It's December 1st, 2018. CCTV records 22 year old Grace and her Tinder date, Jesse, getting ready to leave a bar. They had just met a few hours ago, but already they're about to head back to his place. From the outside, everything seemed to be going perfectly well.
So well in fact, that soon after they could be seen heading to a nearby hotel and up to Jesse's hotel room shortly after. Nobody could have expected that this was the last time Grace would ever be seen alive. The next day happened to be her birthday, and nobody was able to reach her all day. And the same was true even days after.
It was like she disappeared off the face of the earth. Her friends and family quickly reported her missing, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Jesse was recorded on CCTV out and about, going up and down the elevator, carrying cleaning supplies, and what appeared to be a suitcase.
A suitcase with contents that would shock everyone to the core. And what's even worse, the killer had another date lined up. And if the cops don't intervene and arrest him quickly, this girl, as well as countless others, could fall victim to this very same man. Tell me what happened last Saturday.
Um, from the beginning? Yeah. At 5.37pm on December 1st, 2018, Grace, who just finished a backpacking journey from England to New Zealand, leaves her hostel to meet Jesse. Meanwhile, Jesse is having pre-date drinks at a local bar, downing several beers before the date begins. In fact, as he leaves the bar, you can still see at least four empty bottles sitting on the table.
They meet in a popular spot where there's plenty of people, making Grace feel safe while she meets her date for the first time. But this will be a false sense of security, as Jesse has no plans to try anything untoward in public. He's going to wait until they're alone. Suspecting nothing, Grace accompanies Jesse to a bar where they drink together for over an hour before they head for a Mexican bar at 7.15 for more drinks. And yet another bar named Bluestone Room around 8.30pm.
This will be where Jesse tries his luck and sees if he can get a little closer to Grace. At 8.54, they share their first kiss. This is when Jesse takes a trip to the bathroom and where Grace sends her very last message to anyone, telling her friends that it's going amazingly well and that she just clicks with him so well.
She's probably excited to spend the night with a man that she genuinely likes. She could have had no idea that instead... He was about to end her life in one of the most horrific ways possible. The next morning, Grace's phone starts to receive a ton of messages.
It's her birthday, and there are plenty of friends who want to send her their best wishes. Each and every one of these messages goes unanswered. The first sign that something is wrong is at 8am, when Jesse enters the very same elevator, this time on his own, throwing the camera a suspicious glance.
If you think he's just getting the birthday girl a morning coffee, then think again. During that night, Jesse killed Grace by strangulation, and now he's going to try and do everything he can to cover up his crime, and he needs to do it quickly, because he's already got another potential victim lined up. By 8.07am, Jesse is in town and about to start the most eerie shopping trip possible.
He starts at the warehouse on Elliott Street, where he buys a suitcase, that he plans to hide Grace's body in. He checks out the width and depth of the suitcase to make sure it'll fit her, so he can dispose of her body before anyone can catch him. Then 25 minutes later, he makes his way to another store, where he buys a number of cleaning products that will be used to clean up the murder scene. Then he returns to his apartment for a number of hours, reappearing at 10.42am before he jumps in a taxi and Apex car rental where he rents a car. But it's what he does next that's truly shocking.
and puts pressure on the cops to discover and solve his murder as quickly as possible. As Grace's body lies in the apartment, Jesse goes on a date with another girl he'd met on Tinder. Given that he has all the equipment ready to hide one body, it's speculated that he planned this to be his second victim of the day.
As he arrives at the bar, Jesse is wearing exactly the same clothing that he wore the night before, possibly the same clothes that he wore when he killed Grace. We're not sure whether Kempson was as pushy in his initial messages to this girl, but what we do know is that the conversation he struck up with her during the date not only brought up some major red flags, it downright terrified her. Allegedly, he wanted to talk to her about where to hide a dead body from the police.
Right away, the date is over. And this girl's instincts may have just saved her life. It's hard to imagine the horror that she would have felt when she learned the truth about the man she just walked away from. Certain that he likely had the same fate lined up for her as he did with Grace.
At 8.56pm, we can see Jesse carrying a piece of equipment back to his apartment. More precisely, it's a carpet cleaner. And he's going to try and use that carpet cleaner to try and remove any trace of Grace's presence at his apartment. He's even got- two bottles of cleaner in his hand, making sure he's got enough to get the job done. 30 minutes later, and we're greeted with the product of all his hard work.
