[DETECTIVE] - And they’ve said ... [DETECTIVE] - ... that the person ... [DETECTIVE] - ... driving the Volvo waited [DETECTIVE] - in the car all that time ... [DETECTIVE] - with the windows down [DETECTIVE] - and the front door open, the passenger door open [DETECTIVE] - when it was literally chucking it down with rain and it was windy. [DETECTIVE] - Why is that Jemma? No comment. [DETECTIVE] - The car stank, didn’t it Jemma? No comment. [DETECTIVE] - Stunk of a dead person. No comment. [DETECTIVE] - Stunk of Deborah’s decomposing body. [DETECTIVE] - Is that right, Jemma? No ... comment. On June 11th, 2021, a Wembley resident notified police of the disappearance of his landlord, 67 year old Deborah Chong. The caller was concerned about her absence as she had recently struggled with mental illness and had difficulty walking. The anxiety escalated to outright terror. Six days later when tourists stumbled upon a gruesome scene. Deborah's heavily decomposed body was found in a woodland, a blue suitcase ominously at its side. In this video, we will embark on a journey through the investigation into Mrs. Chong's shockingly brutal death and the groundbreaking televised sentencing of the culprit, the first of its kind in England. Let's dive in. Mee Kuen Chong, also known as Deborah, was a kindhearted 67 year old woman from London. Widowed a few years prior, Deborah had migrated with her husband three decades ago from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was a resident of Wembley for the past 20 years. She lived in a home she owned with her tenant, crane operator David Klein. Deborah, a devout Christian, actively shared evangelical content on social networking sites. She was admired for her generosity towards the homeless. After her husband's death, she fell into a difficult period and began writing letters to prominent figures like Prime Minister Boris Johnson and then Prince Charles. In fact, Deborah was convinced she was in love with the prince and that they could communicate through YouTube videos. Alerted to her relentless attempts at contacting public figures, the Fixated Threat Assessment Center, a joint police/mental health unit, referred Deborah to a local community health team. There she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and prescribed psychotropic medication. Those who knew Deborah, a woman they perceived as harmless and childlike, were surprised. Yet despite these perceptions, Deborah herself understood that she needed help. In the summer of 2020, Deborah met a 36 year old woman named Jemma Mitchell through a local church. Jemma was also a devout Christian who shared evangelical content on social media. Bonded by their shared faith, the two women soon formed a friendship and spent considerable time together. Jemma was born in Australia and raised in England since age two. She studied osteopathy in Britain before starting her practice in Australia in a repurposed funeral parlor. In 2015, she returned to London but couldn't practice osteopathy due to a lack of registration with the General Osteopathic Council, as mandated by UK law. With her income limited, Jemma moved back to her family's rundown £4.6 million property in Brondesbury, Brent, residing in a converted garage apartment while her mother and sister lived on the ground floor. As Jemma and Deborah's relationship deepened, Jemma took on the role of a spiritual healer in Deborah's eyes. Over time, Deborah was convinced that Jemma's purported healing abilities were curing her illness. Eventually, Jemma shared with Deborah how she and her mother wanted to renovate their home, but were scammed out of £230,000 by two deceitful contractors. Deborah, moved by the account, offered to gift £200,000 for the home's restoration upon condition that the house be used for Christian worship. For Jemma, this was game changing news. Unfortunately, however, she would never see the money. On June 11th, 2021, at 10:48 p.m., a concerned tenant reported Deborah missing. He hadn't seen her since the previous evening and strangely she had left her phone and glasses behind. Aware of Deborah's close relationship with Jemma, he reached out to her. Jemma told him that Deborah had gone to stay with family friends near the ocean for a year to clear her head due to feeling depressed. Jemma repeated this story to the police, starting an ongoing investigation. However, progress remained elusive until a shocking discovery on June 27th. During a routine dog walk through woodland in Salcombe, South Devon, a family stumbled upon a horrifying sight, prompting an urgent 999 call. Police arrived at the scene and confirmed the presence of human remains. The body was lying on a public footpath at the bottom of a set of steps, and the deceased's head was nowhere to be found. Officers noticed the skin in the neck area had a very clean appearance. A postmortem took place at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital that same day, but failed to establish a cause of death due to the body's advanced state of decomposition. On June 30th, Detective Ben Deer updated local media on the gruesome finding. Police were called to a report of a body found near the Bennett Road area in 2017 and our initial inquiries have identified that female as a 67 year old from the Wembley area of London. It was reported missing in London on the 11 June. We are concerned that movements between the 11 June in London and 2715 when the lady was found in South. And so we would appeal for witnesses and anyone to come forward. The death itself is being treated as unexplained at this time and also Was the heavy rainfall Sunday a part of the discovery? The following days saw agents intensively scouring the area. And on July 1st, another graphic discovery was made. A human head found just 30 feet away from where Deborah's body was discovered. DNA tests confirmed a match to Deborah, who lived more than 200 miles away as detectives grappled with these gruesome findings. They delved into her last known movements while canvasing Deborah's neighborhood for surveillance footage. They stumbled upon a chilling revelation. Jemma Mitchell, who had conveniently kept this detail from officers, had visited Deborah's home on June 11th. At 6:15 a.m.. CCTV footage filmed by a camera adjacent to her house, shows Jemma leaving her home at Brondesbury Park. She had a large blue wheeled suitcase with her. She did not appear to struggle to haul the suitcase. 