00:00:07
- When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time to find the truth, to
separate fact from fiction,
00:00:14
to catch the killer and to make
sure that justice is served. But what happens when the
truth vanishes with the victim?
00:00:24
I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd and I've spent my entire career as a forensic pathologist,
00:00:29
performing nearly
23,000 autopsies. I've learned that the
dead don't hide the truth
00:00:37
and they never lie. Through me, you'll be hearing
directly from the victim with the aid of a
state-of-the-art laboratory.
00:00:47
Using groundbreaking technology, I'll be investigating a
series of intriguing crimes
00:00:54
where from the victim's bodies
are revealed to you the truth behind these murders.
00:01:05
In June 2021, a family on holiday
in Salcombe, Devon made a horrifying discovery.
00:01:12
While out walking, they came
across a headless human body. This gruesome discovery
sparked a police investigation
00:01:20
and a hunt for the truth,
which was 200 miles away. - Salcombe is a very
quiet seaside village.
00:01:36
It's very picturesque,
it's very beautiful. It's popular with
holiday makers. I know people say
this all the time,
00:01:44
but it's really not the
kind of place you expect to find a dead body. A family was out for a walk
00:01:58
and they were walking
along a footpath and they saw what they thought
was a doll or a mannequin
00:02:09
by the side of the footpath. And as they got a bit closer, they realized it
wasn't a mannequin.
00:02:28
- It was actually the
headless corpse of a woman. - It was a gruesome
discovery for the family.
00:02:40
You would have a
sense of reality. It would've been pretty
hard for the family, particularly as the
head was missing.
00:02:47
- [Richard] Devon and Cornwall
police dashed straight to the scene. - The police attended the area
00:02:53
and an investigation commenced. The police initially
treated the case as an unexplained death.
00:03:02
Clearly the discovery of a
body in these circumstances has particularly distressing
features about it,
00:03:08
and I think really
what would kick in is the officer's
passion to find answers, answers for the family
00:03:14
of whoever that person may be as to how this situation arose, how did this person
come to be here?
00:03:25
- [Richard] Scenes of
crime officers were called to the location. - The next steps for the police
are to cordon off the area,
00:03:34
ensure that it's secure and that no more
contamination can be made from people entering the scene.
00:03:41
That would allow them the time and space to conduct a
thorough investigation, looking for any evidence that
would indicate why the body
00:03:48
came to be, where it was,
who might be responsible. - The person's body had no head.
00:04:01
It was clearly being sort
of decapitated somehow. So obviously this
raises suspicions,
00:04:07
it doesn't look like it's a sort of natural death
on the face of it. So they began a fingertip
search of the area to try
00:04:16
and find out firstly if there's
any clues, and secondly, to try to locate
this person's head,
00:04:25
which had become
detached from the body. - When looking for
missing body parts, a specific strategy
would be prepared
00:04:34
and considered depending
on the circumstances. In this case, the body
was in a wooded area
00:04:40
and there wouldn't be
any assumptions made as to whether the
remaining parts would
00:04:45
or wouldn't be local
to the initial finds. The parts of the body
that were discovered
00:04:51
would ultimately be removed
from the scene to allow for a full forensic
examination by a pathologist.
00:05:03
- The headless body showed
extensive decomposition. It had clearly been outside,
but no one knew for how long.
00:05:10
The first question that needed
answering was who is this? There was enough soft
tissue remaining to identify
00:05:18
that this was a female. And what even partial
remains like this can provide is an approximate age
of the individual.
00:05:26
A common affliction for
older people is arthritis, which is a wear and tear
effect on the joints,
00:05:33
and the chances are
if we're looking at fairly advanced
arthritis in the body, we are dealing with
an older person.
00:05:40
Another telltale clue was
osteoporosis in her ribs, a condition that reduces
the density of the bones,
00:05:47
making them fragile
and breakable. After the menopause, women
produce less estrogen
00:05:53
that's needed to generate
healthy bone tissue. So this deterioration of the
bones is a sign of older age.
