The man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane told police she asked him to choke her during sex because she was a fan of the 50 Shades of Grey films.
In his second police interview after his Tinder date with Grace, 22, in Auckland, New Zealand last December, the man said she told him she had practiced a number of BDSM sex techniques with a previous boyfriend.
Two days earlier, he told detectives he said goodbye to Grace with ‘a hug and a kiss on the cheek’, hoping to see her again on her 22nd birthday the next day.
But admitting for the first time that she was dead, the 27-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said he had struggled to put her body in a suitcase he bought to dispose of her body ‘because it just didn’t seem right.’
The next morning he buried her in a shallow grave in the woods outside the city and took dozens of pills to try and kill himself, he told police.
Grace’s parents, from Wickford, Essex, sat in the public gallery watching a recording of the interview played to the jury at Auckland High Court today.
The defendant is pictured returning to the hotel with the suitcase he bought after Grace died
CCTV shows the defendant inside CityLife hotel in New Zealand with the suitcase loaded onto a luggage trolley – with Grace’s body stuffed inside
He still denied being responsible for her death, saying he woke up to find her lying dead on the floor, bleeding from the nose.
‘I picked her up and tried to wake her,’ he said. ‘I was like screaming Grace, Grace.
‘I was trying to shake her. I was listening to see if her breathing was coming through and that’s when I panicked. She was cold.’
Grace Millane (pictured on her graduation day from the University of Lincoln) vanished during the early hours of her 22nd birthday while on a round-the-world trip in New Zealand. Her body was later found inside a suitcase in the woods near the city
The defendant said he had begun dialling for an ambulance, but: ‘I didn’t hit the button because I was scared how bad it looked. There’s a dead ‘person in my room. I thought it looked terrible.
‘I was just terrified and scared. I went to The Warehouse (a chain store) and bought a suitcase.’
Asked in the interview by his own lawyer why he was changing his story, he said: ‘I want her family to know that it wasn’t intentional but I also want her family to have closure.’
He said he had invented his previous, bogus account, because: ‘I was still shocked and I apologise for misleading.’
He agreed to show officers where he had buried Grace’s naked body in a shallow grave in dense woodland 10 miles from Auckland city centre.
The court previously heard that prior to his arrest, police had discovered CCTV footage from a number of bars and shops which exposed his lies and showed him entering the CityLife hotel, where he lived in a £190-a-week room, arm in arm with Grace.
They had been seen kissing and cuddling as they shared a number of cocktails and tequila shots, and Grace had messaged a friend to tell her: ‘I click with him so well.’
Inside the room, he told Detective Sergeant Ewen Settle: ‘She asked me to turn the TV off so I turned it off.
Shocking pictures played to the jury today reveal the moment police discovered the body of murdered British backpacker Grace Millane dumped in this muddy hole in the ground
Grace’s parents David and Gillian, from Wickford, Essex, sat in the public gallery watching a recording of the interview played to the jury at Auckland High Court
‘I had it on the music channel and she started talking to me about 50 Shades of Grey which is a sex fantasy movie that’s out.
‘She told me that were a few things she likes doing and that she had done with her ex-partner.
‘I remember her saying that her partner and her had done things from the first couple of movies.
‘They had binding, bondage with handcuffs, there was spanking with belts, choking, holding the hands down.’
They started having sex, said the man, whose job had ended the previous day.
A video of the alleged killer’s (left) interview with police was played to jurors at Auckland High Court in New Zealand today
He continued: ‘At first it was just normal, it was very placid, and then she asked me if we could get into bondage and she started biting and then she asked me to bite her and so I did.
‘I stopped at first and said, ‘Is this something you really want to do?’ and she said, ‘We are in the moment, let’s just go with it’. I said I’m new to all that sort of stuff.
‘I’m used to having sex that is just sex and at first I was uncomfortable but I liked it so I was open to the idea.
‘She told me to hold her arms tighter and then she told me to hold her throat and push harder.’
The accused said Grace bit him twice on the upper arm and shoulder, leaving teeth marks and bruises which he saw the next day.
Grace, who had a degree in advertising and marketing from Lincoln University, had begun taking pictures of his genitals on her mobile and he had done the same to her, he told DS Settle.
‘I thought, ‘I hope these things don’t go on Facebook but at the same time there was trust,’ he said. ‘You have to have trust to have sex.’
The prosecution have told the jury their case is that Grace was already dead when the man took a series of intimate pictures of her having searched on Google minutes before for ‘waitakere ranges’, the hills where she was later buried, and ‘hottest fire’.
Grace’s phone has never been found, and the defendant has admitted dumping it in a rubbish bin along with her clothes, bag and shoes.
According to data from his phone, the Crown have told the jury that as she lay dead in the room, the man also searched for and watched a number of hardcore pornographic videos In his police interviews, however, the man made no mention of porn.
He said after rough sex when both were drunk, he had fallen asleep slumped on the floor of his shower with the water running and later gone to bed thinking Grace had left the apartment at CityLife hotel in Auckland.
He did not see her on the floor, he said. By 8am, the defendant was arranging another Tinder date that afternoon at a bar, he admitted.
But he had trouble finishing his beer with the second woman because he was ‘not 100 per cent there’.
He was still thinking Grace ‘would wake up and she would be okay.’
In his second police interview after his Tinder date with Grace, 22, (pictured)in Auckland, New Zealand , the defendant said she told him she had practiced a number of BDSM sex techniques with a previous boyfriend
‘I spewed up a few times because I couldn’t put Grace in the bag because all I could think about was what we shared the night before,’ he said.
‘And then I put her in the bag and the whole time I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’.’
Yesterday her parents David and Gill were forced to watch horrifying CCTV footage of the man buying a suitcase before leaving his hotel with it when Grace’s naked dead body was stuffed inside.
They were also shown pictures of the muddied suitcase their daughter was stuffed into after it was uncovered by detectives in a wooded area outside Auckland.
The man denies murder, saying Grace’s death was an accident. The trial, expected to last four weeks in total, continues.