Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 27 - Patel - Full Episode | Forensic Files

MITESH PATEL: I've just come home and the house is ransacked. And she's just on the floor.
She's got duct tape all over her and she's, like, unconscious. NARRATOR: Pharmacist Mitesh Patel
finds his wife Jessica unresponsive on their living room floor. Minutes earlier, he'd been ordering pizza
at his local takeaway, apparently oblivious to his wife's plight. He came in. He paid with cash.
I gave him his pizza, shook his hand, then he left. NARRATOR: Mitesh tells police that his wife
had been the victim of a burglary gone wrong. Later, he'll tell friends too. He had given me a cuddle.
I mean, I'm no body language expert, but it was just such a false cry. You don't know people very well,
do you, until dark secrets come out. NARRATOR: What were the secrets lurking deep
within the marriage of Mr. And Mrs. Patel? [music playing] Owning their own pharmacy had been a dream for both Mitesh
and Jessica Patel. And in 2015, that ambition was realized. On the face of it, they had it all.
AMIR ABD: They lived on the avenue, which is literally just around the corner from here.
It's probably about a five-minute walk. It's a really beautiful area, big houses.
Not everybody can afford them type of homes. FOUAD JAWAD: He make it a very nice pharmacy.
It's very big. And everyone liked his pharmacy because it's not just a pharmacy.
He make everything on it. Everyone who needs something, you go to his pharmacy. NARRATOR: Working in the takeaway, three doors away
from the pharmacy, pizza chef Amir welcomed the Patels as regular customers. She was a nice woman from what I've seen of her.
She was quite pleasant. SCOTT SUMNERS: She was always dead quiet. And she was always nice enough to you.
Got to know her well. And then after that, once you got to know her, she opened up a bit more.
She was quite a bubbly person. She was just-- you couldn't have a bad word to say about her,
to be honest with you. Mitesh is a regular guy. He came in. He's quiet. He's pleasant, polite, respectful,
from what I've seen of him. NARRATOR: The Patels, apparently a classic success story of young professionals making
good in a happy marriage. But there was much the outside world did not know about Mr. And Mrs. Patel.
Theirs was a story that began as children and progressed within a tight, supportive Hindu community.
When it came to family, Jessica was a traditionalist. She wanted to settle down, have children.
You could tell she just wanted to have kids because she used to be dead fussy the other kids,
like their nieces and nephews. NARRATOR: And who better to fall for than a man that she'd known
since childhood? They both grew up in West Yorkshire in the large Hindu community there.
They were the same age, and so they were part of a whole bunch of kids that would play together.
NEIL LANCASTER: She was described by her parents as well-behaved, quiet, and well liked.
She had a good circle of friends, and was generally considered to be a really good, well respected girl.
Hindu communities are very invariably very religious. And they tend to marry somebody that they will know
or somebody within their family, or somebody within a very tight-knit community.
NARRATOR: As they grew up, they went their different ways, until meeting up again
when studying pharmacology. She always remembered Mitesh, and say when she met him again,
when they both coincidentally enrolled at De Montfort University in Leicester, that was an incredible moment
for her because this is a man she'd thought about often since that time. And very quickly, that reconciliation
became a relationship. NARRATOR: In 2006, Mitesh and Jessica opted to study for their master's qualifications
in Manchester. While living in the same city, charting the same career path, Mitesh became the center of Jessica's world.
While she's there, her mother died. And Mitesh then took on the role of providing
a shoulder to cry on. He was there for Jessica. He was the perfect man at the worst time in Jessica's life,
and Jessica fell head over heels in love with him. For two years, they pursued a relationship.
And it was a relationship in secret because in the Hindu community, these sort of things
have to be out in the open. You need your parents' permission. So it was a secret relationship, until two years later, Mitesh
approached Jessica's father and not only announced a relationship, but asked for permission to marry her.
Jessica's father said no, and it may have been something of a surprise to Mitesh.
