Salcombe murder: AA man's 'bizarre' encounter with killer

An AA technician had a "bizarre" encounter with a woman who murdered her London friend before dumping the body in Devon.

Lee Gardin, 38, had been called to a Co-op service station at Malborough near Salcombe after a tyre blew on murderer Jemma Mitchell's Volvo.

Mitchell was found guilty of murdering and decapitating her friend Mee Kuen Chong and is being sentenced on Friday.

"I had no idea at the time how it was going to unravel," said Mr Gardin.

The Old Bailey in London heard on 26 June 2021, Mitchell killed her friend at the 67-year-old's north-west London home.

She then put her body inside a blue suitcase which she placed in the boot of a hire car and drove to Salcombe, a resort town on Devon's south coast.

The Volvo blew a tyre near Malborough and Mitchell was forced to drive into the service station and call for assistance.

Mitchell told Mr Gardin she had driven down from London to see friends and wanted to see the sunrise the next day.

"Looking back on it, it's absolutely bonkers," said Mr Gardin, from Newton Abbot, Devon.

"But it was just a normal working day for me at the time, and I got a call to give a member assistance."

Ms Chong's headless body was found by holidaymakers beside a woodland footpath near Salcombe the next day.

Mr Gardin said the conversation was "very muddled, as if she was like preoccupied".

"I had no idea at the time how it was going to unravel," said Mr Gardin.

"She was having to repeat herself and I had to repeat myself quite a lot to her."

The mechanic said Mitchell was "really intense, as if she was like looking straight through you".

He said the murderer "just didn't seem to hear anything I was saying, didn't seem to be registering".

Mr Gardin, who has since left the AA, said: "About 20 minutes into the job I'd removed the punctured tyre and the damaged wheel, and we needed to put it back in the back in the vehicle.

"That's when I noticed there was a strong smell. I didn't really know what it was.

"It's not something I have really smelled before, it was sort of like dank, murky sort of musty smell."

Mr Gardin said he did not see a suitcase in the car. It is not clear what Mitchell had done with the case at that point.

Looking back, Mr Gardin suspects that Mitchell "caught the puncture when she pulled up on the kerb at the side of the road to dump the body, panicked and drove up to the service station to get assistance".

Mr Gardin thinks after having the wheel changed Mitchell then drove back to Salcombe and retrieved the suitcase, which was later found in London, on the roof of a shed belonging to one of Mitchell's neighbours.

Mr Gardin said: "She's gone back to pick up any evidence that was left."

The roadside mechanic got a call from the police about a week later.

"You go to work, and you never think you're gonna be tangled up in a situation like this," he said.

"In 15 years with the AA I had been out to plenty of breakdowns and every breakdown is a different situation and different people. But I've never come across anyone like Jemma Mitchell in all my time."

Follow BBC News South West on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].