00:06:01
In this case, the postmortem
revealed that this was the body of a nation woman who was likely
00:06:07
to be in her 60s at
the time of her death. So how did this woman end up
in this Devon seaside town?
00:06:15
There was only one way for
investigators to find out. - The next step in this
investigation, in fact,
00:06:22
any investigation is
to identify the victim, identify who the body is, because only by doing that
really can there be a real focus
00:06:31
to the next stages
of the inquiry. - From the little that
they had to go on, they knew it's a
person of Asian origin,
00:06:39
so then they would look
on missing persons lists and that kind of thing, but they would have to
establish their identity really
00:06:46
to get anywhere with this. - It's likely that the
first consideration would be that is this the body
of a local person?
00:06:56
It's unusual for people
to travel long distances to deposit a body somewhere unless they have
good cause to do so.
00:07:03
So if this was a deposition
site as it presented, then the chances are
that the initial focus
00:07:09
would be on local
lines of inquiry. - Clearly the body hadn't
been there for very long
00:07:27
because it was out in the open. You could see the
body from the road, so she would've
been seen by someone
00:07:36
if the body had been
there for a long time. So you've got a fairly
narrow window of opportunity
00:07:42
for the body dump
before it being found. From there, the police
were able to conduct house
00:07:52
to house inquiries,
ask the local community if they've seen
or heard anything, but also very importantly,
00:08:01
checking CCTV cameras
on people's houses and ANPR traffic cameras
in the area just to try
00:08:10
to locate any potential
suspect vehicles that might have been used
to transport this body
00:08:17
and dump it just on the
other side of a low wall near a footpath. - [Richard] With few
clues to go on initially,
00:08:25
the police turned to the press. - The local police force
put out a public appeal
00:08:32
through the media asking anyone who might know who
this person was or anyone who had any
information at all
00:08:43
that could shed light
on what had happened to get in touch with
them and talk to them
00:08:48
and make a statement and
help them solve this puzzle. I think it would've
been very worrying.
00:08:54
You've got an extremely
concerned local community who are desperate for answers and you have the pressure
of the national media
00:09:07
descending on this
quiet community also
looking for answers. There would've been a
degree of fear and shock
00:09:17
because people just really
don't expect something like that to happen in a sort of small,
00:09:23
tight-knit community like that. - It's like a horror
story on their doorstep in this beautiful
spot down in Devon
00:09:33
and where they have tourists,
holiday makers coming. So it's just the last
thing that you'd want.
00:09:40
- [Richard] With a potential
killer on the loose in the height of
the holiday season,
00:09:44
investigators needed
a breakthrough. - For people to sort of start
looking at their neighbors
00:09:50
and wondering it must
have been a very sort of frightening
tense kind of time because obviously until
you know otherwise,
00:10:00
the assumption is that
this is a local crime which would indicate that the perpetrator
is also local.
00:10:07
Every day this person
wasn't identified, the pressure on the
police is increasing
00:10:14
and also the concern and worry of the local
community is going on. It was a complete mystery.
00:10:27
[somber music] - In 2021, police in Devon
were searching for the head of a decapitated body in the
hope of identifying the victim
00:10:49
and unlocking the investigation. At this stage, all detectives
knew was that the victim
00:10:56
was in her 60s and she
was of Asian origin. So a huge search was
underway by Devon
00:11:02
and Cornwall police in
the surrounding woodland. - They need to find
the head basically.
00:11:12
It must have been quite
a challenge for them. - Identifying her would've
been critically important
00:11:19
in finding out what has happened
and how she ended up there. So they've got a really
big job on their hands.
00:11:28
They obviously searched
for several days. - [Richard] The window
to find new leads
00:11:35
from the wider public
was also closing. - As the holiday
season progresses, people go back to
their normal homes
00:11:42
and it could become quite a
disparate investigation then. That kind of
transient population
00:11:49
in terms of holiday
makers coming and going would be be quite critical to start conducting
house to house inquiries
00:11:55
and local inquiries to ensure
that you capture people who were there at the time.
00:12:01
The fact that it
was holiday season would place added pressure and priority in
getting resources out
00:12:09
in order to conduct
those inquiries whilst people were still local. - [Richard] Suddenly,
police made a breakthrough.