NARRATOR: If there was to be a wedding, this was not the smoothest start. NAZIR AFZAL: Not just in Hindu relationships,
but in particularly South Asian relationships, it's almost a requirement that you
get the confirmation from a parent that this marriage is blessed by them. If, as in this case, the parent has said,
I don't agree with this, you are now doing something that is against community regulations and rules, and that in itself
can be seen as being shameful. I can imagine people within the community talking about it.
NARRATOR: Jessica dug her heels in, determined to marry Mitesh. As a solicitor who prosecutes cases of honor-based violence,
Nazir Afzal understands better than most the implications. If Jess is still going ahead despite the fact
that there's been a refusal by a parent, it does suggest that she was in love, or she was determined to make the best of the relationship
that she had with Patel. You don't do it unless you are absolutely certain that you will be right.
NARRATOR: Eventually, with her father's reluctant blessing, Jessica and Mitesh were married.
It was the summer of 2009. Almost immediately, the man who had showered her with love and gifts, who had comforted her
when her mother was dying, appeared a completely different person. Their marriage, it seems from the start, was not a happy one.
Mitesh was not the man he had presented himself to be. Patel was an incredibly controlling person.
He had secrets to keep. But also, he was somebody who had been brought up in a kind
of fundamentalist culture. And those kind of belief systems tend to give the control and power to the male head of the household.
NARRATOR: In 2010, just a year into their marriage, a family tragedy showed Jessica just how little control
and independence that she had over her own life. He limits the amount of time that she's
allowed to spend with her grandfather when he's dying. And then when he does eventually die,
he doesn't let her go and spend time with her family. So that's very emotionally controlling
and deeply upsetting, but it also says that he has power. The whole concept is control.
The idea that she has to ask permission, the idea that she cannot even see her own grandparent
who's dying without permission. It's all part of the buttons you have to press. So you press this button to make sure that she behaves herself,
that she only does what you ask her to do, or she does so with your consent. He died in her absence.
She never got a chance to see him. When she complained about that, she was beaten.
It's one of the very few occasions that we know precisely of the nature of the beating
because it occurred in a car, and it was severe enough that Jessica told her best friend about it.
We have this incredibly articulate, bright, successful, determined woman who is still able to be manipulated
and controlled by her husband. NARRATOR: The red flags were there in 2010 that the Patel's marriage
was going to be an unhappy one. What was keeping Jessica in the relationship? The idea that she could make her own choices
was completely anathema to the community that she was part of. And all of that playing on her mind
would have made it exceptionally difficult for her to step out of that door, and seek help and support,
and say, no, I don't want to be part of this anymore. NARRATOR: Married life had not turned
out the way Jessica had hoped. And Mrs. Patel was about to make even more disturbing discoveries.
During the course of their marriage, it became obvious to Jessica that Patel was gay.
There came a point where he was constantly on Grindr, the gay dating app, setting up various meetings
with various men. NARRATOR: There was much going on and not going on in the marriage of Jessica to Mitesh Patel.
Jessica Patel's husband of just a year was meeting men for sex. Mitesh made less and less effort to hide his private life
from his employees. SCOTT SUMNERS: I suspected he was gay about nine months into working with him.
I could just see him on the apps, on the gay dating apps. He'd leave his phone on the side.
It wasn't as if he was trying to hide. I don't know if he wanted people to know.
I don't even think, as time went on, he even tried to hide that from her. He was-- openly to her, at least--
meeting other men and bringing them back to the house and going into the bedroom with them.
He's taking his lover back to his home. The point is it's also his wife's home, his loyal wife's home.
It's a complete disregard and a complete disrespect to her. It's a message which is, I don't care how you feel.
I don't care about the impact of my relationship with this man on your feelings.
You don't matter. She was in a position where it would have been quite difficult for her to tell
other people about that. It's something very difficult to face that your partner may
have married you for the wrong reasons, perhaps you're not loved. Maybe that's embarrassing at some level.
Maybe it's shameful at some level. And maybe-- and this is very often a factor in coercive control-- she's actually frightened
of him too. NARRATOR: Jessica can have been in little doubt about her husband's inclinations.