25 minutes later, at 6:40 a.m.. Jemma is observed in a different outfit, wearing a beanie and face mask, pulling a blue suitcase and heading towards Deborah's house. At 12:58 p.m.. Jemma is seen walking from Deborah's house with two suitcases, a large blue one and the other a smaller red and blue one. This time she clearly had difficulty moving the larger blue suitcase. She then spends 3 hours carrying the suitcase throughout suburban London before returning home after 4 p.m. with the larger blue suitcase. Detectives also reviewed CCTV footage from June 26th, which captured Jemma in a rented Volvo SUV, struggling to load a large blue suitcase into the vehicle. Later that evening, her car is seen driving along Bennett Road in Salcombe, 3 hours from London towards the woodland area, where Deborah's body was found. During a search of Jemma's residence, officers stumbled upon a cryptic note on a wall calendar that chillingly read "collect body." They also discovered a legal document bearing Deborah's name - a will dated October 27th, 2020, naming Jemma as a trustee. The will declared that Jemma was to receive 95% of Deborah's estate valued at £700,000 for home renovations, while the remaining 5% was apportioned to Jemma's mother. The plot thickened when an examination of Jemma's computer uncovered a word document of the identical will created on July 1st, 2021, weeks after Deborah's death. Detectives also pieced together the following from phone records, app messages and other evidence. In the months leading up to her murder, Deborah had chastised Jemma for being messy. However, Deborah did not realize the full extent of the issue until she visited Jemma's family residence after promising to gift £200,000. Deborah was astounded by the property's state of disrepair. The house was in chaos, showed significant neglect and was littered with clutter to the point where some rooms were inaccessible. Appalled by the property's condition, Deborah withdrew her offer. Instead, she suggested by text that Jemma should sell her property, valued at £4.6 million, downsize and enjoy the profit. This news devastated Jemma. With solid evidence to support probable cause, detectives sought and obtained a warrant for Jemma's arrest. Following the arrest, Jemma was confronted by detectives about the rented Volvo captured on CCTV. No comment. The authorities charged Jemma with an exceptionally brutal murder. Prosecutor Deanna Heer said Jemma was charged with murder and held in custody. She pleaded not guilty to the charge. The trial began on October 11th, with prosecutors contending Jemma, who boasted online of her award winning skill in human dissection, perpetrated the murder in Deborah's home, bludgeoned her over the head with an object, decapitated her and heartlessly packed Deborah's lifeless body into a suitcase for disposal in the woods. Jemma's defense argued there was a lack of DNA evidence from the suitcase and that the value of her property, estimated to be worth more than £4 million, together with £93,000 in personal savings, meant Jemma did not have a financial motive to kill. Further, how could there be a murder when the post mortem analysis found the cause of death was "unascertained?" On October 27th, 2022, after 7 hours of deliberation, a jury at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, also known as the Old Bailey, reached a verdict. Today in the Old Bailey, the 38 year old woman, Jemma Mitchell, has been found guilty of that murder. Deborah was born in Malaysia. Through her own hard work and initiative, she made a good life for herself, finally settling in London, where she was a much valued and loved member of the community. The jury said that her later years were marred by poor mental health, but throughout this time, she never lost her firm religious beliefs nor her belief in the goodness of charity. And it was upon these beliefs that Jemma Mitchell preyed in an attempt to take a significant amount of money from Deborah. When Deborah refused, Mitchell murdered her. She forced the body into a suitcase and transported her body some distance across North London, where she retained it for over a fortnight. At some point she decapitated that body before finally driving some 250 miles to the coast of Devon, where she discarded her remains by the side of a flat, an overgrown footpath. Unfortunately for Mitchell, the following day, on the 27th of July, a holiday family in Salcombe found there was remains and contacted the police and at that point Devon Cornwall Police initiated inquiries. When it became apparent that Deborah had been murdered in London might seem surprising. Mitchell was arrested in early July and charged with attempted murder. Several days later, our investigations revealed that Mitchell was in the process of doctoring wills in an attempt to make a significant claim on the estate of Deborah. But look, first attempt never came to fruition. Jemma was remanded into custody to be