Robert Rhodes was cleared previously but convicted after retrial during which child came forward with new evidence
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.
