Deborah Chong | Truth About My Murder | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

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

Forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd investigates the horrific murder of Deborah Chong, whose remains were found in Devon in 2021 after a fellow churchgoer killed her in her own London home.

In The Truth About My Murder, Dr. Richard Shepherd showcases a state-of-the-art digital autopsy table featuring digitally scanned sample bodies to investigate a series of intriguing murders where the victims' bodies help reveal the truth behind horrific crimes.

For More FilmRise Check Out Our Other Channels: FilmRise Television: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@FilmRiseTelevision⁩ FilmRise Movies: https://www.youtube.com/@FilmRiseMovies Highway to Heaven - Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@HighwaytoHeavenFullEpisodes

Brief Summary

Deborah Chong was murdered by Gemma Mitchell over a financial dispute, leading to a shocking investigation and trial.

Key points

A Gruesome Discovery. A family on holiday in Salcombe finds a headless body, sparking a police investigation.
Identifying the Victim. Police discover the identity of the decapitated woman as Deborah Chong, a retired lady.
The Loan That Changed Everything. Deborah Chong agrees to loan Gemma Mitchell £200,000, but later has a change of heart.
CCTV Evidence. CCTV showed Mitchell arriving at Deborah's house with a large suitcase, raising suspicions.
Arrest of Gemma Mitchell. In a late evening raid, police arrested Mitchell on suspicion of murder.
Shocking Discovery. Police uncovered a forged will in Mitchell's favor, raising further suspicions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's not the kind of place you expect to find a dead body.

1:44WatchFeb 10, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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