he was found guilty of her murder<\/a> after their child came forward with new evidence under double jeopardy rules.<\/p>\nRhodes cut Dawn\u2019s 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 \u2013 who was under the age of 10 \u2013 into helping him carry out the fatal attack.<\/p>\n
Rhodes, a carpenter, then spun a web of lies to pretend he had inflicted the fatal wound to his wife in self-defence and \u201cgaslit\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
After murdering his wife, Rhodes had stabbed himself and slashed his child\u2019s arm in an attempt to bolster his self-defence claim.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He refused to come to court to face his sentencing hearing, and instead sent a message through his lawyer saying he \u201cmaintains his innocence\u201d. The judge branded Rhodes a \u201ccoward\u201d for refusing to leave his prison cell, saying this added to his existing list of \u201cmalignant characteristics\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou brutally murdered your estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes,\u201d said the judge, concluding the motive was sexual jealousy. \u201cYour wicked and callous acts have had a devastating and divisive effect on Dawn\u2019s family and your own.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the hearing, the child \u2013 who cannot be named for legal reasons \u2013 told the judge they had been left with lifelong mental health struggles and a scar on their arm inflicted by their own father. \u201cWhile the symptoms can be managed, the traumatic experiences Robert Rhodes put me through will never go away,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Dawn\u2019s mother, Liz Spencer, told the court in an impact statement: \u201cI have waited nearly 10 years for this result. I don\u2019t look upon the result as justice, but I feel for the first time my daughter\u2019s voice is being heard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A husband who killed his wife and manipulated his own child in a \u201cwicked\u201d plot to get away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-700198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115905606689168421","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}