In a case that has gripped the United Kingdom and stunned legal observers, Robert Rhodes, a 52-year-old carpenter from Surrey, has been found guilty of murdering his estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes, in a rare retrial—eight years after he was first acquitted of the crime. The verdict, delivered at Inner London Crown Court on December 12, 2025, follows the emergence of extraordinary new evidence: the couple’s own child, under the age of ten at the time of the killing, came forward with a harrowing account that exposed the murder as a calculated and chillingly manipulative act.
The events date back to June 2, 2016, when Dawn Rhodes was found dead in the kitchen of the family home in Redhill, Surrey. Her throat had been slit, and both Robert Rhodes and their young child were also discovered with knife wounds. At the time, Rhodes claimed he had acted in self-defence during a violent altercation, painting himself as a father forced to protect his child from a knife-wielding wife. The story was convincing enough that, in 2017, a jury at the Old Bailey acquitted him of murder, accepting that he had acted out of fear for his life and that of his child.
But as reported by BBC News and Sky News, the truth was far more sinister. The couple’s marriage had been unraveling after Robert Rhodes discovered, on Christmas Eve 2015, that Dawn was having an affair with a work colleague. The two had been married since 2003 and had spent over two decades together, but the revelation marked a turning point. According to evidence presented at trial, Rhodes began researching suicide methods and life insurance, created fake social media profiles to harass Dawn’s new partner, and sent messages such as, "Thank you for screwing my life and wife."
On that fateful bank holiday in 2016, the murder plot began in earnest. The child later recalled Rhodes asking, "Do you want to get rid of Mum?"—a question that would haunt them for years. The plan, as orchestrated by Rhodes, involved the child approaching Dawn with a drawing, telling her to "close your eyes and hold out your hands," and then leaving the room. In those moments, Rhodes attacked his wife, cutting her throat with a kitchen knife. The child, terrified and manipulated, locked themselves in the bathroom.
But the horror did not end there. Determined to stage the scene as self-defence, Rhodes coerced the child to stab him in the back and then allowed him to cut the child’s arm so deeply that it required stitches under general anaesthetic. Both wounds were intended to support the fabricated story that Dawn had attacked her husband and child in a fit of rage. During police interviews, the pair initially maintained this false narrative, with the child describing their mother’s supposed "anger" and "rage," and Rhodes likening her to "the Hulk." In his own words, as reported by BBC News, Rhodes told officers, "I was scared, and it takes a lot to scare me. It's like one minute she [Dawn] is fine and the next minute she's like the Hulk."
For years, the child bore the immense burden of this deception. Rhodes, meanwhile, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the cover-up would hold. During supervised visits while on bail, he told the child they had "got some things wrong" and continued to coach them to "stick to the plan." He even hid a phone at his mother’s house, using it to leave messages for the child that reinforced the false story. In an especially chilling moment, witnesses recalled Rhodes telling the child, "Snitches get stitches." As the child later told police, "I didn't want to do any of it. I just felt guilty but I did what I was told."
The child’s ordeal finally came to light in 2021, when, during therapy, they confessed the true sequence of events. The therapist reported this revelation to police, leading to a fresh investigation and ultimately an appeal to the Court of Appeal. Under the double jeopardy rule, a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime unless new and compelling evidence emerges after an acquittal. The child’s testimony met this threshold, paving the way for a retrial that legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg described as "very unusual," noting, "I don't think there's been a case that I can think of where a witness who was present at the scene of the crime has come forward and given evidence, which has led to a conviction."
At the retrial, the jury heard in painstaking detail how Rhodes manipulated and groomed his own child to participate in the crime and its cover-up. Detective Chief Inspector Kimball Edey of Surrey Police summed up the case in stark terms: "During the first trial, Dawn was portrayed as the villain but had actually been a victim of domestic abuse and coercive control at the hands of her husband for years. The fact that Rhodes not only murdered his wife in cold blood but then manipulated and groomed his own child to play a part in his evil scheme and cover-up what he had done is simply despicable—not only did he take a life; he irreparably damaged another, as well as the lives of everyone else who loved Dawn."
The Crown Prosecution Service praised the "immense bravery" of the child in coming forward. Libby Clark, specialist prosecutor for the CPS’s south east area complex casework unit, stated, "The new evidence that came from the child witness was profoundly shocking and showed just how much careful planning Robert Rhodes had put into murdering his wife. It is thanks to the immense bravery of the child in coming forward to explain exactly what happened that night that Robert Rhodes has finally been brought to justice for the murder of Dawn, something he mistakenly thought he could get away with."
Rhodes was found guilty not only of murder but also of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice, and two counts of perjury. He will be sentenced on January 16, 2026. The child, who was under the age of criminal responsibility at the time, bears no criminal liability for their coerced involvement.
Dawn Rhodes’s family, devastated by the years of deceit and loss, paid tribute to her character and memory. Her mother, Liz Spencer, and sister, Kirsty Spencer, said, "We grieved for Dawn in the shadows with the support of only a few who saw through his [Rhodes'] deceit. She was everything to us and he is nothing, she will be celebrated and he will be forgotten. Dawn was caring, capable and strong. She would do anything for anyone and was loved by both friends and family." Her brother, Darren, added, "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 tragic story of Dawn Rhodes stands as a testament to the devastating consequences of domestic abuse, coercive control, and manipulation. It also highlights the rare but vital power of the justice system to revisit old verdicts in the face of new, compelling evidence—however painful that process may be for all involved.