sentenced the following day. The sentencing was aired live on various outlets. It marked the first trial with a murder conviction in England and Wales to have its sentencing phase televised and the first televised sentencing of a woman. As Jemma appeared in court before her sentencing. She was observed mouthing "Hello, mummy," to her mother, Hillary, who sat in the public gallery and blew kisses in response. A victim impact statement from Deborah's sister was read to the court while she watched via video link. Judge Marks began his sentencing remarks approximately 11 minutes after Jemma's arrival. As has no doubt been explained to you by your counsel, the only sentence which the court can impose for murder is one of life imprisonment. But I am required to fix a minimum term, which you must serve in any event, before you would be eligible to be considered for parole. Whether or not he will be released at the end of the minimum term will depend on the view taken by the Parole Board at that time as to whether you continue to represent a danger to other members of the public. I am in no doubt whatsoever. And your counsel realistically acknowledges that this was a murder done for gain. And as such, pursuant to Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act, 2020 Starting Point must be one of 30 years imprisonment, a figure which falls to be adjusted according to the mitigating and aggravation features of the case, which is a topic to which I shall return. You are now 38 years of age. You have one minor previous conviction for breach of a non-molestation order which arose in a domestic context. I propose to ignore that and to treat you as a woman of effective previous good character. You are clearly a highly intelligent woman. Having obtained first class honors in 2006 in human sciences from King's College London, and then gone on to qualify as an year. You went to live and work in that capacity in Australia, returning to live here with your mother in 2015. You live together in a large property in North London and the two of you decided to add an upper floor to the House. This proved to be your undoing. You and your mother paid a total of £230,000 to builders, all of whom evidently cheated you, and you were thereby exhausted for a large part of your resources. But the work remained substantially unfinished, and the house was left without a roof and covered in scaffolding. Meanwhile, you met the victim in this case through the church. Some time, it would appear in 2020. She, like you, was a very devout Christian. And it is clear from the hundreds of phone messages that passed between you over a period of several months, right up to the time of her death, which featured in the evidence in the trial, that you became very close. She was 67 years of age and of Malaysian origin. She was a woman of some means. And the evidence showed that she was extremely generous. Unfortunately, she had a history of serious mental illness, having been diagnosed some years ago with paranoid schizophrenia. And she had spent some months as an inpatient at a mental hospital. Shortly before you killed her. She had suffered a relapse and against her will had been put on anti-psychotic medication as such. And as he well knew, she was particularly vulnerable, both mentally as well as physically and the jury saw from the CCTV evidence how in the days before her death, she walked with difficulty needing to hold on to the arm of her lodger, as she did so. The messages that passed between the two of you showed that she was very well aware of your problems with regards to the House and was proactive in attempting to help you. This culminated in her offering to give you £200,000 to spend on the house, an offer, however, which she withdrew a few days before you killed her, which I am sure is what led you to do what you did on the morning of the 11th of June of last year? You set off early from your home address, taking with you a large suitcase, which it was evident from the CCTV was either empty or had very little in it. You went by public transport to her address and you stayed there for over 5 hours. When you emerged from the property, it was clear from the CCTV evidence that you had injured your hand and surface fire. That can only have happened whilst you were inside the house and must have occurred in the course of the killing. Later that evening you attended St Thomas's Hospital, where you were treated for a fractured finger. You claimed that had occurred when you trapped it in a car door. In my judgment, that was clearly a lie. A suitcase that you had taken to the house was now very obviously full and heavy. You also now have with you another case. I'm sure that this other case was the one that the police later recovered from your home. It is clear that it belonged to Deborah Chong and it contained many documents that also belonged to her, including her passport driving license, naturalization papers, bank credit and other loyalty cards. That large suitcase contained Deborah Chan's body. I have no doubt that you had killed her whilst you were at her house. And absent any explanation from you, given that you went no comment throughout your police interviews and did not go into the witness box. I am driven to the conclusion that you went to her house that morning with that intention in mind. Two weeks later, you hired a car for a period of only 24 hours. You were seen on CCTV to put that large suitcase into her car. It was clearly heavy, such that you needed a trolley to wheel it down the road and into the car. That is because it contained Jennifer's body. You then drove down to Devon, where you clearly planned to dump her body, but your plans went awry when you