not shocking.
The tensions between him and his father and his stepmom eventually led to them giving him an ultimatum.
And we don't know everything involved here, but basically they told him he could get psychological help or he could get the fuck out of their house.
Wow. So he chose the latter.
matter and in 2013 he moved to uh to australia where he lived until 2016 and in 2016 he then returned to new zealand now while he was living in sydney he was arrested multiple times for disorderly behavior which was a pattern that continued when he returned to new zealand because he was arrested in new zealand for drunk driving okay yes basically his issues seemed to follow him wherever he went yeah when he returned to auckland after leaving australia he found a shared apartment situation and told his new roommates that he, quote, was coming over to New Zealand to buy bars to add to the franchise
his father owned. That was not the case at all.
The roommate's problems with him also began almost immediately.
He failed to pay his rent on time constantly.
His former roommate said there was always an excuse.
He was waiting on money from his accountant in Australia.
Eventually, you stop believing the stories.
there were so many stories that you start to say really it stopped making sense and then other roommates even found his behavior to be odd or sometimes threatening one of them a female was so freaked out by jesse that she kept a knife by her bed whenever she was in the house alone with him oh my god another roommate elaborated and said he came home drunk and broke some furniture and she was scared when he was drunk the facade goes just a little bit damn so for detectives the picture of Jesse that was coming through from their investigation was that of a troubled and most likely mentally ill chronic
liar who struggled to maintain relationships with anybody.
Damn. Now, it was his criminal history, though, that convinced them that Grace's death was not an accident.
In 2017, his former girlfriend went to the Auckland police and reported that he had violently raped her.
Oh my God. And repeatedly threatened to kill her over the course of several months oh so he's an actual full -blown in every gender like every direction you could possibly reach piece of absolute garbage garbage yeah and actually about eight months before he met grace on tinder he made another date on the app with a woman that he ended up sexually assaulting at the end of the night she told reporters i was just frozen i let him do what he needed to do so i could try and go to sleep or go home as soon as possible oh that's awful i wish there needs to be like a central place where people can report
yeah this stuff about specific people i know i don't know i wonder if that like i don't know anything about dating apps because that was like way out of my time of dating but like i wasn't on them long enough to luckily have to report i feel like there should be like some central place at each at each site that like yeah you can report a profile and they should really regulate it and if there's even one report against you you should be kicked off that app i because i know you can report profiles but i don't know how it works like after you've reported there needs to be a very specific and it needs
to be a fucking like put the hammer down kind of thing seriously it's so fucked horrifying it's so scary i you couldn't pay me money to online date ever again seriously and that's so scary and it's for people who actually are doing it to meet someone and think of the people that do i mean I mean, I know people who have gotten married after meeting on Tinder or Hinge or any of those, you know, like it happens.
Yeah. But then you have to think that this could also happen.
Yeah, it's true. It's so scary.
But it makes you even it makes you further realize that the Internet and like social media and stuff is so fucking toxic now.
And fake. The grid needs to just crash.
Because even like it's the same thing as like when you meet someone in a bar.
You don't know that person.
No. They're brand new to you.
so if you give your number to them that's it's essentially the same thing but something about the internet makes like the more nefarious aspects of it become real and it's like they it makes it more it's so weird it is it really is weird yeah i don't know what it is i think it it just gives you a little more power to people can hide and to and to put like a an alter ego go in somebody's mind.
Yeah, exactly. He could put on his profile that he's interested in da -da -da -da -da because he saw that Grace was interested in da -da -da -da -da.
Exactly. That's exactly what it is.
It's like they can cater themselves to – it's honestly a bad person's kind of haven there because it's like they can really cater themselves to be what you want them to be.
Yeah, and a lot of times they do.
It's really bad. Let's just let the grid crash, everybody.
Let the grid absolutely crash.
See you later. There's a sunspot on the sun. There you go.
Which is wild, that sunspots can go on the sun. Yeah, it's just like, hey.
But it's four times the size of Earth and apparently it has the potential to cause a lot of solar flares, which could crash the grid.
Yeah, let's just go back to like researching out of books in the library and shit.
Unfortunately, I think everybody would lose their fucking minds if the grid crashed.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
So I would just like hide in a bunker somewhere.
We're too deep now.
Yeah, far too deep.
