A husband who killed his wife and manipulated his own child in a “wicked” plot to get away with murder has been jailed for life.
Robert Rhodes, 52, was previously cleared of killing his wife, Dawn, on the grounds of self-defence. But in a retrial in December he was found guilty of her murder after their child came forward with new evidence under double jeopardy rules.
Rhodes cut Dawn’s throat in the kitchen of their family home in 2016 after he found out she was having an affair with a work colleague. He had plotted the murder for months, and duped their child – who was under the age of 10 – into helping him carry out the fatal attack.
Rhodes, a carpenter, then spun a web of lies to pretend he had inflicted the fatal wound to his wife in self-defence and “gaslit” his child into supporting his false story. He was acquitted at an Old Bailey trial in 2017 but, in 2021, his traumatised child told a therapist and then the police what had really happened.
After murdering his wife, Rhodes had stabbed himself and slashed his child’s arm in an attempt to bolster his self-defence claim.
At the Inner London crown court on Friday, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen sentenced Rhodes to life in prison for the murder with a minimum term of 29 and a half years.
Rhodes was also found guilty in December of two counts of perjury for false evidence at his Old Bailey trial and in the family courts in 2018, perverting the course of justice, and child cruelty. The judge imposed concurrent jail sentences for those charges.
He refused to come to court to face his sentencing hearing, and instead sent a message through his lawyer saying he “maintains his innocence”. The judge branded Rhodes a “coward” for refusing to leave his prison cell, saying this added to his existing list of “malignant characteristics”.
“You brutally murdered your estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes,” said the judge, concluding the motive was sexual jealousy. “Your wicked and callous acts have had a devastating and divisive effect on Dawn’s family and your own.”
At the hearing, the child – who cannot be named for legal reasons – told the judge they had 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.
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.”