00:12:22
- Four days into the search, approximately 30 feet away
from the original find, police search officers
recovered the head of the body.
00:12:34
This is a really significant
find for the investigation. Firstly, it kind of
completes the puzzle
00:12:39
in terms of is this
the only scene? Attention can now be
drawn to identifying who that victim was.
00:12:46
- But unlike the body
that had been discovered a few days before, the head was
very, very badly decomposed.
00:12:57
It was effectively a skull. - The first thing to
determine is whether the head and the body have
a physical fit.
00:13:07
And in this case,
they did showing that they'd come
from the same person. The head was said to be
defleshed, a bit like this.
00:13:14
But when human remains
left out in the open, insects and animals
begin to destroy
00:13:19
the soft tissues very quickly, making identification
much more difficult. But if animals were responsible,
00:13:26
it's unlikely this skull would've been so
cleanly defleshed and the headband the woman
wore wasn't disturbed,
00:13:33
suggesting the flesh had
been stripped by a human. - The way in which it had been
defleshed up to the headband,
00:13:45
that's a deliberate
act obviously. - Seeing a body
in this situation, there's probably
a strong motive.
00:13:54
Whoever did this had a
strong motive to do so. It's unlikely to
be a random attack,
00:14:00
a chance meeting
that kind of incident or that kind of offense. - And then the police
would know they are looking
00:14:07
for a very statistical killer, very dangerous person obviously. - Detectives knew they
had a murder investigation
00:14:16
on their hands. DNA samples from the now
complete body were compared to police missing
persons records to
identify their victim.
00:14:27
DNA tests confirmed this
was a 67-year-old woman, Mee Kuen Chong, also
known as Deborah Chong.
00:14:36
- Deborah Chong was
born in Malaysia but had lived in the
UK for many years. She was a retired lady.
00:14:47
- Deborah had been
reported missing from home by a lodger from her home
in Wembley in London.
00:14:54
- One of her lodgers
had become concerned that he hadn't seen her. He did expect her
00:15:02
to be at the house when
he came back from work. And the fact that she
wasn't there was not just
00:15:08
out of character, it was
extremely concerning for him. - The lodger was of
course immediately worried
00:15:14
of what had happened to Deborah and particularly when he
saw her glasses on the side,
00:15:20
which he needed, and
her mobile phone, which she always took with her. - I know that he
contacted people
00:15:29
that were Deborah's friends,
including someone that told that Deborah had
gone to the seaside
00:15:38
and she was feeling
quite depressed. So hearing that
Deborah, his landlady, but also his friends had
sort of taken herself off,
00:15:47
which was extremely strange. Not only was it out of
character for Deborah to go anywhere sort of beyond
a street away from her house,
00:15:59
it would be strange for
anyone who wore glasses and had a mobile phone to leave
the house down to Tesco's,
00:16:06
let alone to go on a trip to the seaside without those
two important items with them.
00:16:14
- So the metropolitan
police would have primacy for the investigation of
her as a missing person.
00:16:19
Clearly the body had
been found in Devon and a real focus would
be how does Deborah
00:16:25
go from being missing in London to being recovered
in a decomposed and headless state in Devon,
00:16:33
an area that she seemingly
would've had no need or reason to visit? - By now, Deborah's body
was beginning to help police
00:16:41
form a picture of
what happened to her, but the cause of death
was still inconclusive.
00:16:47
A closer look at her torso
revealed multiple broken ribs, but there's no
evidence of bruising
00:16:53
that would suggest these
were caused by a weapon or a sustained attack. We know Deborah lived
in the southeast,
00:17:00
but her headless body
was found in Devon. It's possible if she
was killed in London,
00:17:06
that her body sustained
these injuries whilst it was being
moved by the killer. Detectives needed to
know more about Deborah
00:17:15
and the life she lived. - They need to find
out all about her life. That's how you find a killer.
00:17:24
So they've got to
look where she's from, what her circumstances are. - Deborah Chong first came
to Britain as a student.
