Face of Evil: Woman who murdered church friend and dumped her headless body in suitcase jailed for life

A woman who murdered a friend from her church, decapitated the victim’s body, and dumped the headless body in Devon, United Kingdom has been jailed for life.

Not only did Australian-born Jemma Mitchell, 38, kill Mee Kuen Chong, a 67-year-old widow at her home in Wembley, London in June 2021, but she also plotted to steal the victim’s £700,000 inheritance by faking her will.

The police had dubbed her ‘evil’ for the despicable acts.

Judge Richard Marks KC sentenced Jemma Mitchell to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 34 years for the murder at the Old Bailey, London last Thursday.

Mitchell stayed silent during her Old Bailey trial and became the first woman in England to be handed a life sentence on television.

Mitchell gained a first-class degree in human sciences from King’s College London in 2006.

She lived with her mother who worked for the British Foreign Office and had set up her own osteopathy firm. Mitchell claimed online that she is “attuned to subjects in neuroanatomy, genetics, and dissection of human cadavers”.

She put her human dissection skills to use by removing Ms. Chong’s head from her body after clubbing her to death.

Mitchell and her mother had hoped to make money on the property they both shared in Willesden, London if another storey was added. But they had lost £135,000 when the building contractor they engaged went bust, leaving them living in squalor in a house covered in scaffolding and without a roof.

The trial heard how Ms. Chong had met Mitchell through a church group and agreed to give her £200,000 to complete the stalled work on the £4 million home.

However, Ms. Chong changed her mind at the last minute. Judge Richard Marks KC, said the “murder for gain”, was triggered after Ms. Chong withdrew her offer of the money.

The judge said he concluded that Mitchell had gone to Ms. Chong’s house intending to kill her, and then set up a complex plan to try to get away with murder.

Said Judge Marks, “I am driven to the conclusion you are extremely devious”.

“You have shown absolutely no remorse. It appears you are in complete denial as to what you did, notwithstanding what in my judgement amounted to overwhelming evidence against you.

“The enormity of your crime is profoundly shocking, even more so given your apparent religious devotion as well as the fact Deborah Chong was a good friend to you and had shown you great kindness.”

Close Circuit Television footage showed Mitchell arriving at Ms. Chong’s home carrying a large blue suitcase on the morning of June 11 last year.

She emerged from the property more than four hours later with the suitcase appearing bulkier and heavier. She had also collected a smaller bag full of Ms. Chong’s financial documents.

When Ms. Chong was reported missing, Mitchell concocted the tale that the Malaysian woman was feeling “depressed” and had gone to visit family friends “somewhere close to the ocean”.

Meanwhile, Mitchell had kept Ms. Chong’s decapitated body in the suitcase which she stored in the garden of her home.

Two weeks after the murder, Mitchell used a stolen phone to hire a car, put the suitcase in the boot of the hired car, and drove more than 200 miles to Devon.

Mitchell’s plot to dispose of the body suffered a hitch when the hired car’s tyre burst. The fault was fixed by the AA, but the judge noted that the snag made her “unable to find a more remote location” to dump the body.

Holidaymakers found Ms. Chong’s badly decomposed headless body the following day beside a public footpath near sea-side Salcombe town in Devon. The victim’s head was found a few days later.

Witnesses had seen Mitchell driving the hire car in the same area on the day the body was dumped.

Investigations revealed that Mitchell struck Ms. Chong on the head with a heavy object. The victim’s ribs were found broken as her body was stuffed into the suitcase.

Police investigators also found the fake will and Ms. Chong’s personal possessions in Mitchell’s home.

When she was caught, detectives found that Mitchell had drafted a forged will on her computer, naming herself and her mother as beneficiaries of Ms. Chong’s estate.

Evening Standard reported that Ms. Chong was known for her generosity to the homeless and those in need, and she had given £50,000 to a friend for a house purchase.

She suffered from schizophrenia and was referred for help after writing letters to King Charles and then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Ms. Chong grew up in poverty in Kuala Lumpur and moved to the UK in the 1970s. She lost her husband in the 1990s, sparking a decline in her mental health that deteriorated further after the death of her oldest sister, four months before the murder.

Ms. Chong’s sister Amy said she had been left with “a huge bottomless hole in my heart”, and the family have been further traumatised by hearing details of the crime during the trial, as Ms. Chong was portrayed as a “crazy woman”.

“No one in their right mind would do this to anyone, especially to our loving and caring Deborah”, she said.

“Jemma doesn’t deserve my sympathy, she has broken my family. I hope she gets what she deserves. She is the crazy one who steals people’s belongings after they have died.”

Mitchell denied murder but was convicted by the jury.