A man from Memphis, Tennessee, has been found guilty by a judge in Fiji of murdering his wife during their honeymoon in 2022. 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.
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 did not appear at breakfast or lunch the next day. Justice Riyaz Hamza found Dawson guilty in the Lautoka High Court after a weeklong trial. Dawson had defended the charge but was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The judge noted that Dawson was carrying his passport and other belongings with him when he was arrested, indicating a potential plan to flee. Dawson, a U.S. national, remains in custody in Fiji and faces a mandatory term of life in prison when he is sentenced in January.
Christe Chen, a former pastry chef turned pharmacist, was cremated in Fiji as her body was too badly damaged to be embalmed for return to the U.S. The couple was heard arguing over dinner the night before the murder.
Dawson, who worked in the information technology department at Youth Villages in Memphis, had no prior criminal arrests in Shelby County. The Turtle Island resort, where the couple stayed, is an exclusive and remote 500-acre island that accommodates only 14 couples at a time.
Yasawa, where the resort is located, is a group of about 20 volcanic islands in the west of Fiji, a picturesque South Pacific island nation with a population of 930,000 people.
