A 52-year-old Man, Robert Rhodes, From Withleigh

A 52-year-old man, Robert Rhodes, from Withleigh, Devon, has been convicted of murdering his wife, Dawn Rhodes, eight years after originally being cleared of the crime. The case was reopened and retried after new evidence came from the couple’s child — who was coerced into supporting a false story at the time of the killing but later revealed the truth in therapy.

• On 2 June 2016, police were called to the Rhodes family home in Redhill, Surrey, after a 999 call made by the couple’s young child. Officers found Dawn Rhodes dead in the kitchen with her throat cut and both her husband and their child with wounds. At that time, Rhodes claimed he had acted in self-defence during a violent incident.
  Rhodes was charged with murder, but a jury at the Old Bailey in 2017 acquitted him, accepting his claim that Dawn had attacked him and their child.
  Years later, the family’s child — who was under 10 at the time of the murder — told a therapist that Rhodes had manipulated and coached them to support his story, revealing the killing was deliberate and part of Rhodes’s plan.
  This shocking disclosure prompted an appeal under the UK’s double jeopardy law, allowing a retrial because of compelling new evidence. The acquittal was quashed by the Court of Appeal, and the case was retried at Inner London Crown Court in December 2025.
  The retrial jury unanimously found Rhodes guilty of murder, ending a long chapter in the case. He was also convicted of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice, and perjury for his conduct at both the original 2017 trial and subsequent family court proceedings.
  Rhodes will be sentenced to life imprisonment when he appears before Mrs Justice Ellenbogen at Inner London Crown Court, with the judge to decide the minimum term before he can be considered for release.
  Prosecutors described the case as meticulously planned and cruel. Rhodes included the child in the cover-up — even inflicting injuries on both himself and the child to make the story seem like self-defence — and continued to groom the child for years.
  Libby Clark, representing the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), praised the bravery of the child whose evidence made the retrial and conviction possible, saying it exposed the true nature of Rhodes’s actions. The case highlights how the UK’s double jeopardy rule can be set aside when compelling new evidence emerges after an acquittal, which is rare and legally significant.
  It also underscores the tragic impact of domestic abuse and manipulation within families, especially involving children used as witnesses or pawns in covers-ups.
  The conviction brings a measure of justice to the victim’s family after nearly a decade of uncertainty.
• It demonstrates how new evidence — especially involving vulnerable witnesses — can reopen closed cases even years later.