00:17:35
She goes on a student visa and she went to study at
Huddersfield Technical College
00:17:43
and it was while she
was studying there that she met her husband and
they settled down together
00:17:50
and by all accounts
had a very happy and loving marriage, but unfortunately he died
a few years before Deborah
00:17:59
and she was hit very hard
by the grief of losing him and it affected her health.
00:18:08
- And then in 2021,
her sister died. This had believed to
have triggered a decline
00:18:15
in her mental health. - Deborah was vulnerable,
Deborah had schizophrenia and she was on
medication for that.
00:18:23
- Perhaps because
of the problems and the suffering that
she'd gone through, she was very kind
hearted towards others
00:18:31
and wanted to help people,
especially people who were struggling for one
reason or another.
00:18:37
And if she could help
them either financially or in terms of support,
then she certainly did.
00:18:45
And there's several examples
of how she took people in, gave them a roof over their
heads, didn't ask for rent
00:18:54
and really made it her
mission to look after others. - Deborah was a devout Christian
00:19:00
and was known to
be very generous. Generous with her money supporting homeless
charities, homeless people.
00:19:07
And that vulnerability
is something that perhaps got preyed upon at times. - [Richard] As detectives dug
deeper into Deborah's past,
00:19:19
one name kept coming up, 36-year-old osteopath
Gemma Mitchell who Deborah befriended
at her church.
00:19:29
- Deborah befriends different
people at the church, but particularly Gemma. Gemma's a lot younger, she
could be her daughter in age,
00:19:38
also really a devout Christian and they seemed quite
close for a good while. - Gemma Mitchell came to the
attention of investigators
00:19:47
as someone who had
been in regular and recent contact with Deborah and they had started to
spend increasing amounts
00:19:53
of time together. - We know quite a
bit about Mitchell. She studied osteopathy and then
she set up her own practice.
00:20:04
After many years
away in Australia, she moved into the family
home with her mother.
00:20:11
It was a huge family house and it had been in the
family for many generations, but over time it become
rather dilapidated
00:20:19
and it was in dire
need of renovation. It needed hundreds of thousands
of pounds spending on it
00:20:28
just to sort of make
it habitable again. This sorry state of
affairs date back to 2016
00:20:37
when Mitchell's mother
instructed Affirmer Builders to do the work and paid them
her entire life savings.
00:20:48
- The first builders she
paid a 35,000 pounds to, but that builder then went bust.
00:20:57
- So Gemma Mitchell took
over managing the project and Mitchell found
another firm of builders
00:21:05
and she gave them 100,000 pounds and had promised more, but the money
never materialized.
00:21:18
- As a result, the second
builder left the site and this left the house
in a state of disrepair
00:21:23
with the no roof and
a tar pooling cover. - Having this project
sort of half done
00:21:31
had put Mitchell in
a terrible situation and I think she felt
responsible as well,
00:21:38
having promised her mother
that she could do this project and could be trusted with it
00:21:43
and everything was just
going horribly wrong. And by this point, I think she was getting
really quite desperate.
00:21:51
- And she knows that
Deborah has money and so she asked her if
she'll loan her some.
00:21:59
And Deborah being a very
kind lady agrees to that. - [Richard] Deborah
agreed to give Gemma
00:22:04
a massive 200,000 pound loan. - Deborah initially offered to
support her on the condition
00:22:12
that the house would be
used for Christian worship. - Because Mitchell
was so desperate,
00:22:19
she accepted all the terms and was just keen to get moving and prove to her mother that
she could actually do this.
00:22:29
- [Richard] But Deborah Chong
soon had a change of heart. - Something rang alarm bells
00:22:36
and she thought
this is just going to be a bottomless
pit, this house. So Deborah perhaps thought
because her losses,
00:22:45
tell her friend Gemma the truth that she wouldn't be able
to give her that money.
00:22:51
She wasn't willing to do that. Gemma probably felt let down and that could have built
up a lot of resentment.
