'Do you want to get rid of Mum?' - The plot to kill Dawn Rhodes

On a bank holiday evening in 2016, Robert Rhodes turned to his child and said: "Do you want to get rid of Mum?"

Those words, the child recalled years later, were the start of a plot for Rhodes to kill his wife, Dawn, in their Surrey home and cover up her death as an act of defence - of himself and his child.

For years, Rhodes painted himself as a victim of an attack in the killing he planned and covered up.

Described as swift and protective, jurors heard accounts of a father who moved to protect his child from their knife-wielding mother, who lost her life in the skirmish that ensued.

On 2 June 2016, the child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, went to their mother and said: "I drew a picture for you, close your eyes and hold out your hands."

Then, with the child leaving the room and locking themselves in the bathroom, Rhodes cut his wife's throat with a kitchen knife.

To cover up the killing, Rhodes once again turned to his child, telling them he "needed a favour".

The favour, the child told police in 2022, was to stab their father in the back of the shoulder, with the same knife used to kill Dawn, and then let him cut their arm.

"I didn't want to do any of it. I just felt guilty but I did what I was told," the child said during the police interview.

Despite the child crying and objecting at the time, Rhodes reportedly said: "We've done this now. There's no going back."

The child also told their therapist in 2021 that Rhodes had stabbed himself in the back of the head, causing himself another wound he would claim was caused by his wife.

As they were under 10 years old at the time of the murder, the child bears no criminal responsibility for aiding the attack.

The death of Dawn Rhodes followed the end of a marriage in turmoil, with the couple in the process of separating after revelations of infidelity.

The pair had known each other for more than 20 years, having met when Rhodes was 21 and Mrs Rhodes was 18, the court heard.

Having married in 2003, the couple lived in Epsom and across Surrey, before settling in Wimborne Avenue in Earlswood, near Redhill.

But on Christmas Eve in 2015, Robert Rhodes found out about an affair that Mrs Rhodes had been having with a co-worker.

From that point, Mrs Rhodes would claim to family members that Rhodes would self-harm in front of her and threaten to kill himself.

Internet searches made by Rhodes show him researching methods of suicide, as well as about life insurance.

He told the court: "I didn't see a future in our marriage."

Rhodes also admitted to creating a fake Facebook profile and contacting the wife of Mrs Rhodes' new partner to tell her about the affair.

Later, he would message his wife's partner: "Thank you for screwing my life and wife."

The child continued in their second set of police interviews: "There was a plan and we went through with it. I was told to lie and I did."

But shortly after the killing, the child originally told police how, after another argument between Rhodes and his wife, they had tried to intervene.

As part of the cover-up of their father's attack, the child said their mother picked up a knife and swung it at their arm, delivering the cut to their arm which was, in fact, administered by Rhodes.

The child described Dawn's "rage" and "anger" in a police interview in May 2017, before being told to run upstairs and "lock yourself in the bathroom".

In his own police interview, an emotional Rhodes told officers how he "grabbed the blade" of the knife and "held it as tight as I could".

Weaving his story together, he 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," he added, referring to the comic book superhero.

Rhodes was previously acquitted of murder during a trial at the Old Bailey in May 2017.

Despite the façade put up by the child, witnesses in the trial pointed to signs that the truth lay beneath.

In a conversation while together in a car, when asked about their scar from the incident, the child would tell one adult: "It was the sharp bit [of the knife], that's how dad did it."

The child would later allege that, while on supervised visits, their father would attempt to speak to them, telling them to "stick to the plan".

They would later suggest their father would message them on a phone he had secretly given them, again urging them to continue backing his version of events.

In an unrelated conversation years later, other witnesses revealed how they heard Rhodes tell the child: "Snitches get stitches."

Years passed, and the child continued at school and made new friends, while the truth of what happened continued to eat at them inside.

In November 2021, the child confided the truth in a close friend, who recalled: "I asked if they felt guilty, they said yes - like this guilt had been bothering them. They were distraught."

The following day, the child would then tell their therapist, who alerted police.

Following an appeal to the Court of Appeal in November 2024, Rhodes was retried under the double jeopardy rules.

It meant that, due to the compelling new evidence brought forward by the child, he could be reexamined for the crime he was acquitted of in 2017, as well as charges of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and perjury.

At his new trial, Rhodes would often sit staring ahead, his eyes occasionally darting over to the 12 people hearing his case.

While the court listened to more gruesome details of the murder, Rhodes would hunch over and stare at the floor and, on one occasion when evidence was being read out, he sat shaking his head and mouthing "nope" out into the courtroom.

As jurors convicted him, he stood silently in the dock.

Following the trial, Mrs Rhodes' family - mother Liz Spencer, sister Kirsty Spencer and brother Darren Spencer, paid tribute.

Her mother said: "Dawn was a loving daughter, sister and mother. Being a mother was what brought joy to Dawn.

"During her life, Dawn was looking for someone to build a life with. She was looking for someone to love and be loved by someone to trust and be trusted by and someone to respect and be respected by."

Kirsty added: "Dawn was my sister and I loved her dearly.

"I know my sister would want us to find freedom, a freedom that she was deprived of."

Her brother Darren added: "Dawn was a very capable woman, but unfortunately went through hell in the last few years of her life.

"The pressures on her at the time meant that she wasn't the Dawn we all knew, and the last few times we saw her before she was taken from us, she was at the end of her tether."