Accused discussed manslaughter case with Tinder date

The accused at the Revelry bar on December 2 last year. Photo: supplied
The accused at the Revelry bar on December 2 last year. Photo: supplied
The man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane told a Tinder date he knew of someone who had been done for manslaughter after rough sex went wrong, a court has heard.

The evidence comes from a woman who met the accused for a drink in Ponsonby as Ms Millane's body lay in his apartment.

​The 27-year-old man denies murdering Ms Millane after they met for a Tinder date on the eve of her 22nd birthday in Auckland's CBD in December last year. His name is suppressed.

The accused initially told police he parted ways with Ms Millane after their date but it's now accepted she died in his apartment and he later buried her in the Waitakere Ranges.

This afternoon the woman, who has name suppression, told the court she matched and chatted with the man on Tinder several weeks before meeting him last year on Sunday, December 2.

She said he was sitting at an outside table with a beer when she arrived and she hugged him before getting herself a drink and sitting down with him.

The woman told the court he did most of the talking, starting by asking her how she'd met her friends in Auckland and telling her all of his friends were police officers.

"I thought it was strange that all his friends were police officers. I thought it was a big odd."

She said the accused told her he had been a sales manager at Woolworths in Australia and had just got a job at Fonterra, starting in a few weeks' time.

The woman told the court she was surprised to hear of his jobs and moved the conversation on to what he had been doing that day.

"He said he'd been trying to find a really large duffle bag but he'd been struggling to find one big enough for sports gear."

The jury watched CCTV footage of the accused buying a suitcase he later wheeled out of his CityLife apartment with Ms Millane's body in it.

"He mentioned at one point that his best friend was coming here to be a Crown prosecutor and he was taking a big pay cut because he was coming from Sydney," the woman told the court.

She said she told the man she'd attended a murder trial where a young man had been put away for murder; telling him it was sad to see him jailed and also sad to see the victim's family in court.

"He said it's crazy how guys can make one wrong move and go to jail for the rest of their life," the witness said.

"He said he'd heard of, or knew of, a guy who had asked his girlfriend to have rough sex with him involving strangulation or suffocation.

"It had gone wrong and she'd died during the process and he'd tried to revive her but she couldn't be revived and she died and he got done for manslaughter."

The woman said the man's demeanour was intense but calm as he talked to her.

"He seemed to have empathy for this man that he knew. He seemed a bit aloof and not quite judging how I was responding to the story.

"I think he was just kind of in his own world telling this story and quite intense about it."

The woman said she felt uncomfortable and changed the topic to travel in the South Island before he talked more about his friends being police officers.

"He said that they're [the police] having a really tough time right now, especially in the Waitakeres because a lot of bodies are going missing out there as it's a large area.

"Police dogs can only smell bodies buried more than four feet under..so the police were having a tough time because lots of bodies were going missing in the Waitakeres," she said.

The woman said he seemed concerned but self-assured when speaking to her about this.

"I personally thought it was an interesting fact. It's an unusual thing to say on a date but people say strange things on dates."

The court heard they were at the bar for 90 minutes before they parted ways.

The woman said the accused messaged her a few hours later saying he had a great time and asking if she'd like to meet again.

CCTV footage of the defendant in the Grace Millane murder trial with a rug doctor he hired. Photo...
CCTV footage of the defendant in the Grace Millane murder trial with a rug doctor he hired. Photo: Supplied
CCTV compilation showed accused's movements

This morning, the jury watched a CCTV compilation of the accused's movements the day after Grace Millane died.

In the first clip, the man leaves the CityLife apartment complex to buy a suitcase at The Warehouse on Elliott St about 8am.

He returns to CityLife before leaving again to buy Janola, gloves, wipes and a packet of gum with cash at the Countdown supermarket on Victoria St.

The man then takes the items back to his apartment and then catches a taxi to a car hire company where he rents a vehicle.

He returns to CityLife again and leaves the complex for one hour and then again at 3pm where he goes to a bar in Ponsonby.

The accused is filmed drinking outside the bar with a woman and then returning to CityLife around 6pm.

An hour later, he drives the rental car to Countdown on Quay St where he hires Rug Doctor, a carpet cleaning machine.

Around 9.30pm the man is seen wheeling a baggage trolley up to his room and then wheeling it into the lift with two suitcases on it. The court has heard Ms Millane's body was in one.

The young woman's parents, Gillian and David Millane, both cried in court as they watched the footage of him putting the suitcases into the rental car he then parked in a nearby carpark.