But one can dream. you know well in his first court appearance jesse kemson and his defense team petitioned to have his name suppressed in all the public records and media fuck you which i i'm very confused about why because he was 26 years old it's not like he's a juvenile now but the request it actually was initially denied but that decision was later reversed due to oh this is why i do know why i do know due to the open investigations and to the other assaults that he was now accused of committing before grace was killed that's why but i don't really get it bye maybe it's because it would influence
that decision yeah it's like one of those things where i think it's they they don't want those things being part of the new trial kind of thing i mean but like being i hate that shit because it's like i'm sorry if you're a terrible person and a rapist yeah we should be able to take that into consideration when looking at how you uh murdered a woman in a hotel room yeah i don't think we should be like well just forget all that luckily the jury was able to find out like we'll see but it's so weird right it's very strange the justice system is weird it's very strange and all of them are so different
yeah and remember this is new zealand that's true but in the thing then this is the thing so this ruling was only enforceable in new zealand like keeping his name out of it which immediately caused problems in the case because it was being focused on all around the world yeah of course now there was also a big leak of jesse's name because uh it was through Google when Google sent out their like news roundup I don't know if you got that they named him oh to users across the world of course and it caused this massive like issue and like tension within the trial that's so crazy like I never thought
of the fact that like somewhere like New Zealand would even have that be a thing yeah like an adult their name could be kept out of it yeah and I think their name is kept out of it like we were just saying because of the other cases it's just interesting it is and the new zealand legal system was fucking pissed at google like really mad but then google said that they never received any kind of suppression order and it pretty much went nowhere oh there was like discussions that were had about how fucked up that is that we can't name people but whatever so jesse kemson's trial did start on november
4th 2019 almost one year after grace's death and the trial was overseen by justice simon more and he put unusually tight restrictions on the local and international media in the courtroom because of that situation with Google, so that's why I had to mention it.
The Crown was being represented by Brian Dickey, a Crown solicitor with more than 24 years experience in prosecuting major criminal cases like at the highest courts, which I think is cool when like there's multiple courts high court high courts now Kempson's defense team was led by Ann Brookie a private solicitor who actually had a history of prosecuting cases on behalf of the crown so that was interesting in his opening statement Dickey told the jury the facts of the case and noted that even though Jesse Kempson claimed Grace had died accidentally his actions afterwards were not those of somebody
experiencing panic uh no they were deliberate acts of a murderer trying to cover up a crime scene and just cold careless acts yeah he was like he did not regret this one bit he photographed her body he searched for ways to dispose of her stuffed her into a suitcase and then went back on tinder to find a date that same day that's outrageous and he argued incredible incredible and he argued that he was eroticizing grace's death by taking intimate photographs of her body and looking up pornography while she laid dead in his room.
Oh, come on. Absolutely fucked.
He's a fucking monster.
But in their opening statement, the defense, of course, argued the opposite.
They said that Grace and Jessie shared dinner, some drinks, went back to his apartment and engaged in consensual sex. Shut up.
Like, no. They said it was then that Grace, it was Grace's fault.
Of course it was. She asked Jessie to choke her, which resulted in her accidental death.
And they said, as for Kempson looking at porn and searching for random things later, those were, quote -unquote, random drunk searches.
And they said him searching for the Waitakere ranges could have just been something as simple as him searching, quote, somewhere the pair had planned to go for a day out.
So wait, let me just get this straight.
He's drunk, and how do you spell that?
Ready. W -A -I -T -A -K -E -R -E.
okay okay so you're we're being very serious when we say that he is drunk yeah and searching that particular place yeah and just looking at porn after he already had sex because that makes sense yep okay yeah and when you know what when I'm when I've had a few drinks the first thing that I think of is like I wonder if there's fleshy eating birds out there and that's the other thing I'm like oh yeah it's just my curious mind he's just making sure that there's no no flesh -eating birds that will get them while they're out on their date that's literally all i think about when we go on a hike i'm like
i hope there's no flesh -eating birds around because like they're so common that what wow what wow and it's just a coincidence that you buried her body out there huh just a coincidence just a coincidence so weird crazy i know it looks it looks so bad but but please believe me so it was clear that the defense was going to portray the murder as that's just rough sex gone wrong, that old defense.
But thankfully, the prosecution was very prepared for that.
Their second round of witnesses, they hoped, would show that Jussie Kempson was a sexual sadist with a history of violence against women.
In total, the prosecution called three women to the stand, and each of them had varying degrees of contact with him, and they all had their identities suppressed for their own safety, thankfully.
