In June 2021, Jemma Mitchell murdered her 67-year-old friend after she refused to pay for repairs to her home. A London court has now sentenced her to life imprisonment for the horrible act. Some questions remain unanswered.
A London court has sentenced to life imprisonment an osteopath who murdered and beheaded a friend to get her money. In a move unusual for a British criminal court, the verdict was broadcast live on television. Jemma Mitchell murdered 67-year-old widow Deborah Chong in June 2021, according to the indictment, after she refused to pay for the £200,000 repairs to Mitchell’s ramshackle home.
She initially hid her victim’s body in her garden and claimed that Chong traveled to relatives “somewhere by the sea”. At the same time, she put herself in a forged will as her victim’s main heir, whose fortune was estimated at around £700,000. Two weeks after the murder, Mitchell drove with the body to the small town of Salcombe in southwest England, 320 kilometers away, where holidaymakers later discovered it next to a forest path. A police search later found the victim’s head.
The cruel act had caused shock in Great Britain. The 38-year-old accused boasted of her dissection skills online, but denied being involved in the murder to the end. She was convicted, among other things, by footage from surveillance cameras that showed her arriving in front of her victim’s house with a blue suitcase and leaving it four hours later, visibly struggling with the weight of the suitcase.
Judge Richard Marks called the “insidious” act “deeply shocking” and noted that Mitchell had shown no remorse throughout the trial. The 38-year-old accepted the verdict motionless while relatives of her victim were connected via video from Malaysia. After the verdict, chief investigator Jim Eastwood regretted that many questions remained unanswered. He would have liked to know why Mitchell decapitated her victim and kept it with her for two weeks before dumping the body hundreds of kilometers away.
