HONEYMOON MURDER!
Hubby nailed for brutal beatdown in Pacific paradise
AHATEFUL honeymooner who kayaked over a mile in the middle of the night to get away is under arrest and charged with murdering his new bride — and leaving her blood-spattered corpse in the bathroom of their $3,500-a-night Fiji love nest!
Newlywed pharmacist Christe Jion Chen, 39, was found beaten to death in a bungalow on the south Pacific island where she and Bradley Robert Dawson, 38, had been celebrating their February marriage, according to lawmen.
Cops say the ghastly groom turned up 36 hours later on another secluded island, and told a local he’d reached the atoll by kayak.
“He didn’t tell us he had killed his wife — but I could still smell alcohol on him,” says Manoa Ratulele, 49. “He continued to repeat, ‘We had a fight’ and offered no start or end to that story, just kept saying ‘we had a fight.’ ”
Prosecutors say the Memphis man refused to submit his DNA for forensic testing after his wife suffered multiple traumatic injuries to the body and crushing blows to the head.
The Tennessee couple’s
personal butler made the gruesome discovery after the two failed to show up to breakfast or lunch. He told authorities he used a spare key to enter, despite a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door.
The murder has come as a shock to the peaceful Turtle Island Resort, one of the most idyllic — and expensive — honeymoon spots in the world.
The secluded island can accommodate only 14 couples at a time and is so breathtaking and dreamy it served as the backdrop for the 1980 Brooke Shields romance The Blue Lagoon.
Lawyers for Dawson, who worked in IT for a nonprofit that helps children, say he denies the charges and insists it was an accident.