Jemma Mitchell’s mother, Hillary Collard, says victim Mee Kuen Chong died by suicide (Pictures: PA)
The mother of a killer jailed for life for murdering her vulnerable friend and dumping her headless body has insisted she is innocent.
Jemma Mitchell, 38, was today sentenced to serve at least 34 years in prison for the ‘profoundly shocking’ murder of Mee Kuen Chong, 67, known as Deborah.
Her motive was a simple one — money, and lots of it. She forged a will for Ms Chong in a bid to inherit her £700,000 estate.
The Old Bailey heard how the trained osteopath struck the victim over the head, fracturing her skull, at her home in Wembley, north-west London.
The expert in human dissection then decapitated the victim before storing her body in the garden of the Willesden home she shared with her mother.
Mitchell then drove 200 miles out to a woodland path in Salcombe, a resort town in Devon, two weeks later to dispose of the body crammed in a suitcase.
CCTV captured the moment Mitchell dragged a blue suitcase from Ms Chong’s home (Picture: PA)
But Mitchell, who denied any wrongdoing, kept her lips sealed during the trial.
Her lawyers said ‘gaps’ in the prosecution case meant jurors could not be sure of her guilt.
Speaking outside the London court, Mitchell’s mother, Hillary Collard, suggested Ms Chong suffered from depression and died by suicide.
Ms Chong had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was taking anti-psychotic medication following the death of her husband.
Her head, the Foreign Office worker claimed, detached from her body due to decomposition.
‘As far as I’m concerned she did not do it. She’s innocent,’ Mrs Collard said.
Hillary Collard stressed her daughter’s innocence to reporters outside the Old Baily following the sentencing (Picture: PA)
‘There’s absolutely no question about it and I know she would not do such a thing. I’m absolutely baffled. I’m absolutely agog. There was no DNA on the body.
‘If she had murdered the lady, at our house there would be blood and other things but there was nothing.’
‘Also at Deborah’s house, they said she was murdered there. There’s no blood, no nothing.’
A pathologist, however, said that the skull fractures Ms Chong suffered would not have necessarily caused bleeding.
Mrs Collard added: ‘She offered me to go to Salcombe with her. If she had a dead body in the back she would not have asked me to go with her, would she?’
Mitchell and Ms Chong were both ‘devout Christians’ who met through church and texted about renovating her and her mother’s £4 million home.
A service station worker said there was a ‘musky smell’ coming from her car (Picture: PA)
But after Ms Chong baulked at handing them £200,000 to refurbish their downtrodden home, Mitchell plotted to murder her, the court heard.
Jurors saw CCTV footage of Mitchell arriving at Ms Chong’s home carrying a large blue suitcase on the morning of June 11 last year.
More than four hours later, she emerged still carrying the suitcase, now noticeably bulkier and heavier.
Judge Richard Marks said: ‘That large suitcase contained Deborah Chong’s body. I have no doubt that you killed her when inside her house.’
But Mrs Collard stressed that if Mitchell had given evidence, she would have said the suitcase contained ‘crockery, cutlery and tea towels’.
Worried, Ms Chong’s friends reported her missing only for Mitchell to insist she had gone to visit family friends ‘somewhere close to the ocean’.
The suitcase used by Jemma Mitchell (Picture: PA)
In reality, their friend’s body was rotting in the garden of Mitchell and her mother’s home.
On June 26, Mitchell drove to Salcombe in a car she hired with a mobile phone stolen from her dead neighbour’s house, prosecutors claimed.
She would use the same neighbour’s signature to witness Ms Chong’s fake will which she wrote.
‘I thought that Deborah asked her to type up the will for her,’ Mrs Collard said.
While en route to Salcombe, Mitchell’s Volvo blew a tire so she stopped at a service station by Bristol to get it fixed.
A repairman replacing the wheel noted the ‘musky smell’ coming from the car.
Tourists visiting the small seaside town were stunned to find Ms Chong’s headless body (Picture: PA)
Shocked holidaymakers would later find Ms Chong’s remains near Bennett Road, with police recovering her skull metres away from the body in the undergrowth.
Mitchell had studied human sciences at King’s College London meaning she was ‘taught anatomy’ and ‘had experience in the dissection of human bodies’.
‘That no doubt stood you in good stead,’ the judge said in the televised sentencing.
‘Although why you chose to do that remains a mystery.’
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‘There’s absolutely no question about it,’ Jemma Mitchell’s mother said.