00:22:57
Things seemed to go
from bad to worse. She was extremely angry. - In June 2021, police were
investigating the discovery
00:23:19
of a decapitated court with
its head discarded close by. It had been brought 200
miles from the victim's home
00:23:27
in London and dumped in
Woodland, in Solcombe in Devon. 67-year-old Deborah
Chong's decapitated body
00:23:39
was about to reveal more secrets
about her gruesome murder. - Having the head recovered
was very important
00:23:48
because far apart from
the obvious decapitation, there was no clear
sign of violence
00:23:56
that might be a cause of death. Having the complete body
means that a pathologist
00:24:04
can do a proper postmortem and
look for possible injuries. - Deborah's head was
extensively defleshed,
00:24:17
but it could still reveal clues and tell us what might
have happened to her in her final moments.
00:24:23
The skull showed a fracture
above the eye socket. Now the bone here is
about one centimeter thick
00:24:30
and a fracture of this part of the skull indicates
major blunt force trauma associated with the
use of a weapon,
00:24:38
but no weapon was
ever recovered. Would this blow have been
enough to kill Deborah
00:24:42
before she was decapitated? - The findings from
the pathologist lend
an investigation
00:24:50
to look for somebody
with a strong motive and that's more likely to
be someone that's known
00:24:56
to the victim than
somebody who's not known. - [Richard] During a
search of Deborah's home
00:25:06
when she was reported missing, police found Gemma Mitchell's
number stored in the mobile
00:25:11
she left behind. - Whilst Deborah's disappearance
was being investigated by a local missing person unit,
00:25:20
officers on that team
had conducted inquiries that had led them to
contact Mitchell to ask
00:25:27
if she knew anything about
Deborah's disappearance. - And she does in fact reach out
00:25:32
to the missing person inquiry
and say that she will come and talk to them about
what's what's happened.
00:25:39
- And on the 29th of June
and followed up with an email on the 30th of June, Mitchell had left a message
00:25:47
for the officers conducting the
missing person investigation to the effect that she knew
that Deborah had intended
00:25:55
to spend some time away
visiting family by the coast. - [Richard] This was the
last time police ever heard
00:26:02
from Gemma Mitchell, but while
scanning Deborah's mobile, they uncovered a string of texts
00:26:09
about her 200,000 pound loan. - Deborah had sent a
text message to Mitchell shortly before her death
00:26:20
indicating that she
had changed her mind and she was gonna withdraw
her offer of financial support
00:26:25
for the building work. - Having promised Mitchell
that she would give her all this huge amount
of money to help
00:26:34
with the renovation project, suddenly outta nowhere
she's saying, no, I'm not gonna do it
or she's starting
00:26:43
to back outta this
scheme that Mitchell who thinks is already set. - This had clearly
angered Mitchell.
00:26:53
- [Richard] While Mitchell
was now on their radar as a suspect with a motive, detectives had been
investigating Deborah's
last movements.
00:27:01
- There would be some
priority lines of inquiry that would center
around a home address.
00:27:06
It was the last place
she was known to be. These lines of inquiry would
include the recovery of CCTV,
00:27:12
whether that be from
shops or restaurants or from people's private
doorbells, as well as house
00:27:18
to house inquiries,
conducting various visits to different addresses
in the locality
00:27:23
to establish if anyone had
seen or heard anything. - [Richard] What police
found was truly startling.
00:27:38
- CCTV cameras around
Deborah's home revealed that Mitchell had
visited the house
00:27:50
on the last day that Deborah
was known to be alive. - CCTV evidence showed Mitchell
arriving at Deborah's house
00:28:02
with a large blue suitcase. Suitcase appeared to be quite
light and easy to maneuver
00:28:12
and probably empty
when she arrived. Some four or five hours
later, the same CCTV captured
00:28:21
Mitchell walking away
from the address. - And was seen logging an extremely heavy
suitcase behind her.
