Wicked’ husband jailed for murder of wife after child reveals plot that led to retrial

Saturday, January 17, 2026 - A man who manipulated his young child into helping him murd3r his wife and successfully convinced a jury he acted in self-defence has finally been jailed after the truth emerged years later. Robert Rhodes, 52, slashed the throat of his wife Dawn at their home in Redhill, Surrey, on June 2, 2016. The following year, he walked free from the Old Bailey after jurors accepted his claim that Dawn had attacked him, leaving him no choice but to strike the fatal blow.

The key witness was their child, then still in primary school, who described Dawn as having attacked both of them with the knife, slashing their arm and stabbing Rhodes in the back. It was only during a rare retrial nearly a decade later that the real events were revealed. Last month, a jury at Inner London Crown Court found Rhodes guilty of the “cold-blooded and premeditated” murd3r of his wife, as well as perjury, perverting the course of justice, and child cruelty. Rhodes refused to attend his sentencing hearing and, according to his defence team, declined because he maintains his innocence

The child, now a teenager, told the court that Rhodes had “ruined my life” and described the trauma of being manipulated into covering up the k!lling. Their identity remains protected by law. Sentencing Rhodes to life with a minimum term of 29 years and six months, 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 that detectives reopened the case after the teenager, burdened by guilt, decided that the truth must finally be told. Price described what really happened as “profoundly shocking” and “could not be more different” from the account given at the first trial. Rhodes told police the first time that Dawn had “flipped like a Hulk” before attacking him. To support this false story, he ordered the child to st@b him in the back and sliced their forearm to create wounds that would appear defensive, and then blamed Dawn.

Rhodes convinced the first jury and was acquitted of murd3r in 2017. His plan began to unravel when the child later disclosed to a therapist that they had been manipulated and decided to report the truth to police. In a victim impact statement, the teenager said, “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… On that evening, Robert Rhodes not only murd3red my mother, but he took my dad from me as well.” They added, “Once this is all over, I can begin to rebuild my life from the ruins I have been left in.”

Dawn’s mother, Liz Spencer, said she had waited nearly ten years for the result, adding that she did not see it as justice but as the first time her daughter’s voice had been heard. Dawn, she said, “was a loving daughter, sister and mother.”

Police footage played to jurors showed the child telling detectives how Rhodes had stopped the car days before the k!lling and asked, “Do you want to get rid of mummy?” Rocking back and forth, the teenager explained how they had planned together how the murd3r would be carried out and described how Rhodes indicated that June 2 would be the night.

The child recalled planning to distract Dawn and described Rhodes’ false account: “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 k!lled her.” The teenager added, “That was the plan.”

Rhodes then used the same knife to wound them both so that the invented story would appear credible. “He told me that he needed me,” the child said. “I didn’t want to do it… He was trying to tell me we have both done it, you need to, otherwise he’d go to prison.”

Explaining why they decided to change their account years later, the teenager said, “Just because I don’t want to lie any more… It has made me feel awful for so long, and I want something to be done.”

The court heard that the Rhodes marriage had collapsed in 2015 and that Dawn had begun a new relationship. Rhodes exploited the situation to damage the mother-child relationship, telling the child to report Dawn to police for assault and repeatedly insisting that she had betrayed the family. The teenager told detectives, “My dad would always tell me all of these horrible things about my mum… He would always tell me these things to make me hate and resent her,” adding that “my dad made it his mission to make sure I was on his side.”

Rhodes continued to coach the child after the k!lling and before his first trial, including by hiding a phone at his mother’s house to ensure access. During the retrial, the teenager said Rhodes told them to “stick to the plan” and warned that “snitches get stitches.” They described having PTSD and said they had been made to believe that if they did not lie, they would lose both parents. When Rhodes was rearrested for murd3r, he told officers, “I thought this would come back to bite me.”

Addressing Rhodes directly, the sentencing judge said, “You brutally murd3red your estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes. You did so having enlisted the assistance of your child, then under the age of ten.” She noted that Rhodes had portrayed Dawn as violent, volatile and uncaring, when in reality she had been a victim of coercive control and domestic abuse. “Having taken her life, you sought also to deprive Dawn of her good name,” the judge said. She described Dawn as “a warm, vibrant woman” who had “managed to find happiness with another partner.”

Detective Chief Inspector Kimball Edey of Surrey and Sussex Police praised the courage of the teenager, saying it was “nothing short of extraordinary.” He added that Rhodes had not only taken a life but “irreparably damaged another.” He said Dawn had been wrongly portrayed as the aggressor and added, “Finally, she can be seen as the victim.”

A specialist prosecutor, Libby Clark, described Rhodes as “a man who thought he’d got away with it” and said the conviction corrected a dangerous distortion of who Dawn really was.