A man who manipulated his young child into helping him murder his wife and got away with it has been jailed – after the youngster confessed the truth of what really happened.
Robert Rhodes, 52, slashed his wife Dawn’s throat at their home in Redhill, Surrey, on June 2, 2016.
But he walked free from the Old Bailey the following year after telling jurors he had wrestled the blade off Dawn and struck the fatal blow in self-defence.
The key witness was their child who, then still only in primary school, described how Dawn had attacked them both with the knife, slashing their arm and stabbing Rhodes in the back.
It took an extremely rare retrial for the truth of what happened that night to finally be revealed.
Rhodes was found guilty of the ‘cold-blooded and premeditated’ murder by a new jury at Inner London Crown Court last month.
He was also found guilty of two counts of perjury, perverting the course of justice, and child cruelty.
Rhodes declined to attend his sentencing hearing at the same court today, with his barrister saying he was fit to do so but refused because he still ‘maintains his innocence in these matters’.
The child, left physically and mentally scarred, told the court Rhodes had ‘ruined my life’.
Their name, age and sex cannot be reported for legal reasons.
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Jailing Rhodes for life with a minimum term of 29 and a half years, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen said: ‘To the malignant characteristics of which his crimes speak, the defendant has now added cowardice.’
Prosecutor John Price KC told jurors detectives reopened the case after the child, now a teenager ‘plagued and grievously burdened by guilt, decided it was time for the truth to emerge’.
The real story of what happened to Dawn, he said, is ‘profoundly shocking’ and ‘could not be more different’ than how it was presented at Rhodes’ first trial.
Then, Rhodes had claimed to officers that his wife had hit him twice on the back of the head, and later in his first trial he described her coming at him after ‘flipping like a Hulk’.
To back up his claims, he told the child to stab him in the back and then sliced their forearm open – wounds he blamed on his wife.
Rhodes convinced a jury to acquit him of murder in 2017, but his plan started to unravel when the child spoke to a therapist about being manipulated, and then went to police to reveal the truth.
'The guilt and shame I feel will never go away'
In their victim impact statement, the child told the court: ‘I wish I could stand here and say I’ve moved on with my life, and the pain, manipulation and abuse Robert Rhodes subjected me to has not ruined my life, but I can’t.
‘I wish I could say that Robert Rhodes has not taken everything from me, but I can’t.
‘Once this is all over, I can begin to rebuild my life from the ruins I have been left in.
‘On that evening, Robert Rhodes not only murdered my mother, but he took my dad from me as well.’
The child said their mum ‘was and is loved by many’ and ‘deserves justice for the agony she was put through’.
The child recalled the ‘heartbreaking and distressing’ experience of giving evidence against Rhodes last year, and hit out at their father for ‘gaslighting me, parading around as a survivor, while destroying me and my mother’.
‘While the symptoms can be managed, the traumatic experiences Robert Rhodes put me through will never go away,’ they said.
‘The scar Robert Rhodes left me with when he sliced open my forearm will never go away.
‘Robert Rhodes’ actions and my mental health struggles will forever affect me and impact the rest of my life.’
Dawn Rhodes’ mother, Liz Spencer, told the court in an impact statement: ‘I have waited nearly 10 years for this result. I don’t look upon the result as justice, but I feel for the first time my daughter’s voice is being heard.’
She said the trial had ‘highlighted how my daughter Dawn was a victim’, adding: ‘Dawn was a loving daughter, sister, and mother.’
Jurors were shown video footage of the child speaking to detectives in January 2022.
‘Do you want to get rid of mummy?’
Recalling the plan, the child – now a teenager – told detectives how Rhodes had pulled over while they were out in the car days and asked: ‘Do you want to get rid of mummy?’
Slowly rocking backwards and forwards, they explained how the two of them planned how to carry out the murder together before Rhodes gave the signal that June 2 was to be the night.
‘He said, “right, well, me and her can be talking in the kitchen”, and I was like, “OK”,’ they said.
‘I think I said that “I will take in a picture and tell her to close her eyes and hold out her hands”. I think that was my idea. And obviously he agreed.
‘He gave me the story that I had to stick to, that she attacked him with a knife and that I put my arm out and she hit me and that she was violent towards him and stabbed him and that he accidentally killed her.