00:28:36
In fact, she was
carrying two suitcases, but one was extremely
heavy and it was so heavy,
00:28:42
she was really struggling
to pull it along the street. - [Richard] Detectives
came to one conclusion,
00:28:49
it was Deborah Chong's body
being carried in that suitcase. - She was weeding the
suitcase round town
00:28:57
for at least two hours,
which shows up on CCTV. Clearly she was panicking
trying to get a taxi
00:29:05
to pick up this suitcase
with poor Deborah in it. It's quite a unusual way
to carry something out
00:29:13
and shows that she
wasn't phased at all, not phased by what
she intended to do. - [Richard] Mitchell
seemingly went off the radar
00:29:25
until two weeks later. At 8:42 AM, police
spotted a hire car outside Mitchell's home.
00:29:45
Mitchell was then seen
loading the heavy suitcase into the boot. Then ANPR traffic cameras
tracked her on the motorway
00:29:58
heading to Devon. - While she's driving
down to Devon, she suffers a
blowout on the car.
00:30:06
So one of the wheels
is very badly damaged and she's forced to pull into
a petrol station to seek help
00:30:14
and it's a very weird sort
of erratic kind of scene where she's sort of
knocking over things
00:30:21
outside the petrol station shop and people are sort
of looking around and wondering what
on earth is going on.
00:30:29
And she seems quite sort
of dazed and confused and eventually
somebody helps her
00:30:35
and a repairman comes round and they get the spare wheel
out to change the wheel.
00:30:44
And he said he noticed
a weird musty smell in the back of the car and it was something that
he'd never smelt before.
00:30:58
It was just a sort of
slightly strange thing. And it makes you wonder if
he picked up on something,
00:31:07
if he picked up the smell
of the body or something. She was told by the repairman
00:31:13
that she really
shouldn't be driving on this bare wheel for very far. She'd initially said that she
wanted to drive to Penzance
00:31:22
or Land's End,
but she's told no, that's not a very good idea. So from there, she only
drives a very short distance
00:31:31
because this is just
outside Salcombe. So really whether Salcombe
was her initial destination
00:31:38
seems quite unlikely. - More CCTV was
recovered, which showed that a gray Volvo hire
car that was being used
00:31:47
by Mitchell on the 26th of June was captured on CCTV
driving along Bennett Road.
00:31:55
This is the area immediately
next to the deposition site where the body was
found the following day.
00:32:02
- [Richard] As the
pieces of evidence started falling into place, it was time to confront
Mitchell with the proof.
00:32:13
- The police moved
quite quickly. - [Police] Police! - [Richard] In a late evening
raid of Mitchell's home,
00:32:25
she was finally arrested. - They took her
into police custody. - [Police] All right,
Gemma, at this moment,
00:32:36
I'm arresting you on
suspicion of murder. You don't have to say anything,
but you may have a defense
00:32:40
if you don't mention
one question, something which you
later rely in court. Anything you do say, they'll
be given the evidence, okay?
00:32:45
- They raided her property and seized any items that they thought might be
key evidence in the case.
00:32:54
In a search of Mitchell's house, police uncovered a whole load of financial documents
belonging to Deborah.
00:33:02
- Firstly, there was a will that had been written
out in Mitchell's favor. - Which they examined and
discovered was a complete fake.
00:33:15
It gave all Deborah's
property pretty much in its entirety to Mitchell. So that's extremely
suspicious in itself.
00:33:27
And I think the value
of Deborah's home was round about 700,000 pounds. So it's a not inconsiderable
amount of money
00:33:36
that Mitchell
could have claimed. - Some other items
that were recovered during the search were a phone
00:33:43
and a passport that had belonged to Mitchell's next door neighbor who had passed away in the
months prior to this incident.
00:33:53
The phone it was established
had been reactivated and had been used
by Mitchell to phone
00:34:01
and arrange an order
for the hire car. And it's believed that the
signature on the passport
00:34:07
is what had been copied and used as a witness
signature on the forged will. - [Richard] With this news,
00:34:20
investigators searched
the neighbor's garden. What they uncovered
took them aback.
00:34:28
- The police found
this blue suitcase on top of the neighbor's shed and took that down,
examined that.
