Pharmacist who murdered wife with Tesco bag so he could run off with lover is jailed for life

Victim’s family tell killer he ‘will rot in hell’

A pharmacist has been jailed for life for strangling his wife with a Tesco bag so he could pocket £2m in life insurance and run away with his lover.

Mitesh Patel, 37, will spend a minimum of 30 years in prison for the murder of Jessica Patel, 34, at their home in Middlesbrough.

He had plotted to kill her for years and hoped to start a new life with in Australia with his secret boyfriend.

Patel injected hs wife with insulin to subdue her before strangling and choking her with a Tesco “bag for life” in May. He bound her body with tape and staged a break-in at their house to make it appear she had been killed by an intruder.

Sentencing Patel at Teeside Crown Court on Wednesday, judge James Goss told him: “You have no remorse for your actions. Any pity you have is for yourself.”

The Patels ran a successful pharmacy together but the couple’s marriage was unhappy, with the husband repeatedly seeking sex with men he met on the Grindr dating app.

He was also secretly in a relationship with his “soulmate” Amit Patel, a doctor who had emigrated to Sydney.

A trial heard Mitesh Patel had made internet searches dating back years for terms including “I need to kill my wife”, “insulin overdose”, “plot to kill my wife, do I need a co-conspirator?”, “hiring hitman UK” and “how much methadone will kill you?”

Ms Patel’s family said she had been “betrayed in every sense of the word” by her husband.

Pharmacist Mitesh Patel, 37, was jailed for life for murdering his wife (PA)

In a statement read in court before Patel was sentenced, the victim’s younger sister Divya said on behalf of her siblings and close cousins: “The one thing we hope and prayed for above anything else was that in her final moments she did not suffer.

“The cruel reality is that she did in fact suffer, she knew exactly who her killer was, and he mercilessly ignored her attempts to fight for her own life as he ended it.

“We can only imagine the fear and panic she must have felt knowing herself this was it. Thinking of that moment makes our hearts so heavy.”

Addressing her brother-in-law in the dock, she added: “We do not just pray, we know, she will be free from you for ever. As will she rest in heaven, you will rot in hell.”

In a statement released through Cleveland Police, Ms Patel’s father and grandmother told the court: “The man we welcomed into our family, who promised to look after and protect her, betrayed her in every sense of the word, cheating her of her dreams, robbing her of her life and robbing us of her.

“No one in this world has the right to take someone else’s life.”

Mr Justice Ross said Ms Patel had “clearly loved” her husband and “was a dutiful wife” during their nine years of marriage.

He told Patel: “She wanted nothing more than to have children and live a normal family life. The difficulty is that you had no sexual attraction to her; you were attracted to men.”

Ms Patel was to some extent aware of her husband’s sexuality, the judge said.

“She was lonely, often upset and controlled by you,” he added. “The evidence of witnesses as to your behaviour towards Jessica and the vast amount of data of your messaging conversations reveals you were needy and callous, using her whilst indulging your own desires and whims.”

The court heard Patel had once told his lover he had married his wife as a cover for his sexuality.

Despite his repeated infidelity and love for Dr Patel, the killer desperately tried to persuade his wife to have a baby using IVF.

When she voiced her doubts about going through with the process amid concerns about his cheating, her husband texted her: “Ok then I’m telling you this then we are parting ways.”

She eventually went through three cycles of the fertility treatment, and the last was successful, resulting in three embryos which now lie frozen in a Darlington clinic.

Mr Justice Goss said Patel, who was “business-driven” and wanted to retire at 40, murdered his wife “in the expectation of gain as a result of her death”.

Due to various life insurance policies, he stood to receive £2m if his wife died.

But the judge said Patel had made a series of fundamental errors in his attempt to get away with murder. He failed to hide his house’s CCTV hard drive and left the duct tape he used to bind his wife’s body at their pharmacy.