‘That was the plan.’
‘I don’t want to lie any more – I felt awful for so long’
Rhodes then used the same knife he had murdered his wife with to wound each of them to support the false account he would later give.
The child said: ‘He told me that he needed me. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to get cut and he was trying to tell me we have both done it, you need to, otherwise he’d go to prison.’
Asked why their account has now changed, the child said: ‘Just because I don’t want to lie any more, because it’s not making me feel any better.
‘It has made me feel awful for so long. I don’t want to feel like that anymore, and I want something to be done.’
The court heard the Rhodes marriage crumbled in 2015, with Dawn beginning a new relationship with a work colleague.
The increasingly bitter breakdown played out in front of the child and their relationship with Dawn deteriorated drastically.
Rather than heal the relationship, Rhodes exploited it for his own ends – including by telling the child to report Dawn to the police for assault.
The child told detectives: ‘My dad would always tell me all of these horrible things about my mum – about how she betrayed us and abandoned us.
‘He would always tell me these things to make me hate and resent her.’
They added: ‘My dad made it his mission to make sure I was on his side.’
‘Stick to the plan’
Rhodes continued coaching the child in the aftermath of the killing and in the lead-up to his first trial, including by hiding a phone at his mum’s house to keep in contact with them.
The child, who now has PTSD, claimed Rhodes repeatedly told them to ‘stick to the plan’, reminding them that ‘snitches get stitches’.
They told jurors Rhodes had poisoned them against Dawn and added: ‘I was told that if I didn’t say what I was supposed to say [Dad] would go to prison and I’d never see him again.
‘I was made to feel like if that were to happen it would be all my fault and I would lose my mum and my dad over the same event.’
When he was arrested again for murder, he tellingly told officers he had ‘thought this would come back to bite me’.
‘Having taken her life, you sought to deprive Dawn of her good name’
Addressing Rhodes in his absence and referring to the child as X, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen said: ‘You brutally murdered your estranged wife Dawn Rhodes.
‘You did so having enlisted the assistance of your child, then under the age of 10.
‘In the course of your trial, you depicted Dawn as a violent and volatile individual, and uncaring and indifferent mother who had embarked upon an extramarital relationship heedless of its effect upon her family notwithstanding which you had been desperate to save your marriage and to keep the family together.
‘You accepted no responsibility for the unhappiness which she had felt, her reaction to it or the conflict in her relationship with X.
‘Having taken her life, you sought also to deprive Dawn of her good name, thereby increasing the pain caused to her family.’
The senior judge echoed Dawn’s family’s description of her as ‘a warm, vibrant woman’ and a ‘caring, effervescent person who had managed to find happiness with another partner following her increasing unhappiness with you’.
‘Finally, she can be seen as the victim‘
Detective Chief Inspector Kimball Edey, from the Surrey and Sussex Police major crime team, said: ‘While it should be acknowledged that the child was under the age of criminal responsibility at the time of Dawn’s death and that they were not responsible for the acts that Rhodes manipulated them into doing, the realisation that they were complicit in Dawn’s death and, coming forward to set the record straight nine years later, is nothing short of extraordinary.
‘The fact that Rhodes not only murdered his wife in cold blood but then manipulated and groomed a child to play a part in his evil scheme and cover up what he had done is simply despicable – not only did he take a life, he irreparably damaged another, as well as the lives of everyone else who loved Dawn.
‘During the first trial, Dawn was portrayed as the villain but had actually been a victim of domestic abuse and coercive control at the hands of her husband for years.
‘Her tragic death draws attention to the need to dispel and challenge myths and stereotypes around who may or may not be victims of domestic abuse, and who indeed may be capable of causing such harm.
‘Otherwise, many victims will feel unable to reach out, and will continue to suffer in silence, while those causing harm in relationships are able to exist unchecked.’
Libby Clark, specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, branded Rhodes ‘a man who thought he’d got away with it’ after his convictions.
She said: ‘Ultimately, this conviction is about spinning the public perception of Dawn Rhodes.
‘Dawn was portrayed as the growling woman who stabbed her child and then stabbed her husband and not what we know now.
‘She was the victim of domestic violence. Finally, she can be seen as the victim, not the aggressor.’
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