00:34:38
- The large blue suitcase, which they knew had been
caught on CCTV cameras, you would imagine, if indeed
it had contained the body
00:34:47
of Deborah would be
covered in DNA evidence and forensic evidence. But there was very little on it
00:34:57
and there was no usable DNA
retrieved from it at all. - It seemed the suitcase
had been washed thoroughly,
00:35:05
but it still contained
forensic secrets. - Inside one of the pockets
on the large blue suitcase,
00:35:14
the police retrieved a tea towel and that tea towel appeared
to have blood on it
00:35:22
and that was examined and found to contain
the DNA from Deborah. [somber music] - 67-year-old Deborah Chong
was found decapitated.
00:35:44
Her skull was also discovered
completely defleshed. Police investigating the
killing of Deborah Chong
00:35:51
now had good reason to
suspect Gemma Mitchell. CCTV showed the devout
Christian Mitchell
00:35:58
leaving Deborah's home
with a heavy suitcase that police suspected
carried her body.
00:36:05
Then Mitchell was seen
putting it in a hire car and taking it to Devon. That same suitcase was later
found containing a tea towel
00:36:16
with Deborah's DNA on it. And in a late evening raid-- - [Police] Police! - [Richard] Mitchell
was arrested.
00:36:27
- All right, Gemma
at this moment, I'm arresting you on
suspicion of murder. - Now in police custody,
Gemma Mitchell was charged
00:36:40
with the murder
of Deborah Chong. And in a twist of fate,
Deborah's decapitated
head was about
00:36:47
to reveal another
truth about her murder. The postmortem showed that
Deborah's neck was not complete.
00:36:54
Two upper vertebrae, the atlas and the
axis, were missing and these are crucial
for movement of the head.
00:37:01
These vertebrae overlap
and interlock together and dissecting them apart
is extremely difficult.
00:37:09
This was clearly a
surgical dissection and it tells me that
whoever did it was skilled
00:37:15
at cutting up
bodies with a knife. Now, Gemma Mitchell had
studied anatomy and dissection
00:37:22
as part of her training
as an osteopath. In fact, she was so skilled, she'd won a prize for
anatomical excellence.
00:37:33
- Mitchell had obtained
a BSC in human sciences from King's College London. - She's a very bright woman
00:37:42
and academically
quite successful. And one of the particularly
pertinent things that was on her website
was that she had
00:37:54
gained particular
expertise in the dissection of cadavers as part of her
training to become an osteopath.
00:38:05
- So when it came to
dissecting Deborah, that was quite easy for her. To actually have
defleshed her face
00:38:14
right up to her
hairline, shocking. There's no reason for
her to have done that other than a sadistical motive
00:38:27
that she wanted like
some kind of revenge and she was going to do what
she could to extract that
00:38:34
from this poor woman in death. - [Richard] At
London's Old Bailey, the trial of Gemma
Mitchell began.
00:38:48
She pleaded not guilty
to Deborah's killing. - There was a lot
of media attention,
00:38:55
it was quite a full courtroom, and the case had been
quite intensively covered by the media throughout,
00:39:03
and she gave the
impression of someone who looked quite
sort of reasonable. There was no indication
from her that
00:39:14
she was some sort of depraved
killer or anything like that. She just appeared to be
a perfectly normal woman.
00:39:21
Her mother who had supported
her throughout was in court and sat in the public gallery,
00:39:31
would occasionally sort of
wave and blow her kisses and she was cheerleading
from the public gallery.
00:39:39
- [Richard] Deborah's relatives
were also kept up to date on the trial. - Deborah's family
who lived in Malaysia
00:39:47
were given permission
by the judge to follow the trial from afar, and they were given a video link
00:39:54
so that they could watch
the court proceedings. It was quite an
unusual thing to do,
00:39:59
but also quite a sort of
sensitive decision by the judge to allow them to be able
to follow everything
00:40:06
and really understand what
had happened to Deborah. - Mitchell continued with
her position, really,
00:40:13
that she had adopted throughout
the whole investigation in one of refusing to cooperate.
00:40:18
She'd already answered
no comment to questions that the police
investigation had put to her.
00:40:24
And during the trial, she
refused to take the stand to give evidence
in her own defense.
