The body of a Tennessee pharmacist who passed away while on her honeymoon in Fiji was severely injured, so her family chose to cremate her there rather than bring her home, according to a lawyer for the family on Thursday.
Early this month, Christe Chen, 36, passed away at the upscale Turtle Island resort.
Bradley Robert Dawson, her 38-year-old husband, who has been accused of her murder, appeared in court for the first time on Wednesday in Lautoka, Fiji.
Dawson, who is still in jail, has not yet filed a plea in the case, which was continued until next month.
He might receive a life sentence if convicted.
Chen’s parents, according to the family’s attorney Ronald Gordon, went to Fiji after their daughter passed away but did not embalm her body or bring her to the United States as they had intended.
They instead took her ashes with them.
The newlyweds, who are from Memphis, according to Gordon, came in Fiji on July 7 for their honeymoon at the resort, which is located on a 500-acre island and can only accommodate 14 couples at once.
Gordon claimed that on July 8, when they were reportedly fighting over dinner, Dawson left their room after an altercation and paddled to another island with his wallet but neither his phone or GPS watch.
Staff didn’t find Chen’s body until the afternoon after the pair had skipped breakfast and lunch, according to Gordon.
He said that she had multiple head wounds from blunt force trauma.
About 36 hours later, according to Gordon, Dawson was located by the police.
He claimed that Dawson might have been trying to reach Fiji’s main island but got lost on the isolated island, which was only populated by Indigenous people, who had informed others of his location.
Iqbal Khan, Dawson’s attorney, stated that based on what he has learned thus far, he does not see the components of murder.
He claimed that although detectives haven’t yet given him all the details of the case, including the post-mortem report, what happened might have been an accident.
Dawson departed the resort, according to Khan, because “he panicked, he was shocked.”
He claimed Dawson had been making a difficult recovery and was still upset about losing his wife.
According to NBC News, Chen worked as a pastry chef before going to school to become a pharmacist, and she had worked in that capacity at a Kroger grocery in Memphis.
Dawson worked as an IT specialist for a nonprofit organisation called Youth Villages.
Chen was recognised on Facebook last year by the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy for winning the Wolters Kluwer Clinical Drug Information Award of Excellence in Clinical Communication.