Perhaps she also realized that he had married her not because he loved her, but because she served
an important purpose for him. He was a homosexual man in the Hindu community. And he was not willing to be an open homosexual man
in the Hindu community. It was expected that he would find a wife. Homosexuality is frowned upon.
It's often hidden. Very rarely will you come out and talk to your parents or even a family member that you're concerned about the fact
that you might be gay, or you are pursuing a gay relationship. EMMA KENNY: Jessica's the perfect cover because firstly,
she's traditional. She's not going anywhere. She's going to stay married to him.
She's going to put up with his indiscretions. NARRATOR: In 2011, Mitesh met a man
who became more to him than just a hookup or a one-night stand. Mitesh meets Dr. Amit Patel.
He's another medical professional, so they move in the same circles. TONY KENT: Amit quickly became Mitesh's best friend.
It's quite clear that they embarked upon a homosexual relationship quite quickly.
And it's also clear, from what Mitesh has said subsequently, that he regarded Amit as his soulmate.
Best friends, soulmates, and, it seems to a certain extent, roommates, because quite blatantly by this point,
Mitesh was arranging for Amit to come and stay in the family home. Amit would sleep in the spare room.
Mitesh would sleep with Jessica in the marital bedroom. Halfway through each evening, he would leave that bed,
he would make his way to the spare room, and he would spend the rest of the night with Amit.
Now, this is under the guise of friendship. But Jessica's very intelligent. She knows exactly what this is.
NARRATOR: It was a turning point in the marriage of Mitesh and Jessica Patel. For the moment, I suspect that he brought
his gay lover into the house. He was now on a trajectory which would ultimately lead to Jessica's murder.
He could think of no other way in which he would be able to carry on with his life, the life
that he had now created for himself, rather than the life that he was, quote unquote,
"burdened with," the relationship that he had with Jess. The situation must have been unbearable for Jessica,
and so she must have been extremely happy when Amit emigrated to Australia, emigrated to Sydney.
But unfortunately, it didn't stop there. What followed were countless, constant, lurid phone calls
between Amit and Mitesh, and on top of that, text messaging, messaging back and forth, with no attempt to hide his phone,
with no attempt to demonstrate to her-- to hide the contents. And in fact, Jessica's sister, on one occasion,
picked up the telephone and scrolled through, seeing all of these messages. NARRATOR: Jessica admitted to her sister
that her husband was cheating on her with a man, that he was almost certainly gay.
This causes a family meeting of both families where they discuss the situation. It was an intervention that was hampered enormously
by the customs and traditions of their culture, because they would not raise the subjects
of Mitesh's homosexuality. It was just taboo. It couldn't be spoken about. I would imagine that Jess was being played here.
She really had no choice. There is no doubt in my mind that if she had the opportunity, she'd have left,
but he was totally in control now. And the fact that the other person was there would have made it extremely difficult for her
in those circumstances. NARRATOR: For Jessica, the consequences of challenging her husband's behavior were extreme.
NEIL LANCASTER: In 2013, 2014, they moved to Middlesbrough. Now, the family believe this was a deliberate
effort to isolate Jessica from the rest of her family. JANE MONCTON SMITH: What he wanted went.
He was the rule-maker. He put Jessica, at least at first, in with his family, moved her away from her family.
And then, he moved her away from her support systems. He needed to control what was known about his private life.
NARRATOR: Although Middlesbrough, in the Northeast of England, was just 66 miles from her hometown of Leeds,
once the couple moved, Jessica found herself alone, lonely. SCOTT SUMNERS: She was always up here.
She very, very rarely got to go back down there to see her parents. Her dad used to come up now and again to the shop
and visit her, but it was an hour. And that was it. And she never really had many friends up here.
NARRATOR: Scott Sumners came to know Jessica and Mitesh well when they became his employers.
I worked at Roman Road Pharmacy, and that's how I first met Jess. Because she purchased the shop of my brother,
who previously set it up and owned it. They open and start to build up a very popular and successful pharmacy in Roman Road.