The first woman testified that he had contacted her through Tinder and quote told her he liked rough sex domination and strangulation because it made him feel more superior and in control i literally i can't say right now i was just gonna say i have so many thoughts right now but she said they went on a date and they did engage in consensual and consensual sex but at some point he became more aggressive during that than she had anticipated and she told the courtroom he grabbed my forearms and put all the pressure on my arms so i couldn't breathe and I couldn't move my arms I started kicking trying
to indicate that I couldn't breathe I was kicking violently he would have helped me fight he would have felt me fighting I was terrified and later when she confronted him about the incident she said he told her in an accusing and cold tone you don't think I did that on purpose did you ew he's so disgusting yeah did you see him yeah he looks like a fucking yeah he's repulsive now Now, according to the witness, she did stay in contact with him for months after because she was, quote, concerned that she had given him too much information about her life and that he would stalk her if she cut off contact.
Oh, God. So that's how afraid she was.
Yeah. Now, on the morning of December 1st, 2018, just hours before he went out with Grace, he was trying to get in contact with this witness to get her to agree to a date.
Oh. Oh. But she declined and said she had other plans.
And he kept up with her all day, asking, let's head out, let's head out, let's head out, even in the days after Grace's death.
But she repeatedly declined.
He would have killed a lot of these women.
Not a doubt in my mind he wanted to kill another woman.
Now, the next witness called for the prosecution claimed that she had also matched with him on Tinder and that they had been exchanging messages for weeks.
But she declined his request for a date because she said, quote, Now, like the last witness, he also contacted this girl on the morning that he went out with Grace.
And then a third woman, who he met through Tinder nine days before Grace, had a similar experience in which consensual asphyxiation was introduced by Kempson.
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Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award -winning comedian and actor So after the prosecution had presented the three witnesses, the defense still tried to portray what happened to Grace as an accident.
They said that she had a sexual history involving BDSM, and they actually called several witnesses to the stand to testify as to her sexual interests and preferences.
That's fucked up. Like how fucked is that?
You are brutally murdered by a tinder date and then their lawyers go on to make your sexual history public to everybody and making it seem like you asked for this.
Imagine going home and laying your head down on the pillow at night after doing that to a dead girl.
No I wouldn't. Yeah.
The attorney Kempson's attorney there presented the jury with forensic evidence that he collected from Grace's laptop.
Basically she was on a BDSM website talking to people.
Which she is perfectly allowed to do.
She is a consenting adult.
The chats were between her and two separate men and they occurred between August and September in 2017.
The transcripts were read aloud to the courtroom.
She is dead everybody.
And was killed. And this is nothing to do with it.
Nothing. All they were trying to do was prove that she had an interest in BDSM.
And it's like, OK, she liked BDSM.
Does that mean that she should get murdered for it?
Like what? That's not BDSM.
That's not BDSM at all.
Like I can promise you that.
It's crazy. So one man that she had been talking to was called to testify about his conversation with her.
And he told the jury everything.
And then a second witness for the defense made similar claims that she was new to this world of BDSM, trying it out.
And she did did enjoy being choked.
Okay. That was a preference.
Not to death, everybody.
Exactly. And then in a statement, again, read aloud for the court, an unnamed female friend of Grace's, which, like, you did your friend dirty.
She said Grace enjoyed her partner putting his hands around her neck.
And again, sure, maybe she did enjoy that, but it didn't mean that Jesse Kempson had the right to strangle her for over five minutes and then take photos of her dead body because that is not part of bdso okay they i'm like i love that they're trying to be like well she liked 50 shades of gray everybody and yeah a lot of women i'm sorry what part of 50 shades of gray is this can you point me to the part because i don't see it ridiculous like this is fucked up that they're pretending that this is anything to do with her sexual preferences and her family is sitting there in that courtroom and you're
essentially desecrating her name her Her family, this is what kills me with this shit because it's like this girl got fucking murdered after going on a date.
And now her family is sitting there and she gets to have all of her shit laid bare when she's dead.
She was murdered. And she's not here to tell us actually what she liked and what she didn't like.
And these people just get to go up there and talk about her however they want to and talk about her sex life and say that she liked this.
Like, you don't know.
You have no idea. You don't know these fucking men either.
Like, you don't know any of them.
It's so fucked up. It's like, how you can do that to a girl who has been murdered is beyond me.
Beyond. But they did, and they did it up until - To try to do it to get this guy off, too.
That's what's wild to me.
Who you know killed her.
Not only you know killed her, you know has assaulted at least three other women.
Yes. And how about all the women that were probably too terrified to come forward?
A violent rapist you're trying to get off on murder that he has admitted to.
He raped his own girlfriend.
Yeah. So, and again, they did it all the way till the end.
