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A churchgoing expert in body dissection was today found guilty of murdering a vulnerable Malaysian pensioner, cutting her head off and dumping her body in woodland when she refused to pay for repairs totalling £400,000 to her semi-derelict home in London.
Ex-osteopath Jemma Mitchell battered 67-year-old Mee Kuen Chong to death at her home in Wembley in June last year, before decapitating her corpse, stuffing the body into a large blue suitcase then driving all the way to Devon to deposit it in woods near Salcombe.
The pair had initially struck up a friendship in church but relations soured when Mitchell, from Willesden, continuously harassed Ms Chong for money to help her finish an extension on her north London home, which had seen her sink into debt.
While originally open to the idea of giving Mitchell £200,000 to help with refurbishment work, Ms Chong later changed her mind and eventually tried to cut off contact. But on June 11 last year she agreed to see her friend as long as the issue of money was not mentioned.
Mitchell, 38, arrived at her home in Wembley with a large blue suitcase, knowing Ms Chong, who was 5ft 2in tall and weighed only 7st, would fit inside.
She battered the unsuspecting pensioner around the head with an unknown blunt object and may have cut her head off at the house to allow her body to fit inside the case more easily.
Mitchell left the house and called a cab with the body in the case and another suitcase full of Ms Chong’s personal documents which she would use in an amateurish attempt to forge the victim’s will in a Word document. She kept the body in her rubbish strewn house in Kilburn for two weeks and barely left the property before she hired a car and drove to woods near Salcombe, where she dumped the body and severed head.
Ms Chong was reported missing later on June 11 when her lodger returned home and found she had disappeared leaving her mobile phone and glasses.
A search was mounted for her over two weeks before a holidaymaker in Devon found her body two weeks later.
Screen grab taken from CCTV issued by Metropolitan Police of Jemma Mitchell
Jemma Mitchell (left) battered Mee Kuen Chong (right) to death at her home in Wembley in June last year, before cutting off her head, stuffing the body into a large suitcase then driving all the way to Devon to deposit it in woods near Salcombe
Undated Metropolitan Police handout photo of the site in Salcombe, Devon
Ms Chong went missing on June 11 last year and her body was found hundreds of miles away 16 days later
The suitcase that had contained Ms Chong’s body was found soon afterwards on the roof of a shed belonging to one of Mitchells neighbours with a tea towel covered in the pensioner’s blood in the front pocket.
The judge at the Old Bailey had told jurors they could consider a charge of manslaughter on the basis Australian-born Mitchell did not intend to kill Ms Chong. However, they returned today and found her guilty of murder.
Mitchell was born in Australia where her mother, Hillary Collard, had worked for the Foreign Office. When her mother and father divorced, she moved back to the UK with her mother and her sister, who later accused her of harassment and won a non-molestation court order.
Mitchell had been a brilliant medical student and studied Human Sciences at Kings College London and won a first-class degree in 2004. Part of the course was module called the ‘Structural Basis of Human Function’ where she learned how to dissect bodies.
Mitchell also completed a special study course in ‘Experimental Anatomy’ and was so adept she won the Hamilton Prize for anatomical excellence.
She worked as an osteopath in Australia for seven years but her medical career did not work out and she returned to live with her mother at their £2million home in Brondesbury Park, which had been in the family for generations.
Mitchell lived on the first floor and her mother lived on the ground floor. She began to become more religious and started hoarding items. Some of the rooms at the house were so full of junk, she struggled to get through the doors and the kitchen was filthy with rotting food on the cooker and freezers packed full of food which had passed their sell-by date years ago.
Mitchell dreamed of making a fortune through property development, particularly extending her own home.
Ms Chong was said to be a vulnerable person and prone to erratic behaviour
Jurors heard that Mitchell was in Salcombe on June 26 last year, having travelled there in a rented grey Volvo
Undated Metropolitan Police handout photo of the site in Salcombe, Devon
Ms Chong’s fractured skull was found in undergrowth a few metres away from the body days later
After the first builder went bust, Mitchell was quoted £500,000 to complete the house. She hired a second contractor and paid him £100,000, but then ran out of money and the work was terminated.
Mitchell met Malaysian Ms Chong in August 2020 and within a few weeks she was talking to her about her disastrous finances.