Now, they work hard at this business, and it's doing really, really well. NARRATOR: Those who saw the couple, however, spotted
how Mitesh would treat Jessica. He always used to speak down to her. It was just-- instead of just giving the poor lass a break
and letting her get on with work, he was always putting her down. He never said anything nice to her.
He was always negative. I don't think he had much respect for Jessica. I don't think he loved her.
I think she was achieving something for him, making him look respectable, making
it look as if he didn't have a private life of the nature that he did. He didn't speak to her as if he respected her.
He was quite nasty and abusive, even in front of people, so what he was like in private is anybody's guess.
She never used to say anything back. She'd never argue back with him. She just sort of just put her head down and crack on.
She wanted to remain there because she wanted a baby. NARRATOR: On occasions, Mitesh would ensure
that he was alone in the pharmacy, and it was not to focus on work. I worked till 10:00, one of the nights,
he said we could go home, get yourself off home early. So I went and got myself some food.
I seen him go back in the shop. The shutters were down in the front. And then I see him go in with a guy.
I said what's going on here? I have a look on the cameras the next morning, and I'd seen him.
And you could see in the shop that he was with another guy, kissing a fella and stuff.
NARRATOR: Caught out by the CCTV system that Mitesh himself had installed. He was like obsessed with CCTV.
He got it in the shop. He was wanting to let you know. He would say, right, I can watch us all on the camera.
And he was showing us all on his phone. I can watch what you're doing from home, basically.
And he would say, look, I can see my home and he showed us his house. And he went and bought a top-of-the-range CCTV,
best clarity you can get. NARRATOR: It was around this time in 2017 that Jess began showing signs that she was being physically
abused by her husband. We know he was being increasingly violent to Jessica during this time.
She's described having phones thrown at her head. She's described him placing his hands around her throat
and strangling. One time, she had come in and she had like bruises on her face. And she said what she-- and it was quite bad.
And I was like-- and even the rest of staff, we were shocked. And we were like--
I said, are you OK, Jess? And she went, oh, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine. I fell, and the phone, it landed on my face.
She's described all manner of violence in the course of this later part of the relationship.
It was becoming almost as if it was a daily occurrence. She come into work, and she sat down, and she winced.
And I said, are you all right? And she said, Patel threw the remote control at me last night
when I was watching TV. She said, it hit me. It's went and made a bruise. And I was like, ugh, that's not good.
I said, what was that over? Oh, it's nothing, really. It left a bruise on the side just below her ribs.
NARRATOR: The more Mitesh indulged his gay friendships, the more violent he seemed to become towards his wife.
He was trapped in a relationship and he probably blamed her for all of the ills in his life.
She would have been a focus for everything, so he probably was absolutely horrible to her.
I think he was expressing his dissatisfaction with his life, and she was getting the blame.
We can't get our heads around it ourselves why she just never left him. Because, really, when we looked, there
was no positives to stay with him, apart from the side when she wanted to have children, really.
NARRATOR: The reason may have been Jessica's desire to start a family. If she was really keen, as the evidence suggests,
in becoming a mother, then this is the partner that she chose. This is the person that she wanted to make her life with.
So I can see why she would want to remain under the same roof. Patel got married to create an illusion.
If he got divorced, he's going to break that illusion straight away. Jessica got married because she's a traditional girl.
She wanted to be married. She wants a family. NARRATOR: Trying for a child in what
was a disconnected relationship brought only disappointment for Jess. They struggled to have a child together,
so they get referred to the IVF. I used to feel sorry for her because it was quite clear
that she just wanted to have her own kids and have her own family. Well, they were obviously struggling with the IVF
and stuff like that. NARRATOR: Only later would it be revealed that Mitesh never really intended
to have a baby with Jessica. What he actually does is takes medication to lower his sperm
count, so he actively sabotages the very thing that they are going to try to create, which is a family.
It was all a ploy. It was all a tactic in order to continue the fact that he kept controlling her.
I mean, given his later actions, there's no doubt that he didn't intend to go through with this.
