Jesse Kempson convicted of raping a second woman eight months before murder of Grace Millane

The man who strangled backpacker Grace Millane to death in New Zealand can be named after he lost an appeal against his murder conviction.

The man who strangled backpacker Grace Millane to death in New Zealand can be named today after he lost an appeal against his murder conviction and sentence.

Jesse Kempson, 28, raped another British tourist eight months before killing Ms Millane the night before her 22nd birthday, The Sun revealed.

Just as he did with Ms Millane, he lured the victim, then 21, into a drunken Tinder date before taking her back to his motel room.

Legal restrictions in New Zealand meant Kempson could not be identified before today.

Grace Millane.

In a statement, Ms Millane's family said: “As a family we do not think about him or speak his name.”

Ms Millane, a backpacker from the UK region of Essex, went missing on December 1, 2018 and failed to contact her family on her birthday the following day while in Auckland, as part of a planned year-long trip abroad.

She was last seen alive entering a hotel with Kempson on the evening of December 1.

On December 9, her body was found in a forested area about 9m from the side of the road in the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland.

She died after meeting Kempson through the dating app Tinder, going out for drinks, and then returning to his hotel apartment in central Auckland.

He was jailed for life with a non-parole period of 17 years for murdering Grace in his Auckland apartment.

Eight months earlier, Kempson attacked a woman, then 21, on a Tinder date.

Furious at her refusal to have sex after he had bought her drinks and dinner, Kempson raped her while she lay on the bed.

She kept the 2018 attack secret until she recognised Kempson, now 28, from media coverage the day he was charged with Grace’s murder and went straight to police.

Kempson was convicted of the rape in November.

Jesse Kempson in the dock on February 21, 2020 in Auckland. Picture: Greg Bowker/Getty Images

In a statement read to the court at his sentencing, the victim said for a long time she had woken up “crying and screaming” with flashbacks and nightmares, terrified that Kempson would track her down.

“Every time I went to sleep, I’d see your eyes popping out of your head, staring at me in anger, " she said.

“I am not scared...I am strong. I am not alone. I am loved. I have so much to look forward to in my life and I will not look back.

“You don't have any power over me any more.”

In another trial, Kempson was convicted in October of terrorising his live-in girlfriend over a period of months.

He subjected her to violent assaults, threatened her with a butcher’s knife and forced her into humiliating sex acts after telling her he had been sent by the CIA to kill her.

Details of the cases and their links to Ms Millane’s death can only be reported after Kempson failed in a bid to overturn his murder conviction and sentence at New Zealand’s Court of Appeal.

Their ruling on Friday, and a final decision from the Supreme Court today, allowed New Zealand media to finally reveal Kempson’s identity.

Ms Millane’s family said not naming Kempson had “allowed people to remember Grace – a young, vibrant girl who set out to see the world, instead of the man who took her life.”

They told the BBC: “To use his name shows we care and gives him the notoriety he seeks. We instead choose to speak Grace’s name.”

Justice Geoffrey Venning had found Kempson guilty of the rape, prompting an outburst from the dock.

“You have no reason to convict me. You’re full of sh*t mate,” raged Kempson, a salesman who had become obsessed with online dating and told women, colleagues and friends a never-ending stream of bizarre lies to boost his ego or attract sympathy.

CCTV footage of Kempson in the hours after the murder. Picture: NZ Police

At his sentencing last month, Justice Venning said it was clear Kempson did not accept his offending and told him: “You have no remorse or insight into it.”

Kempson has now been sentenced to a total of 11 years jail for the two recent trials, to be served concurrently with the 17 year minimum sentence for Grace’s murder, but plans to appeal against both new convictions.

Kempson’s identity was finally revealed more than two years after Ms Millane died in the twisted killer’s hotel room the night before her 22nd birthday.

He had taken shocking photographs of her dead body, watched hardcore porn and went on another Tinder date before bundling Lincoln University graduate Grace into a suitcase and burying her in a shallow grave.

At his trial last year, his lawyers argued that Ms Millane had a longstanding fetish for erotic asphyxiation and had encouraged him to choke her during consensual sex and had died accidentally.

In August, at his appeal hearing, his barrister Rachael Reed admitted his actions after Ms Millane died had been “inexcusable” but said the jury, who took just five hours to deliver a unanimous guilty verdict, had not been directed properly on the consent issue by Judge Simon Moore.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission