A violent husband who was acquitted of murdering his wife after ‘manipulating’ their young child to cover for him has finally been convicted in an extraordinary double jeopardy case.
Robert Rhodes was today found guilty of slaughtering wife Dawn Rhodes in a ‘bloodbath’, eight years after previously convincing jurors he slit her throat in self defence after she attacked him.
His 2017 acquittal was in part due to the testimony of his child, who said they were attacked by their mother.
But years later the child – whose name, age and sex cannot be reported for legal reasons – confessed to a counsellor that it was the father who was responsible.
The child said their own injuries, and those of Rhodes, were inflicted on each other as part of a plot cooked up by the father to ‘get rid of mummy’, rather than by the mother herself.
The bombshell new evidence resulted in the acquittal being quashed and the police investigation reopening.
Detectives said Rhodes continued to believe he had ‘got away with murder’ until he was re-arrested in July last year, muttering to police as he was detained: ‘I kind of thought this would come back to bite me.’
Carpenter Rhodes – who had started a new life with a woman 20 years his junior – now faces a significant jail term after being convicted at Inner London Crown Court following an extraordinary trial.
Jurors deliberated for more than 22 hours before finding him guilty of murder, child cruelty, perverting the course of justice, and two counts of perjury.
Rhodes showed little emotion but sighed and unbuttoned his jacket as he sat down after the unanimous verdicts were returned.
High Court judge, the Honourable Mrs Justice Ellenbogen, said: ‘This has been a difficult and upsetting case.’ Rhodes will be sentenced next year.
Libby Clark, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the CPS, said: ‘This is the man who thought – until he was re arrested on the fourth of June of 2024 – that he’d got away with murder.
‘I do wonder if he – knowing what we know now – wondered if the child would come forward and set the record straight, so to speak.
‘I also think how extraordinary it was, just how awful … what he did to the child.
‘I think what a risk that man took. He must have been desperate to kill Dawn Rhodes, to involve their young child.
‘This is so unusual – this is a completely new account from a witness whose evidence was before the court, albeit in the form of a (video) interview and simply accepted, not cross-examined.’
In a statement after the verdict, Dawn’s sister Kirsty said: ‘There cannot be justice for Dawn because she is dead.
‘The only acknowledgment I make is that for the first time in years, Dawn’s voice has finally been heard.
‘The events of her death have made it difficult to navigate a family life, but we have found a path. We will continue to love and be loved for the future evermore.
‘I know my sister would want us to find freedom, a freedom that she was deprived of.’
Her brother Darren said: ‘There are no words we can use to make sense of this horrific situation.
‘We struggle to comprehend the mindset of an individual so twisted as to even contemplate this as a solution to his own unhappiness, implicating a child under 10 in the process.
‘The lack of foresight and disregard not only for his own family but also for the wider, extended family is beyond belief.’
He added: ‘If anything can be learnt from this, it’s that I wish for any woman going through what Dawn went through is to have easier access and knowledge of the support available for women involved in abusive and controlling relationships.’
The Rhodes’ marriage broke down in 2015 after he discovered she was having an affair with a colleague.
The couple then had a row at their home in Redhill, Surrey, on June 2, 2016 after IT analyst Dawn confronted her estranged husband about his new relationship.
Detective Chief Inspector Kimball Edey, of Surrey Police, said Rhodes began to undermine his wife, by giving the child a mobile phone and turning up at school unannounced.
He said: ‘He has manipulated, groomed the child and completely undermined the relationship they had with their mother. (The child) is basically in his (Rhodes’) thrall.
‘His intention is to destroy the reputation of Dawn Rhodes and the relationship with the child… He manipulates others to see him as the victim in this.’
Police were told in November 2021 that the child changed their account of what happened during a counselling session.
DCI Edey said: ‘The child has never tried in any way to excuse what they did. (It is) remarkable for the child to come forward and to say this, from a personal perspective, enormous bravery.’
He added: ‘We must be very clear, there is no blame (on the child.)’
Prosecutors said that Rhodes deliberately slashed his child’s arm, and in turn asked the child to cut his back while he cut his own head, telling police the injuries were caused by his wife in an attempt to cover up the murder.
Police said Rhodes ‘groomed’ and ‘manipulated’ the child to turn against Dawn in the weeks before he struck, taking advantage of a breakdown in the relationship between mother and child.
The child’s evidence was that they came up with the idea to tell Dawn to close her eyes as they had a picture for her – a ‘distraction’ giving Rhodes the opportunity to slash his estranged wife’s throat from behind.
Police believe the child was completely unaware of exactly what went on when Rhodes struck. The child’s evidence was that they were not aware that they were to be injured by their father or that they were to injure him.
The child was under the age of ten at the time, and therefore below the age of criminal responsibility.
Mrs Clark said: ‘The child was not responsible for those acts – the father manipulated the child. I am sure that that must have been extraordinarily hard for an intelligent young person to actually assimilate and learn to live with, and has caused that child a lot of problems.’
She said the case was particularly ‘awful’ for Dawn’s family, who had to hear Rhodes’ lies about his estranged wife and what he alleged was her violent behaviour in the moments before her death.
‘Dawn was portrayed as the aggressor, somebody who was snarling and wielding a knife and injured the child and injured Robert Rhodes,’ she said.
‘They had to listen to that, they’ve lived with that, and it must have been incredibly difficult.
‘Now they can see Dawn properly as a victim of crime, the victim of a murder by Robert Rhodes.’
A change in UK law of so-called double jeopardy cases means a defendant can now be retried for an offence they have previously been acquitted of if there is compelling new evidence.
Following his previous acquittal, Rhodes, 53, got engaged to Megan Baldwin, then aged 25, in July 2019. She has since had a baby.
The carer, who is 20 years his junior, called Rhodes her ‘soulmate’ in videos posted online before he was rearrested, along with photos of his name written in sand and a comparison of their astrological charts to highlight how well-matched they were.
Her mother Deborah said it was a ‘stressful time’ for the family during his retrial. Ms Baldwin, who is living at her parents’ home in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, declined to comment.
Meanwhile Rhodes’ home in Withleigh, near Tiverton in Devon, lies empty following his arrest in June last year. He has been in custody ever since.
His blue works van was parked alongside the property as was another Audi to the front but inside it looked as if tools had literally been downed when the police arrived when the Mail visited last week.
Rhodes’ immediate neighbour declined to comment.
But others in the village of around 200 residents described him as ‘not very friendly’ and even just ‘odd’ with his dyed hair.
One said: ‘One week it was bleached blonde, another pink and yet another it was bright green.
‘Perhaps he was trying to disguise himself but it only made him stand out even more down here.
‘This is rural mid Devon and Withleigh is a tiny little village. Everyone knows one another but he didn’t really mix in.
‘I think I met him once at a village event but he didn’t really have a lot of say for himself.’
Another neighbour said: ‘He was staying there with another woman and they would come in and go between working on the house. I think they were staying there although it wasn’t particularly homely.’
A third said: ‘He told me he was a carpenter and he had moved down from Surrey. None of us knew anything much about him and certainly nothing about his past. Now it’s obvious why.’
It is believed neither he nor his partner have any previous connection to the area. They kept dogs there and after first introducing himself to a neighbour he promptly fell out with them soon after.
The neighbour said: ‘He came over to say hello when he first moved in. Then the next time we saw him he was accusing our dog of having strayed into his house and eaten biscuits which were up on the top.
Rhodes had advertised on the My Builder website across the wider area of Devon, in Barnstaple, Chulmleigh and Cullompton, around where he gave his location as Tiverton.
Rhodes paid £450,000 for his new home in March 2021 and his is the only name on the title register.