NARRATOR: But he does appear to have considered Jessica may have her uses. I think during this IVF process,
he starts to see the possibilities of family because that's something he wants as well.
He just doesn't want it with Jessica. He was still in touch with his soulmate in Sydney,
and he was explaining via text message, via phone call-- we've seen the text messages-- that he still
wanted them to be together, but that he also wanted to have a family. In March 2018, Jessica has a further cycle of IVF.
Now, if this is successful, and they have three embryos to store, we have to ask the question now,
does Patel need her anymore? It's within his grasp that this life he wanted as a gay man but with a family, it's there.
The only thing standing in the way is Jessica. So it's quite possible that at this point,
he starts to think about how he can get rid of her. Divorcing her, probably not an option because he
loses the embryos. He loses that part of the fantasy that he has a family with his male partner.
So Jessica has to be permanent they got rid of, annihilated. NARRATOR: Spring 2018, Mitesh Patel has eggs
from his wife stored as part of the IVF process, and a male lover. It gives him only a small window of opportunity
to decide whether he's going to spend his life with his lover, or whether he's going to get caught in a trap where
he has a child with Jessica. So to some degree, it's the IVF that seals her fate.
He has to act now. NARRATOR: There was another element in the timing of events. Mitesh had the lover, the eggs post the IVF process,
and a chance to be rich. Unbeknown to Jessica, Mitesh has actually taken out a life insurance policy with two million pounds
on her. So not only do we know that he has to make a decision because she's going to have a baby otherwise,
we know that he's insured her for a huge amount of money, so that should she die or disappear,
he's about to become incredibly wealthy, and that's going to fund his new life with his lover in Australia.
So from the point that he's got the insurance policy, it seems that Mitesh has decided he is going to kill Jessica.
NARRATOR: A few days later, Mitesh searched on the internet for properties for sale in Sydney,
where Amit had moved after his own marriage had broken down. Piece by piece, Mitesh was laying the groundwork
for what he was about to do. In the week that led up to Jessica's murder, he made a few more steps which he may have thought
were intelligent. He spoke to one of the neighbors, and he mentioned Jessica's gullibility.
She's so gullible. She's so naive. Someday, she's going to walk into a murder. Somebody will murder her.
Someone will take advantage of this gullibility and murder her. It's a strange thing to say.
The day Mitesh came in, it was the 14th of May, 2018. It was a Monday. We were really busy at the time.
I can't remember exactly the time, but I think it was around 7:00 and 8:00. NARRATOR: This piece of CCTV footage
would soon become crucial to exposing the brutal reality of the end of a marriage.
The timeline of events had begun an hour or so earlier in the Roman Road Pharmacy.
As Jessica Patel prepared to leave the shop for the night, she lingered, chatting with her colleagues.
SCOTT SUMNERS: She was talking about treating herself to a new car because she just had a little Fiesta.
But the phone rang about half 6:00, and it was Patel saying, has Jessica set off home yet?
And I was like, oh, no, she's here still talking. He said, well, will you tell her to hurry up?
You know, I've texted her phone. Will you tell her to hurry up? I need her to bring me some stuff home.
And so when I put the phone down, I said, look, Jess, you know exactly-- he's going mad because you're still here.
She went, ah, OK. And she left about half of 6:00, quarter to 7:00, maybe. So that was the last time we've seen Jess.
Terrible. NARRATOR: An hour later, Mitesh made a visit to his favorite takeaway.
FOUAD JAWAD: Mitesh is a regular here. It's every two days, three days, he come and eat his pizza from my shop.
He like my food. So all the time, he come and order it. Sometimes vegetarian, sometimes cheese garlic bread.
AMIR ABD: He worked a few doors away, so we were kind of like his go-to place when you're hungry.
We open in the evening. It's just nice and easy, isn't it? Pizza whenever you need.
It was a nice day. It was light outside. He came between 7:00 and 8:00. It was still bright at that time.
He ordered his food, which was a 10-inch vegetarian special. And then, he stayed for a couple of minutes
and he said he would be back. He was just going back to the pharmacy. NARRATOR: Standard behavior from the shop regular.
Sometimes stay, sometimes go. But all the time, like, when he orders his pizza--
because I'm busy when he comes in. You see he orders his pizza, and he pays for it, and he goes.
He said, I'm going to the pharmacy and I'll come back after 10. How long when the pizza finish?
I say, like 10, 15 minutes. He come back for it. He take it to-go. He went in the back.
He was rustling around about. He didn't even take no notice of what he was doing.
He said he just nipped out and get a pizza and he popped in to get something from the shop.
You could tell he was a bit twitchy. I actually said to the pharmacist, that was weird,
wasn't it? Don't you think? They go, yeah, he was acting a bit weird. And he was in the back storage room for about half an hour.
AMIR ABD: He came back roughly about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour. His behavior seemed-- definitely,
he was pacing around. He looked-- when I look back now, he seemed a little nervous and kind of unsettled in himself.
When I pulled my hand out to shake his hand, he was quite hesitant, you know, to take his hand out.
I didn't really think much of it. So, obviously, I understand the reasons behind it now.
You know, the same when you have blood on your hands, you know, you can't wash it off.
NARRATOR: At 8:18 PM, Mitesh Patel arrived home. Moments later, he made a frantic telephone call.
Patel returns from the take-away, allegedly to find the burglary. He then dials 999, says to the police
that his house has been burgled and his wife has been killed. NARRATOR: When the emergency services arrived,
they found Jessica dead. The four-bedroom home had been ransacked. Crime scene officers found Jessica's phone on the ground
outside the front door, apparently dropped by the attacker as he fled. A post-mortem would find Jessica had
been strangled and suffocated with a plastic shopping bag. This is clearly now a murder inquiry,
and a full investigation is undertaken. This would involve all the normal strands of inquiry
around telephones, and around CCTV, and the like. NARRATOR: But Mitesh's passion for security cameras
apparently had not helped. CCTV at the house was disconnected, or so Mitesh told them.
Officers visited the pharmacy that Mitesh had left just a couple of hours before.
SCOTT SUMNERS: The police come in as we were going to lock up about 10 to 10:00.
And they said, we need you to stay. And they were taking swabs of everything. And they had all the people and--
obviously, you see them in the white uniforms and stuff when it's basically something bad has happened.
But we was-- They said to us we can't leave because we had the keys to the shop.
NARRATOR: When he realized Jessica was dead, Scott felt sure that her husband had something to do with it.
I was actually saying to the police, he's done this. And they were saying, why do you think that?
And I was saying, I just know for a fact that he's done this because this doesn't add up.
NARRATOR: Officers make their next inquiries at the pizza take-away. FOUAD JAWAD: The police come in the shop around 10:00,
something like that, in May 14, 2018. NARRATOR: Chef Amir got an inkling that they suspected
the quietly spoken pharmacist. AMIR ABD: I was in the shop when the police came in
and kind of flooded Romano's when they came in. There was maybe seven, eight police officers.
And so we knew something serious was going on, but we had no clue. They'd ask to see the CCTV regarding the matter, trying
to give them an idea that it was to do with a customer that came in, Mitesh. And they just want to see the time
of how long he was in for, and when he was here and when he wasn't here. NARRATOR: Next visit for detectives
was the couple's home in nearby affluent Linthorpe, rigged up with surveillance cameras,
but Mitesh had got there first. What he did next was to take the CCTV down. He tried to destroy it.
He took the hard-drive out, and then went and hid it upstairs underneath a suitcase.
NARRATOR: Oblivious to the growing case against him, Mitesh put on a show for his staff at the pharmacy.
He came back into the shop the day after she'd been killed. He got me in the consultation room and he said--
and he give me a cuddle and it was like-- I mean, I'm no body language expert, but it was just such a false cry.
And he said, oh, this must have all happened while-- this all happened while I was at the shop to visit you.
And we were just like, you just sort of knew yourself, he was just, like, trying to get it in our heads,
create himself an alibi, trying to make us believe what he was saying. NARRATOR: The following day, Mitesh didn't show up for work.
