A Devon man who brutally murdered his wife and then spent years grooming his own child to help conceal the crime has finally been sentenced to life in prison.
A Web of Lies Unravels After a Decade
Robert Rhodes, 52, from Withleigh in Devon, will serve a minimum of 29-and-a-half years for the murder of his wife, Dawn Rhodes, in June 2016. He had previously walked free from the Old Bailey in 2017 after a trial where he successfully portrayed his victim as the aggressor, a narrative he had forced his young child to support.
The couple's marriage had deteriorated in late 2015 after Rhodes discovered Dawn was having an affair. By the following year, he had formulated a chilling plan. The court heard that he roped his child, who was under the age of 10 at the time, into the plot, beginning by asking them: "Do you want to get rid of mum?"
The Chilling Night of the Murder
On the evening of 2 June 2016, at the family home in Redhill, Surrey, the child was instructed to tell Dawn to close her eyes for a surprise. As she stood unsuspecting, Rhodes attacked her with a knife, severing the structures in her neck. The child, having locked themselves in the bathroom, called 999 at 7.34pm.
When police arrived, Rhodes claimed Dawn had attacked him and injured the child during a violent argument. The youngster, following their father's coaching, showed officers a cut on their arm which they said was caused by their mother. In a 2017 trial, Rhodes described Dawn as "flipping like a Hulk," and was acquitted.
In reality, Rhodes had inflicted the wounds on both himself and the child to support his false story. After the murder, he told his weeping child he "needed a favour," forcing them to stab him in the arm, before coldly stating, "We've done this now. There's no going back."
Years of Grooming and a Brave Confession
Rhodes' manipulation continued for years. Even while on bail and during his first trial, he covertly stayed in contact with the child, using a hidden phone at his mother's house to leave messages reinforcing their "agreement" and warning that "snitches get stitches."
Meanwhile, Rhodes built a new life in Devon with a partner more than 20 years his junior, buying a £500,000 home and expecting a child. All the while, his own child was wracked with guilt. In 2021, they began seeing a therapist and eventually bravely confessed to police in 2022, stating: "I didn't want to do any of it. I just felt guilty but I did what I was told."
This new evidence led to Rhodes' re-arrest in 2024. When detained, he told officers, "I kind of thought this would come back to bite me." He was subsequently found guilty of murder, two counts of perjury, perverting the course of justice, and child cruelty.
Prosecutor Libby Clark praised the "immense bravery" of the child, whose testimony finally revealed Dawn as a victim of years of domestic abuse and coercive control, not the villain Rhodes had painted her to be. Detective Chief Inspector Kimball Edey said Rhodes' actions were "simply despicable," noting he had "irreparably damaged" his child's life alongside taking Dawn's.
Dawn's brother, Darren, said in a tribute that his sister had "gone through hell" in her final years and was "at the end of her tether" due to the pressures she faced.
