'SINISTER SECRET'
Chilling moment woman, 38, ‘drags suitcase containing her pensioner friend’s decapitated BODY around London streets’
THIS is the moment an expert in body dissection dragged a suitcase allegedly containing the body of a friend she had murdered along a street.
Jemma Mitchell, 38, has been accused of battering Mee Kuen Chong, 67, to death before decapitating her and dumping the body after a row over money.
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Former osteopath Mitchell needed at least £400,000 after a project to add an extra storey to her home in Willesden, North West London ended in disaster, a court heard.
She had been pressurising vulnerable victim Ms Chong, known to her friends as Deborah, to give her the money by doing a deal on her home, it is claimed.
When Ms Chong refused, Michell killed her, decapitated her and dumped her body more than 250 miles away in Salcombe, Devon, the Old Bailey heard.
The head was found ten metres away and had been "cleanly cut" from the rest of the body.
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Mitchell had been a brilliant medical student and won a prestigious prize for her knowledge of the human body.
She is alleged to have murdered Ms Chong at the victim's home by hitting her over the head with a blunt object, fracturing her skull, on 11 June last year, it is claimed.
Mitchell then moved the body to her half-derelict house and kept it there for two weeks before driving to Devon in a rented Volvo.
After the killing, Mitchell made herself the main beneficiary of the victim's will, jurors heard.
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Jurors today watched CCTV footage of Mitchell's journey to her friend's home on 11 June.
At 6:23am, a camera across the road on Brondesbury Park, where Mitchell lived, captured her leaving her home wearing a hat, scarf and backpack and carrying a large blue fabric suitcase.
Just over an hour later the court watched Mitchell walking down Ealing Road which leads to Chaplin Road, where Ms Chong lived.
Prosecutor Deanna Heer, KC, told the court that Mitchell was no longer wearing her scarf or backpack but had donned sunglasses and a face mask.
Just before 8am, CCTV showed Mitchell on Chaplin Road.
Ms Heer said: "We can see there that she still has with her the blue suitcase.
"We can see much more clearly in this footage that she has a face mask, a surgical face mask, on.
"She's walking at a normal pace, pulling the suitcase on its own wheels.
"The cloth of the suitcase itself doesn't appear to be bulked out...at this stage."
She was seen again on Chaplin Road just after 8am, the court heard.
Hours later, at 1:13pm, CCTV picked her up walking down Chaplin Road, away from Ms Chong's house, with the original blue and now a red suitcase.
The red suitcase contained the victim's personal documents, the court has heard. Jurors heard she had her backpack on again.
In the footage, Mitchell pauses with the two suitcases before walking on.
CCTV officer DC Dharmesh Bakrania said: "It appears that it has to be kicked back by her foot to try to get it to move off. I mean the blue suitcase.
"With the right foot she's kind of had to lever it...[like with] a heavy kind of bag."
Jurors also heard there was "something black" covering Mitchell's left hand.
Cameras continued to track her movements with the two suitcases.
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DC Bakrania said the blue suitcase was "more filled out" than it had been in footage from that morning.
Jurors heard that Mitchell made nine phone calls to various cab companies between 1:08pm and 15:09pm.
To one of them she said her name was "Julia" and that she wanted to be taken to 11 Brondesbury Park which is the house next-door to hers, the court heard.
A taxi picked her up at 3:41pm and travelled 40 minutes to drop her off at 11 Brondesbury Park.
A camera across the road captured her pulling the suitcases onto the pavement outside that house before the taxi drove away and she pulled both bags through the gate to her home.
The court heard Mitchell and Ms Chong were devout Christians who met through the church and had known each other since about August 2020.
Within a month Mitchell began talking to Ms Chong about her finances and suggested she could sign her home in Wembley to her to avoid inheritance tax.
Mitchell continued to pressure her for almost a year, the court has heard.
Six months before she died, the victim agreed to give £200,000 for repairs, providing the house was used for Christian worship.
But by 7 June 2021 she had decided against it and told Mitchell when she came to her home, it is claimed.
On June 8 the victim sent her a message saying: "Until you sold house, I won't want you to come to me or my house I am stress(ed) to the core".
When Mitchell suggested visiting Ms Chong on the day she vanished, 11 June, the victim was so fed up of her friend badgering her for money that she said in a text: "Not talk about house or money, stresses them both out.".
Ms Chong was reported missing that night and for the next two weeks Mitchell hardly left her home.
On June 26 she hired a Volvo from Hertz and laid a white sheet in the boot before struggling to load the blue suitcase into the back of the car.
Later that evening the car was captured on a CCTV camera overlooking Bennett Road, close to the location where the deceased's body was to be found the following day by a family on holiday.
The blue suitcase was later recovered on top of the neighbour's shed close to the party fence at 9 Brondesbury Park.
In the pocket at the front was a bloodstained blue and white tea towel which bore traces of Ms Chong's DNA, it is said.
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Mitchell, of North West London, denies murder and will claim the killing was "absolutely nothing to do with her".
The trial continues.
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