SCOTT SUMNERS: He went and stayed with his family anyway. And that's when we've seen in the paper
about a week later that they arrested him, well, arrested a 36-year-old. NARRATOR: On the 17th of May, 2018,
three days after Jessica Patel was murdered, her husband Mitesh was arrested. Now, during his time in the police station,
he was interviewed. He denied the offense completely. He claimed that their relationship was good.
NARRATOR: As a weepy Mitesh Patel stuck to his tale of a burglary gone wrong, police were digging,
and what they found was incriminating. There was DNA underneath Jessica's fingers,
and there were very clear scratch marks on his neck. Now, Mitesh tried to explain this
away by saying he'd suffered them at the gym, but Mitesh had a personal trainer who said
he'd done nothing of the sort. NARRATOR: The evidence seemed clear. Mitesh Patel had killed his wife, but he was denying it.
Would his story that she had been killed in a failed burglary convince a jury? The cell phone, when he was staging the burglary,
would have recorded all of that movement. The phone would have recorded the steps.
It can determine the difference between walking and running. So the more vigorous the activity, the phone
would have thought that was running. So his phone, the evidence recovered from his phone would
have shown that there was a period of vigorous activity that was recorded, and, again, times, dates
would have all been recovered from the phone. NARRATOR: At Teesside Crown Court that November,
the prosecution laid out for the jury a completely different version of events than the one that Mitesh Patel
was claiming in his 999 call-- --beginning with the moment that Jessica arrived home from work
on May 14. The day that Jessica's murdered, we know that Mitesh is waiting for her at home.
She's left the pharmacy. She's been shopping. And she obviously is going home to an ordinary evening,
but little does she know that he is there. She's gone indoors, but almost immediately, Patel
has come up to her and he's injected her with a fatal dose of insulin. You can see his thinking, right?
I'm going to subdue her with a drug that maybe gets out of the system quite quickly, but gives me an opportunity
to kill her without a big fight, or lots of screaming, or lots of neighbors hearing what's going on,
until I want there to be that kind of attention. After that, he used either a Tesco's bag or a ligature
to attempt to strangle Jessica. That didn't work. And so he then resorted to his bare hands.
But ultimately, Jessica was killed that day by strangulation, having been already dosed
with an overdose of insulin. I don't think she would have stood a chance even if it was
against even somebody who was smaller than Patel because, literally, she was like a child's frame, body frame.
Following Jessica's death, Mitesh decided that the way to cover this up would be
to fake some form of break-in. He ransacked their home. He made it look, for all intents and purposes,
like she had walked in and she had walked in upon a burglar. He binds her arms and legs with duct tape.
Duct tape that could be traced back to his pharmacy, that could only come from him.
He then leaves the house and goes to the nearby pizza takeaway. This is in order to give himself an alibi to put himself out
of the house to allow the opportunity for this staged burglary to have happened.
He used Romano's as an alibi from the time period he'd ordered his food, left and gone
home, and killed Jessica, and then come back and picked up his food. In order to add credence to his alibi,
he sends a text message to Jessica in order to make it seem that he was out of the house.
NARRATOR: At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that this was a crime five years in the planning.
There are Google searches now recorded from his computer. One of them is "how do I kill my wife."
Another is "is it painful to die from an insulin overdose." This wasn't a man who killed his wife in a rage of passion.
This wasn't a man who suddenly found out something catastrophic about this relationship.
This was a guy who had coolly and calmly and, for a considerable amount of time,
planned how to end his wife. He wanted the perfect solution for a very awkward problem,
which was Jessica. NARRATOR: Prosecutors told the court that Mitesh wanted to keep for himself and his lover
the three eggs that Jess had produced, now frozen in a storage facility in the Northeast of England.
I think that the murder was the only logical course of action because of the embryos.
If Jessica lived, she could have stopped him having the embryos to make a family.
He was very, very focused on getting out of the country with his lover to start a family somewhere else.