Ms Chong was mentally unstable and wrote bizarre letters to Prince Charles and Boris Johnson, thinking they were her boyfriends. She was also very generous with her money and had given one friend £50,000 to buy a home.
At first Mitchell suggested she could sign her Wembley property over her to her to avoid inheritance tax. Ms Chong declined but Mitchell continued to pressure her for almost a year.
Six months before she died, the victim agreed to give her £200,000 for repairs, providing the house was used for Christian worship.
But by June 7 last year, she had decided against it and told Mitchell when she when came to her home that day. The next day the victim she sent her a message saying ‘Until you sold house, I won’t want you to come to me or my house I am stress to the core.’
When Mitchell suggested visiting Ms Chong on the day she vanished, June 11, the victim told her in a text ‘not talk about house or money, stresses them both out.’
Mitchell was captured on CCTV going to Chaplin Road at 8am with the empty blue suitcase. She was filmed again struggling with the now full suitcase five hours later at 1.13pm as she left the house to take a cab home. Mitchell also had a smaller red and blue case belonging to the victim, full of her personal documents.
Later that day, Mitchell was treated in hospital for a broken finger, which she explained she had injured in a car door. However, the cab driver told police she had the injury when he picked her up.
On June 26 she hired a Volvo from Hertz and lay a white sheet in the boot before struggling to load the blue suitcase into the back of the car.
She now was using a phone belonging to a neighbour which she had stolen from his flat after he died and reactivated under his name.
Stored in its memory were Google Maps searches for locations on the Devon and the Cornwall coast, including ‘Salcombe, North Sands, Cliff Road’ where the body was found.
When she was in Devon, the Volvo got a puncture but Mitchell drove on damaging the wheel. She eventually stopped at a Co-op garage in Salcombe Road, Marlborough, close to the south Devon coast and was ‘shaky and distressed.’
Mitchell told customers who tried to help her that she was ‘visiting family in Paignton and had come to Salcombe for a scenic drive.’
An AA man who changed the wheel noticed the car had ‘a strange smell – sort of musty and damp.’ .
Mitchell insisted that the damaged wheel should be placed on the back seat of the car and not the boot before she continued on her journey. She drove out of the garage and turned towards Salcombe at 8.49pm.
Later that evening the car was captured on a CCTV camera overlooking Bennett Road, close to the location where the body was to be found the following day by a family on holiday.
By 6.30am the following morning Mitchell was back in London and dropped the car off at the hire company telling staff the tyre had ‘just blown.’
When police contacted Mitchell as they searched for the victim, she left a voice mail saying: ‘I tried to return your call yesterday… I was getting in touch to let you know that Mee said she was planning to stay with friends near her sister’s family on the coast. She said she felt neglected on 7 June 2021 and wanted to leave.’
On July 6 police arrived at Brondesbury Park to arrest Mitchell. After she was cautioned Mitchell said: ‘I know that she has gone away.’ She then turned to her mother and said: ‘It’s not true.’
But police had found a handbag next to the victim’s body containing a length of orange rope of which an Identical type was found among the rubbish at Mitchell’s home. Police also found a 2021 wall calendar with an entry written by Mitchell for June 26, the day she drove to Salcombe, in two different inks. It read: ‘8am collect body back C letter will copy 2 hr walk.’
In a box in the bedroom was a copy of Mitchell’s will, written in 2017 and a will in the name of the victim, dated October 27, 2020, which made Mitchell the main beneficiary.
It left 95 per cent of the deceased’s estate to the defendant ‘to be applied for the benefit of ‘Brondesbury Park’s projects’ and five per cent to the defendant’s mother, Hillary Collard.
The will had been faked by Mitchell who had forged the signatures including that of a witness who had not seen Mitchell since 2013.
Detectives searched her computer and found the Word document of the will which she had created on 1st July 2021, three weeks after she murdered Ms Chong.
Officers also found a torn-out newspaper article in Mitchell’s bedroom entitled ‘The Do’s and Don’ts of Claiming an Estate’ dated June 28, 2021.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer told the court: ‘A large sum was needed to complete the repairs on the defendant’s house.
‘In Mee Kuen Chong, the prosecution say the defendant found someone from whom she thought she could get that money – by persuading Mee Kuen Chong to give it to her, or if not when she was alive, then by forging her will after she had killed her.’
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