Crown completes Millane murder evidence; defence case to open
Warning: Contains graphic content
After hearing evidence from 30 witnesses, the jury for the man accused of murdering Grace Millane will on Monday hear from the defence.
The accused killer’s chief of defence Ian Brookie has made hints he will call an expert pathology witness but he has otherwise kept his list of potential witnesses close to his chest as the trial enters its third week in the High Court at Auckland.
Brookie and fellow defence counsel Ron Mansfield will also discuss with their client about whether the 27-year-old will give evidence.
Auckland Crown Solicitor Brian Dickey and his team of prosecutors allege that on the night of December 1 last year the accused murdered Millane in his CityLife central city apartment.
The accused has admitted putting the British backpacker’s body into a suitcase and dumping it in a shallow grave in bush in Auckland’s Waita¯kere Ranges.
On Thursday, the last day of the Crown’s evidence, the jury and those who packed into courtroom 11 watched the accused’s second police interview. The videotaped interview from December 8 by Detective Ewen Settle came two days after the suspect was first quizzed by the cop.
In the second interview the accused, who cannot be named for legal reasons, confessed to Millane dying in his apartment and his attempts to hide her body and evidence.
It was also the first time the accused talked about what he says occurred in the hotel room — claiming Millane brought up the topic of bondage and asked him to hold her down and grab her neck.
Afterwards, the accused said he passed out drunkenly in the shower. He recalled waking up when it was still dark and crawling back into the bed.
“I thought Grace had left,” he said. He woke the next day to find “blood coming from her nose”.
During the interview Brookie asks his client: “Did you intend to cause her death?”
“No,” the accused replies. Settle asked why the accused didn’t call for an ambulance.
He said he “dialled 111 . . . But I didn’t hit the button because I was scared at how bad it looked — there’s a dead person in my room, I thought it looked terrible.”
Earlier the court watched CCTV footage of the accused buying a suitcase, cleaning products, renting a car, moving Millane’s body, buying a shovel and disposing of evidence.
They also watched his first police interview with Settle from December 6, where he provided a false alibi and lied about when he last saw Millane.
A woman told the court of going on a Tinder date with the accused at a Ponsonby bar during the afternoon of December 2 — just hours after Millane died. While on the date, the young woman said, the accused talked of a man who had accidentally killed a woman during rough sex and was later convicted of manslaughter.
“It’s crazy how guys can make one wrong move and go to jail for the rest of their life,” he allegedly told her.
The accused also said “there are a lot of bodies going missing in the Waita¯keres”.
On Tuesday the Crown’s expert forensic pathologist Dr Simon Stables said Millane died from “pressure on the neck” — an area of her body that displayed bruising.
Stables said Millane’s bruising was “probably around the time of death”, while the pattern was consistent with “some sort of restraint”.
The accused accepts Millane died from pressure to her neck, but claims it occurred during sexual misadventure rather than any intended harm.
The court also heard from the accused’s Tinder date on November 2 last year — a month before he met Millane.
She was one of three women who spoke of the accused’s supposed predilection for erotic asphyxiation.