NARRATOR: If this was his plan, it was hardly a realistic one. The biggest flaw in Mitesh Patel's thinking
was yet to be exposed, and it came from his phone, a device that was never far from his hand as he used it
to meet men online, monitor CCTV, and to track his exercise regimes. Phil Ridley is a forensic investigator
who specializes in examining digital devices and analyzing uses of apps, like the Apple Health app.
The Apple Health app comes installed as default on most modern iPhones. It's been around since 2014.
The whole purpose of the app is to record, as the name suggests, health information.
And the way it does that is recording movements of the device that it's installed on,
whether that be steps that you've taken during the course of the day, whether it's changes in elevation,
so how many flights of stairs you've walked up. NARRATOR: Mitesh and Jessica Patel's phones
will offer a mine of revealing data. As part of setting the scene of this burglary,
Patel takes Jessica's phone and takes it outside and puts it on the doorstep. The Health app, in this particular instance,
would have shown that there was a period of normal activity when the victim was still alive.
It would have shown the period of the 14 steps when the phone was taken and discarded.
The police would have been able to show from evidence, from both of the devices, from the Health app evidence
that there would have been two periods of overlapping motion. They would have been effectively identical
because it was the same individual that was carrying both devices, so they would have been
able to prove that there were-- both devices were effectively moving together during that period.
This phone took 14 steps outside after its owner was dead, and his own phone, which also traces steps, had taken
however many other steps all throughout the time of her death. There was frantic activity on the phone's movement
around the house at the exact time that he was ransacking the house to feign a burglary.
If it were not for the tragic death of Jessica Patel, this would be a comedy of errors.
When I was given my evidence and stuff and I seen him in the car, I was thinking why--
it was so obvious, all the evidence against him. That's the type of person who obviously wants to go and drag
her family through everything. But he was dragging his own family through it all as well.
NARRATOR: There is no evidence to suggest that Amit Patel knew Mitesh was going to go through with his threats.
In court, Mitesh told the jury how painful it was to live as a gay Asian man in an unhappy marriage.
Patel tried to use his sexuality during the trial to get favor with the jury. They saw through it.
They rejected his claims entirely and unanimously found him guilty after only three hours of deliberation.
On the 5th of December 2018, Patel was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 30 years.
NARRATOR: The judge, Mr. Justice Goss, dismissed Patel's plea for sympathy. Whilst you can have some sympathy and empathy for Mitesh
when it comes down to his sexuality and his awkwardness around telling people that he's actually gay,
that he's then violent to his wife, that's got nothing to do with his pain about being gay, absolutely nothing.
You don't, as a gay person, become violent because the world isn't accepting you.
This was a despicable and horrific crime committed by a man with ruthless intent to obtain
two million pounds worth of life insurance by killing his wife. NARRATOR: Patel will serve a minimum of 30 years
in prison, a verdict which was some comfort for those who cared for Jessica Patel.
I was checking-- I seen the sentence that he has a minimum term. And I was glad because especially--
it was like a relief off your shoulders as well. And I was more thankful what Jess' family
as well had got a bit of closure on it and got a bit of justice.

Jessica Patel's husband Mitesh was not only abusive but also seeing men behind her back, plotting to be with the man he loved.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Mitesh Patel murdered his wife Jessica after years of abuse and infidelity, staging it as a burglary gone wrong.

Key points

Mitesh Patel's Disturbing Discovery. Mitesh finds his wife Jessica unresponsive on the floor, leading to shocking revelations.
The Illusion of a Happy Marriage. The Patels appeared to be a success story, but dark secrets lurked beneath.
Jessica's Struggles with Control. Mitesh's controlling behavior escalates, revealing the toxic dynamics of their marriage.
The Hidden Truth of Mitesh's Life. Jessica discovers Mitesh's secret life, leading to devastating consequences.
The IVF Deception. Mitesh sabotages their attempts to have a child, revealing his true intentions.
The Dilemma of Family. Mitesh Patel grapples with wanting a family but feels trapped by his marriage to Jessica.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was the perfect man at the worst time in Jessica's life.

Mitesh supports Jessica after her mother's death.

4:49WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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