Wellington, New Zealand — A man from Memphis, Tennessee has been found guilty by a judge in Fiji of murdering his wife during their honeymoon in 2022, the prosecutor’s office said Monday.
Bradley Robert Dawson, 40, killed his wife, Christe Chen, who was 36, at the exclusive Turtle Island resort in the Yasawa archipelago two days after the newlyweds arrived in Fiji, then fled by kayak to a nearby island. Chen was discovered in the couple’s room by resort staff with multiple blunt trauma wounds to her head after the couple was heard arguing and didn’t appear at breakfast or lunch the next day.
Justice Riyaz Hamza found Dawson guilty in the Lautoka High Court last Thursday after a weeklong trial, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said. Dawson had denied the charge.
The fact that Dawson was carrying his passport and other belongings with him when he was arrested indicated that he planned to flee, 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 offense.
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The U.S. national, who remains in custody in Fiji, faces a mandatory term of life in prison when he is sentenced in January. Fiji law permits a presiding judge to set a minimum term to be served before a pardon is considered.
An attorney for Dawson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2022, a lawyer representing Christe Chen’s parents said their daughter’s body was so badly damaged that she couldn’t be embalmed for return to the U.S. and her remains were cremated. Chen worked as a pastry chef before returning to school to become a pharmacist, and had worked in that capacity at a Kroger supermarket in Memphis.
The family’s lawyer, Ronald Gordon — who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday — said Chen and Dawson were heard arguing over 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 when he was arrested. An online records search showed no criminal arrests for Dawson in Shelby County, which includes Memphis.
The Turtle Island resort, where the pair stayed, is an exclusive and remote 500-acre island that accommodates only 14 couples at a time. Yasawa is a group of about 20 volcanic islands in the west of Fiji, an idyllic South Pacific island nation of 930,000 people.