In his closing arguments, Ron Mansfield, who was a member of Kempson's defense team, reinforced their position that Grace, excuse me, had initiated and encouraged the sexual behavior that resulted in her death.
That's what they said.
Wow. I have like no words.
I have many words, but I'm not going to say them right now.
They said everything Kempson did after was out of fear.
Mansfield told the jury, people do things when they're stressed, when they're panicked.
No matter what he did once he realized she had died, unless he called the authorities, that was not going to look good or stand him in good steed because who was going to believe him that the death occurred during a consensual activity?
No one, just like no one's going to believe it now, you blundering idiot.
And also like, sure, yeah, you're correct.
People do do things when they're stressed and panicked and no matter what he did other than calling the ambulance would look bad.
Him looking up porn is a lot more than bad.
Him looking up the place where he buried her body is more than bad.
him then doubling down to see if the birds would eat the flesh off of her bones horrific yeah those aren't just things people do when they're stressed no when i'm stressed i like i knock things over i trip yeah you don't google weird shit i don't i don't kill someone look at porn and then take photos of it take photos of their dead body so in his closing arguments brian dickie uh disagreed with the defense's case entirely he pointed out the medical examiner's estimation that the strangulation lasted between five and ten minutes and told the jury this is a quote this isn't just a little bit of sex
gone wrong because the person doing that must have known that they were hurting her yes causing her harm that might well cause her death but they were reckless and carried on and she died this is not an accident no of course it's not and they've shown a pattern that he's the one who likes doing that yeah she is interested in bdsm obviously but it's showing like he's making seem like oh she wanted me to do that i just i was i was so wholesome i had no idea how to do this he has a longer history than you have a long history of doing this and actually the defense for him only kind of fucked themselves
there proved that because yeah she was super new to this exactly nice job yep now the um dickie there the one that we like he also noted more importantly that the evidence presented at trial didn't even support the defense's claim of of an accidental death he partially or excuse me he particularly pointed to jesse's actions right after grace's death he said the internet searches and the taking photographs uh were specifically undermined by the defense yeah and said either miss malayne was dead when they were taken or he had searched for the way takari ranges where he buried her body while she
was still living thus showing he planned to kill her yeah it's like so do you really want to go with that one still exactly because then we're gonna have some premeditation here so exactly yeah So after almost four weeks of graphic, graphic testimony and very disturbing evidence, the jury retired for deliberation.
So before they headed out, Justice Moore reminded them that they were not deliberating whether Kempson was guilty of having caused Grace's death.
We all knew that was true.
He said, you're deliberating whether he intentionally caused that death or not.
And he said to them, consent only comes into your deliberations if you have rejected murder on either the basis of the murderous intent I have described above.
It is not relevant to the murderous intent inquiry.
no person under our law may consent to their death or the infliction of the sort of actual bodily injury that could well cause death.
And that is the reason why if you find either of the murderous intentions proved, thus proving the murder, the question of consent does not arise.
Okay. Now, the jury deliberated for just about five hours before returning a unanimous guilty verdict.
Oh, thank goodness.
Okay, you took a second and looked at me and I was like, if you fucking tell me.
I just like to see where you're at.
I will be very angry.
Unanimous guilty. The decision was obviously bittersweet for Grace's parents, David, and I think it's Jillian, but it could be Jillian, Mullane.
It's with a G. I think it's Jillian.
Yeah. Who told reporters, the verdict of the murder today will be welcomed by every member of the Mullane family and friends of Grace.
It will not reduce the pain and suffering we've had to endure over the past year.
Grace was taken in the most brutal fashion a year ago and our lives have been ripped apart.
This will be with us for the rest of our lives.
grace was a beautiful talented loving daughter grace was our sunshine and she will be missed forever she did not deserve to be murdered in such a barbaric way or on her gap year we must return home and try to pick up the pieces of our lives without our beloved grace which i have chills reading that yeah in february of 2020 actually which is crazy jesse comes in was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 17 years before he could ever be considered for parole good and And in the months that followed, he was also found guilty in two sexual assault cases.
Good. And he got sentenced to 11 years in prison for those to be served once he was done for the murder of Grace.
Good. I like that they did that.
So tacked it right on to the end.
Of course, he and his lawyers appealed to the sentence.
And they argued that there was a, quote, credible narrative of consent, basically saying that he believed Grace consented to the act that resulted in her death.
Shut up. But the justices rejected the claim on the basis that an individual does not have a right to consent to their death.
No, of course they don't.
We don't have euthanasia around here.
