A husband who manipulated his young child as part of a ‘wicked’ plot to murder his wife and then cover it up has been jailed for life.
Robert Rhodes, 52, cut his wife Dawn’s throat at their home in Redhill, Surrey, on June 2, 2016.
But he got away with it after convincing an Old Bailey jury 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, 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.
Years later, the child confided to a friend and then to a therapist they he had groomed them into helping him ‘get rid of mummy’.
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’.
Judge Mrs Justice Ellenbogen jailed Rhodes for life and ordered he serve a minimum term of 29 and a half years.
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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 ‘profoundly shocking’ real story of what happened to Dawn, he said, ‘could not be more different’ than how it was previously presented.
Jurors were shown video footage of the child, whose name, age and sex cannot be reported for legal reasons, 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.
‘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.’
‘I don’t want to lie any more – I felt awful for so long’
Using the same knife he had cut Dawn’s throat with, Rhodes then told the child to stab him with it to support the false account he would later give detectives about her having ‘flipped like the hulk’.
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.’
Child tells court Rhodes’ ‘manipulation and abuse has ruined my life’
The child of Robert and Dawn Rhodes delivered a victim impact statement during the court hearing, setting out how they had been ‘gaslighted’ by Rhodes whose actions had ‘ruined my life’.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, the child told the judge they have been left with lifelong mental health struggles and a scar on their arm inflicted by their own father.
‘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.’
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’.
‘I wish I could say his manipulating and abuse has not ruined my life, but I can’t,’ they told the court.
‘I wish I could say Robert Rhodes did not take everything away from me, but I can’t.’
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.’
‘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’.
Mr Price told jurors there was ‘an abundance of other evidence’ supporting the child’s new account.
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.
Mr Price said: ‘She was ambushed in her kitchen.
‘This killing was then accompanied by a cover-up of the truth.
‘Finally, she can be seen as the victim – not the aggressor’
‘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.
‘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.’
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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