had a puncture which had to be attended to by the air. This meant that you had rather less time down to find a place to secrete the body than you had envisaged. Hence why you were unable to find a more remote location than you did. The place that you alighted upon was at the bottom of some steps on a public footpath by some woodland adjacent to Bennett Road in Shulkin. A truly telling piece of evidence against you was the fact that that evening after the punctured tire had been repaired, your hire car was seen being driven by you on Bennett Road, 15 meters away from where Deborah's body was found the following afternoon by a lady who was out walking. That grim discovery was made all the worse by the fact that her head had been cut off. It was not found until a number of days later, some ten meters away from the body further down the hill beneath some undergrowth because of the extent of decomposition of the body. The pathologist who carried out the autopsy, she was unable to ascertain the cause of death. But what was found was that she had suffered a comminuted fracture to the skull, as well as multiple rib fractures. As part of your degree, you were taught anatomy and you included on your website, which advertised your services as an Austrian. The fact that you had experience in the dissection of human bodies that no doubt stood you in good stead when you cut off Deborah's head. Although why he chose to do that remains a mystery. Following your arrest from the 6th of July, amongst the items found by the police at your home was a will which reported to be that of Deborah and to leave 95% of her assets to you and the remaining 5% to your mother. That will was fake. It was written by you and it contains signatures of Deborah and two witnesses, each of which had been forged by you. All of the persons whose signatures you forged was that the a man by the name of virtue of Peter, an erstwhile neighbor of yours, who had died some months earlier following his death, you had managed to gain access to his room, and you took from that room various papers of his, including his passport, as well as his mobile phone. A short time later, you rang the phone company pretending to be him, giving his name and date of birth. And you had the phone reactivated. It was his phone rather than yours that you used to put the hired car and it was his phone that you took with you on the trip to Devon, leaving your own at home. Moreover, the evidence of the handwriting expert was that his purported signature on the work had been copied from his passport, which you had removed from his room. Quite apart from anything else, I am driven to the conclusion that you are extremely devious. I said at the outset of these remarks that I would return to the issue of mitigating and aggravating features. The sole mitigation is that you are effectively a woman of previous good character, although given the gravity of your crime, in my judgment, that entitles you to only a very modest discount As to aggravating features, there are the following. Firstly, the amount of planning and premeditation that went into this offense. Although it is right to acknowledge that this is bound to be an invariable feature of a killing, John, Sergei and I must avoid double counting in that regard. Secondly, there is the issue of Deborah's mental and physical vulnerability, to which I have already referred, and of which you were very well aware. Thirdly, there is the chilling aspect of what you did to and with her body after you had killed her. You have shown absolutely no remorse and it appears that you are in complete denial as to what you did. Notwithstanding what in my judgment, 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 that Deborah Charles was a good friend to you and had shown you great kindness. The sentence of the court is one of life imprisonment and the minimum term of imprisonment that you will in any event be required to serve will be 34 years that will be deducted from the term the 475 days that you spent in custody on remand and the statutory surcharge will apply. Please take the defendant downstairs. Despite her conviction and the judge's sentencing remarks. Jemma's mother remained staunchly in her daughter's corner, dismissing the guilty verdict following the sentencing. She stood outside the courtroom and vehemently insisted on Jemma's innocence, asserting the suitcase was filled not with a body, but with crockery, cutlery and tea towels. She further promised that Jemma would appeal the conviction. She is innocent, and I know that. And I'm going to go to the top. I'm not accepting this because it's not right. She is innocent. I know it. I'm taking it further. I'm 76. If it takes me until I die, I'm going to contest it. Because it's not right. In an interview with the Herald Sun, Jemma's mother said her daughter was no killer and had become traumatized after splitting with the first boyfriend who had treated her properly. She added, Jemma had hundreds of boyfriends. They all used her for sex. But the last one she loved. He was lovely, very religious. He never slept with her. That's why she fell for him. When it ended, she hit rock bottom. She was erratic. She turned to God because the boyfriend went to church. According to a published report by the Australian TV news program 60 Minutes, Jemma's mother visits her regularly in prison, despite insisting on her daughter's innocence and claiming she has proof. She has refused to turn over any evidence to police because the police are corrupt. Jemma mitchell has been sentenced to a minimum of 34 years in prison for the murder of Deborah Chang. The earliest she could be eligible for parole consideration is in October 1256.