A convicted murderer who manipulated his young child to cover up his wife's killing managed to evade prison for years, during which he built a new life with a fiancée more than two decades his junior.
A Decade of Deception and a New Beginning
Robert Rhodes, 53, has now been sentenced to life in prison for the brutal 2016 murder of his wife, Dawn. However, his path to justice was tortuous. He initially walked free from the Old Bailey in 2017 after a trial where he avoided a guilty verdict, largely by involving his then-under-ten-year-old child in a fabricated story.
In the intervening years, Rhodes capitalised on his freedom. He began a relationship with Megan Baldwin, a carer who was 25 at the time of their engagement in July 2019. The couple, with an age gap of over 20 years, purchased a home worth nearly £500,000 in Withleigh, near Tiverton in Devon, and were expecting their first child prior to his rearrest.
The Chilling Crime and a Child's Coerced Cover-Up
The horrific sequence of events began on the evening of 2 June 2016 at the family home in Redhill, Surrey. Emergency services were called by the couple's child to discover Dawn Rhodes lifeless on the kitchen floor, her throat so severely cut that all structures in her neck were severed.
Rhodes claimed his wife had attacked him first and had even turned a knife on their child. The youngster, showing police a deep cut on their arm, corroborated this false narrative, stating their mother had caused the injury. This testimony was pivotal in the first trial's outcome.
The truth only emerged years later when the child, now older, confessed to a counsellor. They revealed that their father had orchestrated the entire cover-up. The injuries on both the child and Rhodes were inflicted on each other as part of a plot 'to get rid of mummy', directly contradicting the initial story that Dawn was the aggressor.
Life in a Rural Village and a Final Reckoning
While living in Devon with his new partner, Rhodes, who worked as a carpenter, was described by neighbours in the small village of Withleigh as "odd" and "not very friendly". His frequently changed hair colour – from bleached blonde to pink and bright green – made him stand out. One neighbour remarked they knew little of his past, a fact that became grimly clear following his arrest in June last year.
Megan Baldwin, who had called Rhodes her "soulmate" in online posts, is now living with her parents. Her mother, Deborah, described the retrial as a "stressful time" for the family. The expensive Devon property now lies empty.
The retrial, driven by the child's courageous revelation, finally delivered justice for Dawn Rhodes, a woman who the court heard had been a victim of domestic violence for years. Robert Rhodes's calculated attempt to use his own child to escape the consequences of his crime ultimately unravelled, leading to a life sentence and the end of the new life he had deceitfully built.
