When a 999 call came in at 8:22pm on the evening of May 14, 2018, the man on the other end, his voice shaking, told the operator that he had just returned home to find his house had been broken into and his wife had been attacked.

Inside, he said he had found her lying on the living room floor, bound in duct tape and unconscious, as the operator immediately began asking questions, trying to establish whether she was still breathing, who he was, and who his wife was.

As Mitesh struggled to remove the duct tape from her body, his breathing became heavier and more panicked, and while the operator quickly called for an ambulance and assured him it was on its way, he also tried to keep him calm, continuing to gather information about what had happened inside the house and the condition his wife was in.

But as the call went on, his performance intensified. He became increasingly breathless, at one point begging the operator to contact his father. The operator kept him talking, asking questions, gathering details. Mitesh obliged — painting a picture of their home life, their routine, his voice catching and breaking on cue.

Eventually, he told the operator he had managed to remove the tape, continuing to repeat that someone had come into the house and tied her up, as the operator, sounding slightly uncertain, pressed him for more detail about how she had been found, prompting him to describe the scene in increasingly graphic detail.

Towards the end of the call, with the ambulance now just moments away, Mitesh appeared to break down completely, sobbing and asking again for his father to be contacted, while the operator continued trying to reassure him, telling him help was almost there.

But when paramedics arrived at the semi-detached Victorian house on The Avenue in Linthorpe, Middlesbrough, they found 34 year old Jessica Patel lying on the living room floor.

Devastatingly, she was already dead. Why had he done this? Why had a man taken the life of his own wife in such a brutal, calculated way — a woman who had loved him, supported him, and spent years trying to give him the family she had always dreamed of?

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📚 Sources for this episode: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AYJOCstdMj6HhLEEvVl0DiRW_vZun322/view?usp=sharing