By James Simons-
A 52-year-old carpenter from Surrey, Robert Rhodes(pictured), has been found guilty of murdering his wife in a rare retrial, eight years after being acquitted.
New and compelling evidence from a child witness, who was under 10-years-old at the time of the murder, led to a successful application to the Court of Appeal under the double jeopardy law introduced in 2003 to re-try Robert Rhodes for the murder of his wife Dawn in June 2016.
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At the original trial, Rhodes had deceived jurors into believing Dawn had attacked him first and had inflicted knife wounds on him and a child at their home in Redhill, Surrey before he retaliated, cutting her throat. The new evidence presented to the jury from the child witness showed that Rhodes had carefully planned to kill Dawn, manipulating the child into helping him.
Dawn was told by the child to close her eyes and hold her hands out, as if she was about to receive a surprise. The child then left the room and Rhodes attacked his wife, making the child inflict wounds on him, which they were unable to do, meaning Rhodes had to inflict some of the injuries on himself.
Robert Rhodes killed his estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes, by slitting her throat with a knife at their family home in Redhill, Surrey, in June 2016. The couple’s marriage had broken down and he had filed for a divorce.
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He was previously found not guilty after a trial at the Old Bailey in 2017, after convincing jurors that he had acted in self-defence during an argument.
It has since emerged that this was a “cover-up”, after the couple’s child came forward with new evidence that Rhodes killed Ms Rhodes, and they were involved in the murder too.
In 2021, the child, who was under the age of 10 at the time of the murder, told police they had been manipulated into lying about the true version of events by their father.
Both Rhodes and the child were found with knife wounds at the scene, which were initially claimed to have been inflicted in an attack by Ms Rhodes.
The child’s new account stated that after Rhodes killed his wife, he inflicted two wounds to his scalp before instructing the child to inflict two more on their father’s back. He then cut his own child’s arm so deeply that it required stitches under general anaesthetic.
On Friday, jurors at Inner London Crown Court convicted Rhodes of murder and child cruelty. He was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice and two counts of perjury.
The law permits a retrial where someone was acquitted of a serious offence, but new and compelling evidence has since come to light which indicates the person might actually be guilty.
In this case, the new evidence from the child was compelling enough for the Court of Appeal to quash the acquittal and a retrial to take place.
Crucially, the child’s evidence was so compelling that the Court of Appeal agreed Rhodes needed to be tried again. the child, who was of primary school age at the time, and is below the age of criminal responsibility, was “groomed” by Rhodes into lying.
The child told police that during supervised contact with Rhodes in 2016 and 2017 – while he was on bail after being charged with murder – he had told them that they had “got some things wrong” and continued to give them instructions to stick to the plan.
Robert Rhodes killed his estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes, by slitting her throat with a knife at their family home in Redhill, Surrey, in June 2016. Rhodes even hid a phone at his mother’s house for when the child visited, on which he would leave messages for the child.
Detective Chief Inspector Kimball Edey said: “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.
“The fact that Rhodes not only murdered his wife in cold blood but then manipulated and groomed his own 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.”
The Crown Prosecution Service said “the child’s part in the plan was that they would distract the mother by saying to the mother ‘hold out your hands, I’ve got a surprise for you’, and the child would then put a drawing into the hands of the mother”.
Rhodes then cut his wife’s throat. She was found lying face down in a pool of blood in the dining room.
Libby Clark, specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service’s south east area complex casework unit, said the child showed “great bravery and strength” in coming forward with the truth.
She said: “The child has grown up with the dawning realisation, I would say, that they were part of a plan. They were complicit in the murder of the mother, Dawn Rhodes.”
Ms Rhodes’s family paid tribute to the “loving daughter, sister and mother”.
“She was everything to us and he is nothing, she will be celebrated and he will be forgotten,” they said.
“There are no words we can use to make sense of this horrific situation.
“We struggle to comprehend the mindset of an individual so twisted as to even contemplate this as a solution to his own unhappiness, implicating a child under 10 in the process.”
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