A woman has been found guilty of murdering and decapitating her friend in a row over money.
Jemma Mitchell, 38, had been accused of killing devout Christian Mee Kuen Chong and dumping her headless body more than 200 miles away in order to inherit hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Mitchell, an alternative therapist, hit the 67-year-old over the head with a weapon at her London home and left her decapitated and badly decomposed body in woods in Salcombe, Devon, two weeks later.
The prosecution claimed Mitchell had planned to murder the divorcee and fake her will to inherit the majority of her estate which was worth more than £700,000.
Jurors were told that Mitchell came up with the plan to murder her friend, known as Deborah, after she backed out of giving her £200,000 to pay for repairs for Mitchell’s £4 million dilapidated family home.
Mitchell denied having anything to do with her friend’s death and declined to give evidence at her trial.
During the trial, jurors viewed CCTV footage of Mitchell arriving at Ms Chong’s home carrying a large blue suitcase, allegedly containing her murder kit, on the morning of 11 June last year.
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More than four hours later, she emerged from the property in Wembley, north-west London, with the suitcase appearing bulkier and heavier.
The prosecution said CCTV appeared to show Mitchell struggling to carry the unwieldy suitcase because it contained a body. She also had with her a smaller bag full of Ms Chong’s financial documents, which were later recovered from Mitchell’s home.
After Ms Chong’s lodger reported her missing, Mitchell claimed she had gone to visit family friends “somewhere close to the ocean”.
The prosecution suggested Mitchell had decapitated Ms Chong and stored her remains in the garden of the house she shared with her retired mother in Willesden, north-west London.
On June 26 last year, Mitchell stowed the body inside the suitcase in the boot of a hire car and drove to Devon.
On her way to Salcombe, Mitchell was forced to drive into a service station after the car blew a tyre. A repairman who changed the wheel described an “odd musty smell” inside the vehicle.