You fuck. Get out of here.
And the appeal also alleged that the prosecution didn't present enough evidence or a credible argument that could sufficiently warrant a guilty verdict.
Honey. But the justices also rejected this claim.
Yeah, they've rejected that outright.
Are you kidding me right now?
Exactly. Like, wow.
Okay, glass house. No, absolutely ridiculous.
They said by their verdict, the jury showed that they were sure that if the applicant did not intend to kill the deceased, he at least intended to inflict bodily injury, which he knew was likely to result in death.
Yeah. The most that could be taken from Kempson's account is that Ms. Mullane may have consented to the application of manual pressure to her neck for the purposes of sexual gratification.
But there is nothing in what the applicant told the police to suggest she consented to, or he believed she consented, to the infliction of bodily injury of a kind likely to kill her.
No, of course not. No. So on June 29th, 2021, the court rejected that appeal, and they upheld the court's original ruling.
Stay there. Now, outside of the courts, Grace's murder brought up a lot of questions about the safety of female tourists and backpackers in New Zealand and just the safety and protection of women in the country in general.
Now, like overall, New Zealand is seen as a very safe and progressive country.
They've actually even had three female prime ministers in their history.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that the reason this was probably brought up after this case is because it is such a safe place that they do it the right way where something like this happens and they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to take a look at what's happening here.
Well, what's crazy is when it comes to domestic violence and violence against women in New Zealand society, recent reports found that, quote, 35 % of New Zealand women had suffered physical or sexual violence in their relationships.
Wow. And that the country lacked a comprehensive strategy to tackle the problem.
Damn. So according to an associate professor of criminology at Victoria University in Wellington, a woman named Jan Jordan, New Zealand had, quote, lauded and valued an incredible toughness in men, which in turn had created an insidious culture of violence.
And she went on to say, we get lulled into thinking we're actually quite an equal society, but those women who have made it to the top are actually a tiny minority.
Wow. Wow. So after the trial was finished, people were completely appalled by the rough sex gone wrong strategy that the defense used.
They called it what it was, ultimate victim blaming.
Yeah. And according to Fiona McKenzie, founder of We Can't Consent to This, the argument Kempson's defense used meant, quote, he gets to tell her story.
He gets to tell the story of what she liked and how she asked for it.
Families not only lose their loved one, but these men steal the public perception of them and destroy their reputation.
Yes, exactly. it's appalling it is so thankfully once jesse was convicted things kind of like this case shook things up and activists in new zealand started advocating for change and the laws that allow the use of such defenses because that is a real defense yeah and fiona mckenzie told reporters with nearly 40 percent of women under 40 saying they've been violently assaulted in sex the criminal justice system needs to be ready to respond if these women report and not just dismiss the violence as something they asked for now as of 2023 the laws have not changed yet but it's a very much still ongoing
debate and i'm actually going to include a petition um calling for the end of the rough sex defense in the show notes good so definitely make sure to check that out and sign if you are well yeah i signed it so you should too do it but yes that will be in the show notes and then i will see if our girl avery can also put it on social media yes absolutely but But that is the tragic, tragic story of Grace Mullane and how the legal system really tried to defile her name but didn't end up working out for them.
Damn, that's an awful story.
Such a sad story. I hope something good comes out of it.
I hope that law gets changed.
I hope that law gets changed too, like big time.
It's time. That was a brutal one.
It really was. But we love you guys and please stay safe out there if you're using dating apps.
Yeah, be careful. Go on double dates.
Yeah, there you go.
oh my gosh my friend has this really cool boyfriend i think you'd hit it off let's go you want to do a double date because i don't want you to murder me yeah there you go yeah perfect or have your friend just like go on a date with her her significant other at the same at the same place as you just so they can keep an eye yes love follow you yes you know i love that i like that a lot yeah all right guys well that's your tip of the week um we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so that your voice cracks at the end bye yeah ¶¶ If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad
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they're affecting the entire planet.
Post -Zack Goldbaum is investigating real cases where environmental destruction meets murder, conspiracy, and cover -ups.
We're talking about activists who disappear in the Amazon rainforest, whistleblowers who risk everything to expose deadly corporate secrets, and communities being silently poisoned while powerful people profit.
What makes these stories truly terrifying?
They're happening right now.
This isn't history.
It's a massive criminal conspiracy unfolding in real time, with consequences that affect us all.
Each episode feels like opening a case file into the darkest corners of corporate and government power.
Trust us, once you start listening, you will not be able to stop thinking about these stories.
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You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