The public gallery was standing room only during the CCTV evidence, as it has been for most of the trial.

The accused then went back to the supermarket and bought flavoured water, gloves and carpet stain remover.

At 6am the following morning, he drives the rental car to an ITM west of Auckland where he buys a red shovel with cash.

He is filmed returning to a carpark near CityLife and walking into the complex with a sports bag at 9.30am.

The Crown is nearing the end of its Crown witness list, which has included forensic scientists, police officers and women who had also gone on Tinder dates with the accused.

An image taken from video shown to the jury of the defendant being interviewed at Auckland...
An image taken from video shown to the jury of the defendant being interviewed at Auckland Central Police Station. Photo: Supplied

Earlier today

The court heard the accused told police he was at a bar getting black-out drunk at a time CCTV cameras showed him entering CityLife with Grace Millane. It is accepted she died in the man's CityLife apartment before he buried her body in a suitcase in the Waitākere Ranges.

Earlier today, the jury watched the defendant's first police interview at the Auckland Central Police Station on the afternoon of December 6.

He said he matched on Tinder with Ms Millane the day before meeting her for a date near SkyCity, at his suggestion.

The accused told Detective Sergeant Ewan Settle he wanted to meet her in a public place in case he was being "catfished" - a term that refers to people posing as fake identities online.

"I didn't initially know that she was real ... it's happened to a few people I know in Australia and it's all over the TV.

"So I thought 'you know what if I meet at SkyCity at least I know there's lots of people around' so if it's someone that it's not I can just walk away."

Grace Millane was murdered on the weekend of her 22nd birthday.
Grace Millane.
The man said they hung out at the bar drinking cocktails at Andy's Burgers and Bar in SkyCity for at least two hours.

He said the chat "flew" by as he talked to Ms Millane about her travels, her home town in Essex and his job as a sales manager; at one point offering to get her a job at his work.

The man said they planned to meet at Base Backpackers, where Ms Millane was staying, the following day; which was her 22nd birthday.

"I tried to message her the next day on Tinder but I'd been unmatched and I was like, 'oh, what's going on here? I must have done the wrong thing.

"So I went to go text her to find out all the details were for the next day and I'd been unmatched so that was that."

He told the detective he last saw her on Victoria St and they parted in good spirits.

"There was a hug, a kiss on the cheek and a 'nice meeting you', and then I said 'let me know about tomorrow'. She said 'okay' and then she kept walking."

The jury has now been shown CCTV footage that showed the pair actually entered the CityLife apartment complex at 9.40pm.

Detective Ewan Settle sketched a map of the Victoria and Federal Streets area, pressing the man on when he last saw the woman.

The defendant then said he did not watch her walk down Victoria Street because he started talking to a tourist group.

"I started talking to a group of Chinese travellers ... they were walking across the road ... they were happy to chat."

He said he was heading to the Viaduct to meet a workmate but she was not replying to his texts or calls and told him the following day she was with her mother after a death in the family.

The man said he didn't end up walking to the Viaduct and instead stopped at an old black pub with "rickety tables" on Queen St.

He said it was busy and he mingled with people smoking outside while drinking at least 10 handles of beer himself and buying 20 drinks for other people with cash.

The man told the detective he ate steak, chips and eggs at the bar but his memory stopped when he left the pub between 10pm and 11pm, the court heard.

"That's when I can't remember. I did the same thing on Thursday night when I went out drinking with workmates and I ended up sleeping outside the hotel.

"The concierge had to help me upstairs. So I tend to drink and somehow get into bed."

He said he'd been out drinking with his work's chief executive, owners, sales managers and colleagues on the Thursday night.

"I remember getting into a tuk tuk and giving the guy $20; that's where I had the cash from. I was going to catch a taxi but then the tuk tuk was there."

The man said he felt "fine" after drinking cocktails with Ms Millane but after getting black-out drunk at the Queen St bar he woke up at 10am in his apartment.

"I had a bit of a vomit. I knew that I'd mixed drinks before, I felt like crap. I knew I'd had too much and not just beer."

He said he had "a feeling" the same concierge had carried him to his apartment in CityLife that night as well.

He then caught up with a friend he had worked with at a Ponsonby bar that afternoon, he said.

The court has heard Ms Millane's body was in a suitcase in his apartment at the time.

The trial before Justice Moore and a jury of seven women and five men is set down for four weeks.