Chilling text messages from Aussie convicted of decapitating friend in London revealed

Australian-born osteopath Jemma Mitchell was calm and sent text messages hours after decapitating her friend in London, it’s been revealed.

Jemma Mitchell on Chaplin Road, north west London dragging a blue suitcase on June 11 2021.

Text messages sent by convicted murderer, Jemma Mitchell, just hours after brutally killing her friend have been revealed.

Mitchell sent multiple messages saying “I had a good day thank you, it’s nice hearing from you” and she was “off to church” while her victim’s body remained at her house.

A friend Mitchell had met through a dating website told the The Sun he never thought she would commit such a violent crime and he had received calm messages from her following the murder.

“What terrifies me is how calm she appeared for those weeks after she had killed her friend,” her friend told The Sun.

“We messaged just as normal although she sometimes would message back at 3am.

“On the day which I now know is when she committed that terrible crime she replied to me late in the day to say she’d had a nice day.”

Jemma Mitchell who has been found guilty at the Old Bailey.

The Australian-born osteopath living in London was been found guilty of murdering and decapitating her friend to get her hands on her million dollar estate.

The 38-year-old received her verdict and was sent to jail during a live broadcast in what was England’s first televised sentencing of a woman.

The court found that Mitchell hit Mee Kuen Chong with a blunt object, cut her head off, and drove her body parts in a hire car more than 300km away to dump them.

It was revealed during her trial that Mitchell, who operated an osteopath business in Melbourne, had learnt how to dissect a human body while studying Human Sciences at Kings College where she received a first-class degree and was awarded the Hamilton Prize for “anatomical excellence”.

On social media, Mitchell said she arrived in Melbourne in 2009, with the “dream” to set-up her own osteopathic clinic.

She operated the business between 2010 and 2015 in Williamstown before selling it.

A friend of Mitchell told the Herald Sun she was “devastated” for the victim and her family.

Holiday makers made the gruesome discovery of Ms Chong’s headless body on a pathway in the resort town of Devon on June 27 last year.

Her badly composed head was found wrapped in a woollen headband some metres away.’

Police alleged Mitchell has plotted to murder her friend and to create a fake will leaving her most of her estate.

Mee Kuen Chong who was murdered.

Mitchell denied the murder. But did not give evidence at the trial.

Pathologists were unable to give a cause of Ms Chong’s death because of the state of decomposition of her body when it was found a fracture above her right eye socket suggested she had been hit with a “blunt object very shortly before her death”. The weapon has not been recovered.

Judge Richard Marks who oversaw the trial said “the motivation for Jemma Mitchell’s actions was money and she showed a significant degree of planning and calculation as she attempted to cover up her horrific actions,” he said.

The court was told that Mitchell, a long term unemployed, lived with her retired mother in property she was renovating but was ripped off by rogue builders and the property was left without a roof and covered in scaffolding.

They had lived in Australia for some time while Mitchell was growing up before moving to London with her mother when her parent’s marriage broke down.

Prosecutors told the court Mitchell completed a degree course in osteopathy at the British School of Osteopathy in 2009 and she returned to Australia where she practised as an osteopath for seven years.

Her professional website was quoted at trial as saying “as result of her training, she was ‘attuned to subjects in neuroanatomy, genetics, [and] dissection of human cadavers”.

Evidence was heard that Mitchell returned to the UK in 2015 and had been unemployed ever since.

She and Chong met at a church in August 2020 and their conversations turned to her renovation project. And then Chong’s will and who would inherit her home.

During the trial, the court heard Chong had met Mitchell’s mother and agreed to give £200,000 for their renovation on condition that the house was used for “Christian worship”. However, Chong later changed her mind.

Mitchell became the main suspect in her friend’s murder after CCTV footage of Ms Chong’s last known movements and those of Mitchell.

The CCTV revealed Mitchell leaving home with a large blue suitcase and arriving at Chong’s home at 8am on the morning of the murder.

Video footage then showed Mitchell leaving in different clothes nearly five hours later with the suitcase which appeared much heavier.

The prosecution said Mitchell had killed Ms Chong and then hidden her body in her garden for several weeks before driving the body parts to Devon.

A search of Mitchell’s home discovered a will in Ms Chong’s name, purportedly appointed Mitchell as a trustee and leaving the bulk of Chong’s estate to her and the remaining 5 per cent to Mitchell’s mother.

But when police searched Chong’s home they found a different will in which she left her home to the church.

When police searched Mitchell’s computer after she was arrested, they found a copy of the will leaving everything to Mitchell and her mother that had been created after Ms Chong was already dead.

Originally published as Chilling text messages from Aussie convicted of decapitating friend in London revealed