Husband murdered wife after recruiting their young child to help ‘get rid of mummy’

A husband once cleared of murdering his wife now faces a life sentence – after their child revealed he recruited them to help plan the killing and then cover it up.

Robert Rhodes, 52, slashed his wife Dawn’s throat at their home in Redhill, Surrey, on June 2, 2016, but walked free from the Old Bailey 11 months later after claiming he acted in self-defence.

The key witness was their young 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.

Prosecutor John Price KC told a new jury at Inner London Crown Court last month that ‘Robert Rhodes had got away with murder’ – that was until his 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 insisted Dawn brandished the knife during a blazing row before he wrenched it from her grasp and swung out in defence of himself and their child, who had both already been wounded by her.

Reporting in the aftermath of that trial focused on Dawn’s six-foot 14-stone frame, almost blaming her for her own death under headlines angled on Rhodes’ claims she ‘flipped like the Hulk’.

But in late 2021, the child changed their story, saying their mum was never the aggressor and had in fact been ambushed by Rhodes while sitting with her eyes closed and hands held out waiting for a ‘surprise’.

It was all, they said, part of a chilling plan the two of them had hatched together in the days before.

Jurors were shown video footage of the child speaking to detectives in January 2022.

In their new account, they described how Rhodes pulled over while they were out in the car days before the killing, on May 30, and he asked: ‘Do you want to get rid of mummy?’

The teenager went on to explain how the two of them planned how to carry out the murder together.

‘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”, they said. 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.’

Describing the night their mum died, the child said: ‘He told me it was happening that night.

‘I think I went, “Oh Mummy I drew a picture for you”, then dad looked at me.

‘I told her to close her eyes and then hold out her hands.’

The child said Rhodes moved to pick up a knife from the counter as they left the room.

‘I went into the living room and then heard sounds. It was like if you gurgle water – that but quieter,’ they continued.

‘If you’re struggling to cough, like that sound as well. It was like those merged together. It sounded wet, if that makes sense. It sounded like there was liquid.’

Asked by the officer how long that sound lasted, the child replied: ‘Not very long.’

After hearing something ‘really heavy falling on the floor’, the child said they went upstairs briefly before returning when Rhodes called them back down again.

‘That’s when dad told me to stab him,’ they added.

Crouching down and pointing to his upper back, the teenager said Rhodes handed them the knife saying: ‘I need you to put this here and push as hard as you can.’

They added: ‘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.’

In his closing speech, Mr Price told jurors Dawn’s murder was ‘cold-blooded and premeditated’.

‘She was ambushed in her kitchen,’ he said.

‘We submit that this killing was then accompanied by a cover-up of the truth.

‘This was designed to make it appear that it was she – Dawn Rhodes – the dead woman who could not now speak who had taken up a knife.

‘In fact, as her own child has now confessed, Dawn Rhodes had been tricked by that little child to close her eyes and hold out her hands.

‘As part of that cover up, the knife which the defendant had used on his wife, was then used on his own child.

‘We further submit that this cover-up of the truth of how Dawn Rhodes died was further sustained by him by lies he told on oath.

‘And this cover-up succeeded for a time.

‘Robert Rhodes had got away with murder, we submit, that is until a teenager, plagued and grievously burdened by the guilt they felt by the great wrong which had been done to their mother and which the child knew they had helped bring about, decided it was time for the truth to emerge – whatever might be the cost for them.’

Mr Price said there was ‘an abundance of other evidence’ which the child simply could not have known about which proved that when Rhodes asked whether they wanted to ‘get rid of mummy’ that ‘it was in fact something he had long since desired to do’.

Examination of his mobile phone uncovered searches for spyware capable of ‘cracking’ mobile phones matching those owned by Dawn as well as more than a dozen drugs and ‘household poisons that kill instantly’.

More chillingly, the court heard that Rhodes had spent some time on June 1 last year, hours from the eighth anniversary of Dawn’s death, looking at photos taken of her from behind.

He pointed to the evidence of two pathologists who told jurors they believed the fatal neck wound could only have been inflicted from behind.

Rhodes denied murder but was found guilty by a new jury at Inner London Crown Court today following 22 hours’ deliberations.

He was also found guilty of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and two counts of perjury.

Judge Mrs Justice Ellenbogen thanked jurors for their work on the ‘difficult and upsetting case’ and excused them from further service for life.

Giving evidence, the teen was pressed by Rhodes’ barrister Nina Grahame KC about there being ‘no such plan and no such discussion’.

But they insisted: ‘There was a plan, and we went through with it. I was told to lie and I did.’

They 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.’

Over the course of several days in the witness box, Rhodes told jurors Dawn’s face was ‘angry’ as she attacked the child with the knife, saying they ‘yelped’ as she slashed their arm.

He described hearing ‘growling’ noises as she swung the blade at him in a ‘chopping action’.

‘She was furious,’ he added. ‘She had totally lost control. Her eyes almost looked black.’

After sending the child upstairs he said he grabbed the knife from Dawn before ‘she came back at me’, adding: ‘I instinctively just swung.

‘[I] obviously made contact, and I pushed her at the same time with my left hand. I pretty much ran out of the room straight after that.’

But Mr Price pointed to the subsequent 999 call in which the child can be heard telling the operator Dawn was ‘on the floor’.

‘On the defendant’s account she couldn’t possibly have known that,’ he said.

‘The last thing according to Robert Rhodes that that child will have seen was their mother with a knife using it to wound them. Yet they tell the operator their mother is on the floor.’

Cross-examining Rhodes, Mr Price said: ‘You called them downstairs after you had killed their mother, didn’t you? “Poppet, it’s alright now, you can come down now” – that’s what you said, isn’t it?’

Rhodes replied: ‘No, it’s not.’

But Mr Price pressed him: ‘That’s how they were able to say those words, which were absolutely correct, to the operator.

‘The reason is because you called them downstairs after you had killed their mother and you cut their arm with a knife, didn’t you?

‘You then put it in their hand and told them to wound you, and they saw their mum on the floor.’

Rhodes replied: ‘No.’

His sentence is listed on January 16 at the same court.

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