Wellington, New Zealand – A man from Memphis, Tennessee has been found guilty by a judge in Fiji of murdered his wife on their honeymoon in 2022the prosecutor's office said Monday.
Bradley Robert Dawson, 40, killed his wife, Christe Chen, who was 36, at the exclusive resort of Turtle Island in the Yasawa archipelago two days after the newlyweds arrived in Fiji, then fled by kayak to an island near hand Chen was found in the couple's room by resort staff with multiple trauma wounds to her head after the couple was heard arguing and she failed to appear at breakfast or lunch the next day.
Judge Riyaz Hamza found Dawson guilty in the Lautoka High Court last Thursday after a week-long trial, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said. Dawson had denied the allegation.
The fact that Dawson was carrying his passport and other things with him when he was arrested indicated that he intended to escape, Hamza said, according to the Fiji Times newspaper. The judge said he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Dawson and no one else had committed the offence.
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The US citizen, who remains in custody in Fiji, faces a mandatory life term in prison when he is sentenced in January. Fiji law allows a presiding judge to set a minimum term before a pardon is considered.
Dawson's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2022, a lawyer representing Christe Chen's parents said that their daughter's body was so mutilated that she could not be embalmed to return to the United States and that the remains were her to burn. Chen worked as a pastry chef before returning to school to become a pharmacist, and had worked in that role at a Kroger supermarket in Memphis.
The family's attorney, Ronald Gordon — who did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday — said Chen and Dawson were heard arguing at dinner the night before the murder.
Dawson worked in the information technology department at Youth Villages, a nonprofit child welfare and support organization based in Memphis, the organization confirmed at the time of his arrest. An online records search showed no arrests for Dawson in Shelby County, which includes Memphis.
The Turtle Island resort, where the couple stayed, is a very remote 500 acre island that only has 14 couples at a time. Yasawa is a group of about 20 volcanic islands in western Fiji, a South Pacific island nation of 930,000 people.
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