Europe 1 with AFP 1:45 p.m. 28 October 2022A 38-year-old woman was sentenced in London in June 2021 to life imprisonment with a 34-year security penalty for beheading her friend. This is only the second time that cameras have been allowed to live stream a verdict in a criminal court.
An Australian woman was sentenced to life in prison at a trial in London on Friday for beheading her friend, whose verdict was televised live, an extremely rare occurrence. Jemma Mitchell, 38, has been convicted of the murder of 67-year-old Deborah Chong in London in June 2021. Two weeks after the murder, she had driven more than 200 miles to the south-west of England, where she left her victim’s decapitated and decomposed body in the woods. She was sentenced to life imprisonment from 34 years on Friday and the verdict was broadcast live on television, a first in England for a murder case involving a woman.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, a planned assassination
According to prosecutors, Ms Mitchell planned the assassination after she became friends with Ms Chong while attending her community group. She killed her victim after he refused to give her £200,000 to repair their run-down house. She then wrote a false will to inherit Ms Chong’s fortune, which is estimated at £700,000 (€812,000).
When Ms Chong was reported missing, Ms Mitchell initially claimed she left to visit family “somewhere by the sea”. But Ms Mitchell had in fact already beheaded her victim and was keeping his remains in her garden, prosecutors had said.
Osteopathy-trained Jemma Mitchell boasted online that she is good at human dissection but denied being linked to Ms Chong’s murder. Judge Richard Marks said she “showed no remorse and totally denied” the “deeply shocking” crime. Jemma Mitchell remained unmoved in her case as the judge found her guilty on Thursday, while the victim’s family watched the verdict via video conference call from Malaysia. It is only the second time that cameras have been allowed to broadcast a verdict live in a criminal court and the first time that the accused is a woman.