LONDON—A woman described by a prosecutor as a “devout Christian” murdered her friend, decapitated her, and dumped her headless body on a public footpath 200 miles away, where a family stumbled across it while on a holiday stroll, a jury in London has heard.
Jemma Mitchell, 38, denies murdering Mee Kuen Chong, 67, and depositing her body and head near Salcombe in south Devon in June 2021.
A jury at the Old Bailey in London heard on Tuesday how Charlotte Rollings and her family made the “gruesome discovery” as they took a walk near their holiday cottage on June 27, 2021.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer, KC, said the head was found three days later and she said: “There were signs of an assault. The skull was fractured above the right eye socket. The pattern of the fracture suggests that it was the result of a significant impact by a blunt object very shortly before death.”
Chong, who was born in Malaysia and was known to friends as Deborah, suffered from schizophrenia and had been injected with anti-psychotic medication in May 2021, after she repeatedly wrote “bizarre” letters to Prince Charles and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Heer said she was last seen on June 10, 2021.
Heer told the jury Mitchell visited Chong at her home in Wembley, London, on June 11, 2021 and was last seen on a CCTV camera nearby hauling two suitcases, one of which was described as “very heavy and hard to manouevre.”
The prosecution claim the suitcase contained Chong’s body and they claim Mitchell transported it to Devon in a rented Volvo car and was spotted on CCTV driving towards the area where the body, and later the head, were discovered.
Heer said Mitchell, a trained osteopath who had won a prize at university for her anatomical knowledge, lived with her mother, Hilary Pollard, who used to work at the Foreign Office.
The prosecutor said Pollard had decided to construct a third floor on their home in Brondesbury Park but the project ran into problems when a builder went bankrupt.
Victim Offered £200,000 but ‘Changed Her Mind’
She said Chong and Mitchell were both “devout Christians” and Chong had offered £200,000 ($220,000) of her own money to complete the building work on condition that the house was used for “Christian worship.”But she changed her mind on June 7, 2021, four days before she went missing, the jury was told.
The trial was told that Mitchell had tried to persuade Chong to set up a charity and then give her house to it in order to avoid inheritance taxes.
Heer said Mitchell had a science degree from King’s College, London, and she had undertaken a course in which she had learned how to dissect bodies.
The prosecutor said Mitchell even bragged on the website of her osteopathy website how she was an expert in dissecting “human cadavers.”
On Wednesday Heer told the jury Chong’s lodger, David Klein, had texted the defendant on June 12, 2021 and said she had gone missing.
Mitchell replied: “Hey David. She said on Monday she was going to stay with family friends for a year to clear her head … somewhere close to the ocean, she said she felt depressed about the home visit by the mental team.”
The prosecutor said Mitchell stayed at home for the next two weeks but on June 26, 2021 she rented a Volvo and transported Chong’s body, in the blue suitcase, to Devon.
Heer said at one point the car’s wheel got damaged and a mechanic at a garage near Salcombe told the woman driver to ring the AA.
When an AA man, Lee Gardin, arrived and changed the spare wheel the suitcase was no longer in the car but the driver told him she planned to “watch the sunrise” before she returned to London.
But by 6:44 a.m. Mitchell was back home and, after a change of clothes, she returned the Volvo to the car rental firm and refused to pay for the damaged wheel, saying, “It’s not my fault.”
The prosecutor alleged Mitchell had faked Chong’s will, using the signature of a neighbour who had died in March 2021, in which 95 percent of her estate was left to Mitchell and the other five percent to her mother.
The trial is due to last for three weeks.
