Husband Murdered Wife After Recruiting Their Young Child To Help ‘Get Rid Of Mummy’

Crazy story out of Redhill in Surrey involving a man who was cleared of murdering his wife in 2016, but is now facing a life sentence after their child revealed the truth about what happened.

Robert Rhodes, 52, slashed his wife Dawn’s throat at their home in Surrey on June 2, 2016, but walked free from the Old Bailey 11 months later after claiming he acted in self-defence.

A retrial at Inner London Crown Court in December 2025 has found Rhodes guilty of murder after hearing the new evidence from the child, and other evidence that included internet searches by Rhodes for poisons and spyware. Didn’t they have those searches handy the first time around?

The young child was then only in primary school when he described how his mum had attacked him and his dad with the knife, prompting Robert Rhodes to disarm her and kill her in self-defence.

In late 2021, the child, by then a teenager, became “plagued and grievously burdened by the guilt” and decided to tell the truth to police: that Robert Rhodes had recruited their help in order to kill Dawn.

Here’s what really happened, according to the new testimony by the child; Days before the murder, they were out in the car when his dad suddenly pulled over and asked him: ‘Do you want to get rid of mummy?’

The child agreed, for whatever reason, and then the two of them hatched a plan.

The child, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, explained: ‘He said, “right, well, me and her can be talking in the kitchen”, and I was like, “OK”.’

‘I think I said that “I will take in a picture and tell her to close her eyes and hold out her hands”. I think that was my idea. And obviously he agreed.

‘He gave me the story that I had to stick to, that she attacked him with a knife and that I put my arm out and she hit me and that she was violent towards him and stabbed him and that he accidentally killed her.

‘That was the plan.’

Describing the night their mum died, the child said: ‘He told me it was happening that night.

‘I think I went, “Oh Mummy I drew a picture for you”, then dad looked at me.

‘I told her to close her eyes and then hold out her hands.’

The child then left the room as his dad picked up the knife.

‘I went into the living room and then heard sounds. It was like if you gurgle water – that but quieter.’

‘If you’re struggling to cough, like that sound as well. It was like those merged together. It sounded wet, if that makes sense. It sounded like there was liquid.’

After hearing something ‘really heavy falling on the floor’,  his dad called him into the room and told him to stab him in the back in order to create the wound that Dawn supposedly inflicted in the original story. The child’s dad would then slash his arm afterwards.

The child said Rhodes handed him the knife and said: ‘I need you to put this here and push as hard as you can.’

‘He told me that he needed me. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to get cut and he was trying to tell me we have both done it, you need to, otherwise he’d go to prison.’

Asked why their story had changed, the child said: ‘Just because I don’t want to lie any more, because it’s not making me feel any better.

‘It has made me feel awful for so long. I don’t want to feel like that anymore, and I want something to be done.’

Incredible. How mental would you have to be to come up with a scheme of that nature, let alone have your primary school-aged child assist you in it? What’s incredible is that he actually encouraged the kid to have some input into the murder itself, which might have been the trait of a good parent, if it didn’t involve a plan to stab Dawn Rhodes to death and make it look like self-defence.

In addition to being found guilty of murder, Rhodes was also convicted of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and two counts of perjury.

Hopefully this goes some way to alleviating the child of its guilt. Of course, it will be tough to forgive themselves completely given that they tricked their mum into closing her eyes before being stabbed to death, but at least the man who manipulated the child is finally facing justice for it.

Prosecutor John Price KC told the new jury at Inner London Crown Court: ‘She was ambushed in her kitchen.

‘We submit that this killing was then accompanied by a cover-up of the truth.

‘This was designed to make it appear that it was she – Dawn Rhodes – the dead woman who could not now speak who had taken up a knife.

‘In fact, as her own child has now confessed, Dawn Rhodes had been tricked by that little child to close her eyes and hold out her hands.

‘As part of that cover up, the knife which the defendant had used on his wife, was then used on his own child.

‘We further submit that this cover-up of the truth of how Dawn Rhodes died was further sustained by him by lies he told on oath.

‘And this cover-up succeeded for a time.

‘Robert Rhodes had got away with murder, we submit, that is until a teenager, plagued and grievously burdened by the guilt they felt by the great wrong which had been done to their mother and which the child knew they had helped bring about, decided it was time for the truth to emerge – whatever might be the cost for them.’

While giving evidence, the teen was pressed by Rhodes’ barrister Nina Grahame KC about there being ‘no such plan and no such discussion’.

But they insisted: ‘There was a plan, and we went through with it. I was told to lie and I did.’

They told jurors Rhodes had poisoned them against Dawn and added: ‘I was told that if I didn’t say what I was supposed to say [Dad] would go to prison and I’d never see him again.

‘I was made to feel like if that were to happen it would be all my fault and I would lose my mum and my dad over the same event.’

I guess Robert Rhodes didn’t count on his child growing up and developing a conscious. Well done to the kid on doing the right thing. A lifetime of therapy sessions to look forward to, no doubt.

Rhodes be sentenced on January 16.

For the case in which ChatGPT ‘coached’ a man to kill his mum, click HERE. Mental.