He's about to try and hide the body. He reappears in the elevator with a trolley carrying several luggage bags, one of which is the suitcase that he'd bought earlier that morning. It's way too heavy to carry, as inside is Grace's dead body.
Of course, he can't walk through the streets with this amount of baggage, which is exactly why he hired the rental car. Minutes later, he's loading the rental car with all of the baggage, ready to make the next move in his attempt to cover up this murder, hiding the body in a place he thinks no one will find it. The next morning at 7am, Jesse buys a shovel and heads back to his apartment, where he collects some clothing to take to the dry cleaners, destroying more potential evidence of his crime. But he's not done there, as he stops off at a random trash can, tossing a large trash bag inside.
Then Jesse takes his rental car for a deep clean. paying particular attention to the rear of the vehicle where he had stashed the suitcase containing Grace's body. And with that, his work was done.
For the next two days, Grace's family and friends go through turmoil. Nobody has heard from her, she hasn't posted on any social media, and she isn't answering either of her two phones. Her family report her missing to Auckland police on December 5th.
Grace's father, David, even flies to Auckland and makes a heartfelt appeal for his daughter's safe return. Grace has been missing for seven days. And as a family, we've been extremely concerned for her welfare.
If anybody has seen, spoken to, or come into contact with Grace, come forward and contact the investigation team. With so much media coverage at the time, Jessie likely saw her father's appeal, and yet the family's pleas went unanswered. But Auckland police are about to use various methods to track Grace's last movements and find their main suspect in her disappearance. They're able to find out she was on a date with a mystery man, and after poring over hours of surveillance footage, they find the last person she was with, and track him back to his apartment.
At 3pm on December 5th, the cops turn up at the City Life Hotel, but they almost miss their man, as he eyes them in the lobby when he approaches the front door. Jesse thinks if he casually strolls away, he won't be noticed, but But these eagle-eyed cops don't miss a trick and quickly apprehend him before he can make an escape. At this point, the smartest thing for Jesse to do is to own up to his crime, maybe try to play it off as an accident and face the consequences. But he's not going to do any such thing.
In the interrogation room, he plans to lie his way out of this. But he's completely unaware that the cops have already seen every move from the night of the murder and have about as much evidence as they could possibly ask for. At the start of the interview, he has no reason to lie, as he's just recalling the events before the murder.
Tell us about Grace. So I was talking to Grace on Tinder. Yeah.
And we'd matched on Friday. I saw that we'd matched the next day on Saturday. And then we met at Sky City.
And then we decided that we were going up to Andy's Burger Bar. Which is on the first floor. Not long into this interview, Jesse becomes entangled in his first lie, as he claims Grace was the one pushing for a date, when we already know he was the one trying hard to meet Grace in their initial messages.
Whose idea was it to go to that particular burger place? Me. Because 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? 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. Right. And it's, on Tinder it's all about the way you look, and so if they use more endearing photos, you're more likely to swipe for them.
Okay. Yeah. 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, at least in my mind I'd feel safe.
When Jesse is confronted with evidence from surveillance cameras, he continues to lie, digging a hole for himself. himself that he's going to struggle to escape from. No, I go down Victoria Street, straight down to the bottom, and then hang a left, and I head towards the viaduct. You go to the viaduct a bit? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You've kind of walked in a bit of a funny direction if you were planning to go to the viaduct. Well, it's the direction I normally go.
Yeah. It's, um... I mean, I'm just saying, like, if you were planning to go to the Viaduct.
I normally go down Queen Street and then cross at the bottom of Queen Street, go through the containers and then walk along the wharf. Yeah. Is there a particular reason you would kind of do that? I feel safer down that way. The cop obviously suspects something strange here.
Jesse's behavior and responses don't seem to line up or make sense at all. And if Jesse is lying, it'll only take a good few questions to throw him off completely. So the cop starts to apply the pressure, sending Jesse into panic.
If 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 done it. Okay. Hey, I just want to ask a question. Have you ever been arrested for something that you didn't do?
