Murder of Mee Kuen Chong

Mee Kuen Chong, known to friends as Deborah, was a Malaysian-born widow who had lived in London for 30 years and lived with paranoid schizophrenia, for which she took antipsychotic medication. She had been referred by the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre to her local community mental health team after exhibiting erratic behaviour. In or around August 2020, Chong met Jemma Mitchell, an unregistered osteopath, at a church they both attended, and the two became friends. Mitchell and her mother had been cheated out of £230,000 by builders hired to renovate the London property they shared, and Chong initially agreed to give Mitchell £200,000 toward the project, but later withdrew the offer and urged Mitchell to sell the house instead — a reversal that came shortly before the killing.

On the morning of 11 June 2021, Mitchell travelled to Chong's home in Wembley, north London, carrying a large suitcase. Chong, last seen alive the previous day, was killed at the property; her ribs were broken and her body was placed inside the suitcase, which Mitchell stored in her garden for two weeks. After reactivating a recently deceased neighbour's phone to hire a car, she drove 200 miles to Salcombe, Devon, on 26 June and left the body, its head missing, on a woodland path near Bennett Road. Holidaymakers found the body the next day, and a police search located the head four days later, about 10 metres away. The body was too decomposed to determine an exact cause of death, though a post-mortem found a fracture to the skull.

Chong was reported missing by her lodger on 11 June. Asked about her whereabouts, Mitchell told investigators Chong had gone to stay with family friends near the coast. Mitchell was arrested on 6 July 2021 and charged with murder; she made no comment in police interviews and later pleaded not guilty. At trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutors presented CCTV footage of Mitchell arriving at Chong's home with the suitcase and leaving hours later with it visibly heavier, plus a bloodstained tea towel later found inside the recovered suitcase. A forged will was also found at Mitchell's home, purporting to leave 95% of Chong's roughly £700,000 estate to Mitchell, drawn up using documents stolen from Chong and from the deceased neighbour. Mitchell did not testify; her lawyers argued the absence of Chong's DNA in the suitcase and Mitchell's own financial means undercut any motive, while prosecutors pointed to a finger Mitchell broke on the day of the killing as evidence of a struggle.

On 27 October 2022, after seven hours of jury deliberation, Mitchell was convicted of murder. Her sentencing hearing the next day, at the Old Bailey, was the first in England and Wales to be televised for a murder conviction, and the first televised sentencing of a woman in the UK. Chong's sister, watching by videolink from Malaysia, told the court in a victim impact statement that the family still did not understand how Chong had died. The sentencing judge said Mitchell had shown no remorse and described the treatment of her body as a "chilling aspect" of the case, before imposing a life sentence with a minimum term of 34 years, meaning Mitchell will not be eligible for parole until October 2056. The investigating Metropolitan Police officer said Mitchell had never accepted responsibility, leaving unanswered why she kept the body for two weeks, why she decapitated it, and why she chose Salcombe to dispose of the remains. Mitchell's mother continued to maintain her daughter's innocence after the conviction.