00:40:29
- [Richard] The court
heard about Mitchell and Deborah's disagreement
over her 200,000 pound loan.
00:40:37
- What emerged in court
is that in the weeks prior to Deborah's disappearance
and her death,
00:40:43
she'd withdrawn her offer of
financial support to Mitchell. This had been evidenced
by a text message
00:40:52
that had been recovered
from Deborah to Mitchell, saying just that, that she
no longer wished to support
00:40:58
and to hand any money over. It was clear that this
had angered Mitchell and seemingly provided a motive
for her to kill to murder.
00:41:08
- Mitchell knew that
Deborah was vulnerable. She also thought that Mitchell
was some kind of healer
00:41:14
and would help her. So Mitchell took advantage
of this, her delusions. - She says, well,
I'll come around.
00:41:23
She talks about giving
her a healing session. Mitchell had clearly
made her mind up
00:41:34
before she even went
round to Deborah's house that she was going to kill her. - That, again, made this
crime even more heinous,
00:41:45
that this lady trusted her and yet she was the last
person to be trusted. - She comes to the house
prepared with a large suitcase
00:41:58
with which she will be able
to carry away Deborah's body. And inside the suitcase,
there is a sort of suggestion
00:42:06
that she would've taken with
her whatever weapon she used to attack Deborah with.
00:42:14
Because in all the searches
of Deborah's house, there was no sign
of a murder weapon.
00:42:18
So the assumption was
by the prosecution that not only did she take
the suitcase with her,
00:42:24
she also, inside the suitcase, would've taken was effectively
a murder kit with her.
00:42:32
- The fact that Mitchell
turned up at Deborah's house with a suitcase and then went inside,
00:42:39
her friend must have thought
she was coming to see her, and then carried out this
horrendous assault on her,
00:42:46
and then proceeded
to dissect the body and decapitate her and
broke her ribs actually
00:42:53
as she pushed her
into this suitcase. I mean, firstly it shows
she has clearly no empathy
00:43:00
and an awful lot of
contempt for her friend. But also that this was a crime that was planned,
completely planned.
00:43:10
- [Richard] But the
surgical removal of Deborah's head finalized the prosecution's
case against Mitchell.
00:43:18
- What was really
important was the findings from the pathologist that
indicated that that procedure
00:43:23
had been conducted with
a degree of expertise by someone with some training. Once that is overlaid
with the CCTV evidence,
00:43:31
the only real conclusion
that can be drawn is that Deborah was
murdered by Mitchell.
00:43:45
- The jury was only out
for about seven hours before they came back with
a unanimous guilty verdict.
00:43:59
- [Richard] In the
UK's first ever televised murder sentencing,
Gemma Mitchell heard her fate.
00:44:07
- You have shown
absolutely no remorse and it appears that you
are in complete denial
00:44:14
as to what you did. The sentence of the court
is one of life imprisonment and the minimum term of
imprisonment that you will,
00:44:27
in any event, be required
to serve will be 34 years. - So that would
mean that Mitchell
00:44:36
would be in prison
well into her old age and she might even
die in prison. - The judge found that it was
a particularly shocking case,
00:44:48
particularly considering the
religious beliefs of Mitchell. - Could you please take
the defendant downstairs?
00:45:01
- The way Deborah was killed, to have her body desecrated
in the way that it was,
00:45:08
it really sort of told
a very clear story about what a truly evil
woman Mitchell was.
00:45:19
- To have done such a
terrible thing to this poor, sweet lady who people
spoke so well of,
00:45:27
it was shocking
and traumatizing. She's a cold, very
calculated killer, and a very dangerous person.
00:45:40
- Deborah Chong was a kind
friend to Gemma Mitchell, who paid for that
loyalty with her life.
00:45:46
Despite claiming to
be a devout Christian, Mitchell killed her friend
in the most gruesome way.
00:45:52
She severed her head from her
body with clinical position and attempted to
dispose of the remains
00:45:58
hundreds of miles
from the murder scene and all for financial gain. But in the end, Deborah's
body revealed the truth
00:46:06
about her murder and
put her killer in prison for a very long time. [bright music]