After grooming his child into covering up his sick crimes for nearly a decade, Robert Rhodes has finally been sentenced for brutally murdering his wife after escaping justice for years
He almost got away with murder, but his web of lies has finally fallen apart around him. Robert Rhodes, 52, has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 29-and-a-half years after being found guilty of brutally murdering his wife, Dawn Rhodes, nearly a decade after he walked free during his first trial. The killer cowardly refused to turn up to court today to learn his fate.
For years, Rhodes managed to keep his crime hidden after he manipulated his young child into helping him cover it up. The twisted manouvere allowed him to evade a guilty verdict at an Old Bailey trial in 2017 when he was first accused of murder, but everything changed when, years later, the child revealed the sinister truth.
The couple’s marriage had crumbled in late 2015, after Rhodes discovered Dawn had been having an affair with a work colleague. The following year, the warped husband meticulously planned his estranged wife’s murder, roping their youngster, who was under the age of 10 at the time, into helping him. During his first trial, Rhodes, from Withleigh in Devon, painted Dawn out to be abusive, claiming that he killed her after she had attacked him and injured their child. But it all turned out to be lies – with Dawn herself suffering years of domestic abuse.
READ MORE: Robert Rhodes gets LIFE for killing wife as child reveals ‘plan to murder mummy’
On the evening of June 2 2016, the couple’s child – who cannot be named for legal reasons – rang 999. When police arrived to the family home in Redhill, Surrey, they discovered Dawn lying lifeless on the kitchen floor. Her throat had been cut so severely that all the structures in her neck had been severed.
Rhodes told officers that his wife had hit him twice in the back of the head. He also claimed that during a heated argument in the kitchen, Dawn had picked up a knife and aimed it towards the child, before he told them to go upstairs. The youngster showed cops a deep cut on their arm which they claimed had been caused by their mother.
In police interview footage that now makes for deeply disturbing viewing, Rhodes breaks down in tears as he recalls that night. He says that he managed to prize the knife from Dawn before she ‘came at’ him in a rage. He told how he swung at her with the blade, and it made contact with her neck, before he ran upstairs and called the police. In reality, his account couldn’t be further from the truth.
At his first trial, Rhodes claimed that Dawn had come at him “flipping like a Hulk”. To back up his bogus claims, the dad had actually stabbed himself and inflicted a cut on the child’s arm – wounds he blamed on his wife. In fact, the murder plot all began with one horrifying sentence: “Do you want to get rid of mum?”
Before the killing, the child had been instructed by their father to tell Dawn to close her eyes and wait to be handed a picture. “I drew a picture for you, close your eyes and hold out your hands,” the court heard the child was told to say. The youngster then left the room and locked themselves in the bathroom, while Rhodes brutally came at his wife with a knife as she stood with her eyes closed – having no idea of the impending attack. The child called 999 after the murder, at 7.34pm.
In 2021, after keeping their father’s secret for years, the child went to see a therapist and bravely opened up. Eventually, they told police the dark truth: Rhodes had coached them before and after the stabbing to support his version of events. “The new evidence that came from the child witness was profoundly shocking and showed just how much careful planning Robert Rhodes had put into murdering his wife,” said prosecutor Libby Clark.
After the murder, Robert told his child he “needed a favour” – the sick favour in question was to force the child to stab him in the back of the arm. As they weeped in horror, their heartless father replied, “We’ve done this now. There’s no going back.” The dad’s sick manipulation did not stop there: while he was on bail for his wife’s murder in 2016 and 2017, he covertly stayed in touch with the child – ensuring that his crime remained covered up.
The killer gave them instructions to stick to the plan, and manipulating and grooming them while behind bars by using a hidden phone at his mother’s house to leave messages for the youngster, reminding them about the agreement they had made. Witnesses claimed that during conversation, Rhodes would warn the child “Snitches get stitches”.
Given the child was under 10 at the time, they bear no criminal responsibility for aiding the murder – but the guilt they lived with became unbearable. In 2022, they confessed to the police what their father had done, saying in an interview: “I didn’t want to do any of it. I just felt guilty but I did what I was told.”
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.”
They also 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.”
Whilst the child spent years wracked with guilt, in the intervening years before his second trial, Rhodes built himself a new life, with a partner more than 20 years younger than him. Before his second arrest, he had bought a new home worth nearly £500,000 with his young fiancée, and they were expecting their first child, the Daily Mail reports.
Around 150 miles from where he had taken Dawn’s life in the small and sleepy village of Withleigh, Devon, which has a population of around 200, Rhodes must have stuck out with his dyed bright green hair and much younger partner. In 2024, when he was detained by the police again for murdering his wife, he told officers, “I kind of thought this would come back to bite me”. Rhodes was also found guilty of two counts of perjury for giving false evidence, perverting the course of justice, and child cruelty.
Prosecutor Libby Clark also pointed out the “immense bravery” it took for the child to come forward after years of grooming and abuse. Rhodes “continued with his web of lies over the intervening years. It is thanks to the immense bravery of the child in coming forward to explain exactly what happened that night that Robert Rhodes has finally been brought to justice for the murder of Dawn, something he mistakenly thought he could get away with. None of us can even begin to imagine what Rhodes has put the child through over a period of many years. Now though, as a result of their evidence, Dawn can now be remembered by everyone in the right way – as a victim of her violent partner.”
Rhodes’ murderous violence came after a long spell of turmoil for Dawn. The killer had abused and controlled his wife for years, at times harming himself in front of her and threatening to take his own life, the BBC reports. The couple had met when they were very young, Dawn only 18 and Rhodes 21, and had known each other for two decades.
In a tribute, Dawn’s brother Darren said: “Dawn was a very capable woman, but unfortunately went through hell in the last few years of her life. The pressures on her at the time meant that she wasn’t the Dawn we all knew, and the last few times we saw her before she was taken from us, she was at the end of her tether.”
And at today’s sentencing, Dawn’s 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.”
Detective chief inspector Kimball Edey, from Surrey and Sussex Police major crime team, 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.”
For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk. If you or your family have lost a friend or family member through fatal domestic abuse, AAFDA (Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse) can offer specialist and expert support and advocacy. For more info visit www.aafda.org.uk.
