New Zealand—A court in Fiji has convicted a man from Memphis, Tennessee guilty of killing his wife during their honeymoon in 2022, the prosecutor’s office said on Monday.
Bradley Robert Dawson, 40, murdered his 36-year-old wife, Christe Chen, at the luxurious Turtle Island resort in the Yasawa archipelago two days after the newlyweds arrived in Fiji, then escaped to a neighboring island by kayak. Chen was found in the couple’s room by resort workers with several blunt trauma wounds to her head after the pair was overheard fighting, and she did not appear for breakfast or lunch the next day.
Dawson was found guilty by Justice Riyaz Hamza in the Lautoka High Court last Thursday after a weeklong trial, according to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Dawson has contested the accusation.
Dawson was carrying his passport and other possessions when he was caught, indicating that he intended to leave, according to Hamza, as reported by the Fiji Times newspaper. The court said unequivocally that Dawson and no one else committed the crime.
The US native, who is still in Fiji jail, faces a mandatory life sentence when he is sentenced in January. Fiji law allows a presiding judge to impose a minimum sentence before considering a pardon.
An attorney representing Dawson did not immediately return a request for comment.
In 2022, a lawyer for Christe Chen’s parents said that their daughter’s corpse was so terribly injured that it could not be embalmed and sent to the United States, therefore her ashes were incinerated. Chen worked as a pastry chef before going to school to become a pharmacist, and she had previously worked at a Kroger store in Memphis.
The family’s lawyer, Ronald Gordon, who did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Monday, said Chen and Dawson were heard bickering over dinner the night before the murder.
Dawson was working in the information technology section of Youth Villages, a Memphis-based nonprofit child welfare and support organization, when he was detained. An internet records check for Dawson revealed no criminal charges in Shelby County, which contains Memphis.
The Turtle Island resort, where the couple went, is a private and isolated 500-acre island that can only accommodate 14 couples at a time. Yasawa is a series of around 20 volcanic islands in the west of Fiji, a beautiful South Pacific island country of 930,000 inhabitants.