We haven't been arrested, Mike. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Oh, God. He's not being arrested just yet, but Auckland police are convinced Jesse is either behind Grace's disappearance or is at least involved. And the more they investigate this case, the more evidence they find to suggest Jesse is the one responsible. It's not just the surveillance footage that helps solve this case. Remember the new suitcase and cleaning products Jesse bought the morning after?
Well, believe it or not, they were all bought on Grace's credit card, as well as an extra night's stay at the City Life Hotel. In fact, it's very possible he paid for his second date on Grace's credit card. An extra day at the hotel should give Jesse time to clean up the mess, but it's going to take more than a carpet cleaner to get rid of the evidence. When police search his apartment, they find traces of Grace's blood. The credit card payments, the witness testimony, cell phone locations placing Grace and Jesse together, and the staggering detail found in the surveillance footage backed their suspect into a corner, and in his second interview on December 7th, they left Jesse no choice but to confess.
A confession that would soon lead into one of the most interesting, but troubling defenses ever used in court. They were talking to me about Fifty Shades of Grey, which is a... It's a fantasy movie that's out. We started having sex. At first it was just normal.
It was very placid. And then she asked me if we could get into bondage. And then all I remember is falling asleep in the shower. I need a drop. I need to go.
Would you like some fresh air? Yeah, please. I was in shock. And I didn't know what to do.
I went downstairs and I was just, I don't know, I was all over the place. And I didn't believe what had happened. I was just terrified and scared.
I thought that she had gone. I thought she had left. A pathologist, a specialist doctor will perform a post-mortem.
They're very skilled. Establish a people's course. Do you understand that?
I went to the warehouse at the atrium and bought a suitcase. I went back and I was just in shock because it just didn't seem right. I left to go and get cleaning products, so I messaged a friend.
And said I'll meet you at Revelry. And after finishing drinks with her, I got back to city life. And all the time I just kept saying I'm sorry. And then...
I went downstairs and I grabbed the deporter thing and I put the suitcase on top of the deporter thing. I drove the hire car into Wilson's car park and parked it. I woke up the next day at about 5am.
I drove the car out to Kumu at first. I picked up a shovel from ITM at Kumu. I ended up driving towards the Waitakere's.
I went into the bush, I dug a hole, I went and got the suitcase, and I covered the hole, and then I drove. Where is her positions? I threw them in the rubbish.
Whereabouts? Um, Albert Park. Rubbish.
Alright, so what items of her property have been disposed of in Albert Park? Um, everything. All of her clothing? Everything that was in the room. Whereabouts did you clean the car?
The outside of the car? Um, I think it was in Henderson. I don't know West very well.
Okay. And what did you use to clean the car? Um, a water blaster thing from... A car cleaning place. Did she have any injuries?
Not that I can remember. I was just panicking. Did you inflict any injuries on her that caused her to die?
Uh, no. Did you kill Grace Mullane? Okay.
And you're under arrest for the murder of Grace Mullane on or about the 2nd of December. You understand? Yep. Did you intend to cause her death?
No. Are you ready to take us to where she is? The media called it the Fifty Shades of Grey defense. The idea is that someone may consent to being harmed during intimacy, knowing the dangers involved. If they made no indication to stop, then it would be seen as an accident, and the person responsible shouldn't face a murder charge.
But this defense has always been seen as more of a scapegoat, used by lawyers to try and get their defendant off with a lighter sentence, which in this case... would be manslaughter. This doesn't change what happened after Grace's death and the disturbing series of events uncovered during the investigation.
From December 1st, the day before the date, all the way to December 7th, cops found Google searches made by Jesse looking for a place to hide the body. He'd also taken photos of Grace's body before and after he packed her into the suitcase. They found Grace's body on December 9th, 2018 in the Waitakere Ranges just outside of Auckland.
It was determined that she was strangled and had bruises on her arms and chest consistent with being pinned down. In New Zealand, there is no such thing as first degree or second degree murder. All charges are treated the same, carrying a life sentence.
That meant there was no investigation into the premeditation. All that mattered was if Jessie killed her or not. It was that simple.
Jessie maintained his innocence but was eventually found guilty. And on February 21st, 2020, He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. After his trial, two more women came forward and claimed Jesse had assaulted them after they met him on Tinder.
He was found guilty on those charges as well, adding another 11 years to life added to his sentence.