Man Allegedly Kills Wife To Claim Insurance, Plans Escape With Grindr ‘Soulmate’

A British pharmacist was accused of killing his wife in order to claim millions in insurance payment before he planned to make a getaway with his “soulmate” he met on Grindr, a dating app for gay men.

The accused was Mitesh Patel, 37, a resident of Middlesbrough, England, whose wife Jessica Patel, 34, was found dead in their house May 14. The couple jointly owned a pharmacy business.

Mitesh had met Jessica while studying at university and the two fell in love. However, after getting married the man cheated on his wife after meeting someone on Grindr.

“Jessica Patel had been killed as a result of pressure being brought to bear on her neck. She was strangled,” Nicholas Campbell QC, the prosecutor in the case told the Teesside Crown Court jury, BBC reported. “The prosecution case was that a plastic shopping bag, a Tesco Bag For Life, was used both as a ligature and to suffocate her.”

Mitesh, who was initially treated as a witness in Jessica’s murder, told investigators he returned home to find his house robbed and his wife dead with her wrist duct-taped, a narrative that according to Campbell, the defendant had made up. The prosecutor claimed the accused had staged the crime scene by tying the tape on the deceased’s wrists after he had murdered her.

As for the motive, Mitesh stood to receive 2 million pounds ($2.6 million) on his wife’s death, which made for “ample” reason as to why he would choose to kill his wife, the court heard.

“He was planning to use the money to start a new life in Australia and that life would be shared with the person who he really loved, one who he regarded as his soul mate - another man,” Campbell added.

Apparently, a list of things he had planned to take with him to Australia, had been left untouched in alleged burglary, claimed by Mitesh.

Apart from that, there were an array of evidences presented in the trial to prove Mitesh’s guilt.

For instance, for the last five year, the defendant made online searches of topics such as the amount of insulin it would take to kill a healthy non-diabetic and time a person takes to die from strangulation. In addition, keywords like “life after loss of spouse,” “the death of spouse, rebuilding your life after the first year” and “how do I arrange a funeral” were searched by him. All of these suggested his wife’s murder was premeditated, Independent reported.

Mitesh also had three scratches on his neck, which led investigators to consider him as a suspect.

Finally, before he dialed the emergency number, following his wife’s death, Mitesh allegedly hid a hard drive from the surveillance system in a suitcase, placed under a mattress. Also, an hour after the investigators pronounced his wife dead, the accused was seen by many witnesses behaving strangely.