Miss Millane, from Wickford
in Essex, was on the New Zealand leg of a round-the-world trip when she died in
an Auckland hotel room while on a Tinder date with the man accused of murdering
her in December last year.
Grace Millane’s alleged
killer told police she asked him to hold her throat during sex and that she had
talked about the erotic film Fifty Shades of Grey.
In his second interview
with police, the 27-year-old suspect said he and the British backpacker started
to have “violent sex” and that she was showing him want she wanted him to do.
The defendant also told police
how he was “in shock the whole time” as he prepared to stuff her body in a
suitcase.
It is alleged he murdered
her during rough sex that night, but he insists her death was accidental.
During the police interview
shown to the court, the defendant said he and Miss Millane, 22, had been
kissing at that she asked him to turn the television off. He added that she
began talking about 50 Shades of Grey, an erotic romantic film.
"She told me that
there's a few things she likes doing and that she'd done with her ex-partner,”
the accused said in the interview. "We started having sex, at first it was
just normal. It was very placid."
The accused claimed Miss
Millane said "We're in the moment, let's just go with it."
The alleged killer said the
pair talked for a while before having sex again. He said: "We started
having more, I guess, violent sex”, and that they “ended up on the floor”.
He said the pair took nude
photos of each other.
"And then we kept
going she told me to hold her arms tighter… And then she told me to hold her
throat.”
The suspect said he then
went to the bathroom but fell asleep in the shower. He told police he
remembered waking up while it was still dark and went back to bed.
“I thought she had gone. I
woke up the next day, I saw she was lying on the floor with blood coming out of
her nose,” he said.
The accused said after he
realised that Miss Millane was no longer alive, he just wanted to “end it all”.
He said: "I was at the
point where I just wanted to end my own life - I'd had enough, I was
finished."
The defendant then recalled
putting Miss Millane's body in the suitcase. "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."
He was first interviewed by
Detective Ewen Settle as a person of interest on December 6 - five days after
Miss Millane's death, the court heard. He was not under arrest at the time.
The defendant lied,
claiming he and Miss Millane parted company at 10pm on the night she died.
Footage shown to Auckland High Court earlier this week showed him telling an
officer he left his Tinder date after a couple of drinks in a bar.
But CCTV shown to the jury
of the final hours of Miss Millane’s life revealed how they in fact both
returned to a hotel where the defendant was living in an apartment on the third
floor.
The court was also earlier
shown CCTV footage showing the alleged killer buying detergent, bleach and
rubber gloves. Other footage showed him arriving at the hotel in a rental car
and pushing a trolley loaded with large suitcases which he placed in the boot.
Miss Millane’s body was
found bundled into a suitcase and dumped in a shallow grave in woodland outside
Auckland on December 9.
In his second interview
with police on December 7, the suspect changed his statement. He said he would
take officers to where her body was because he wanted her family to have
closure.
“I’m telling you this
because I want her family to know that it wasn’t intentional and I want her
family to have closure,” he told police.
New Zealand courts have
banned reporting the defendant's name and the country's government has asked
international media to respect that ruling.
The Crown has now presented
all its evidence against the accused. The defence is now preparing its case,
which is likely to begin on Monday.
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