Surrey Man Found Guilty Of Wife’s Murder 8 Years After Acquittal

A Surrey carpenter who was acquitted eight years ago of murdering his wife has now been found guilty in a rare double jeopardy retrial after new evidence from the couple’s child revealed a long-hidden truth.

Robert Rhodes, 52, was convicted on Friday at Inner London Crown Court of murdering his estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes, at their family home in Redhill, Surrey, in June 2016. He was also found guilty of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice, and two counts of perjury.

Rhodes had originally stood trial at the Old Bailey in 2017, where he persuaded jurors that he acted in self-defence during a violent argument. That account has now been exposed as a fabrication.

The case was reopened after the couple’s child, who was younger than 10 at the time of the killing, came forward in 2021 with a new, detailed account that contradicted Rhodes’s version of events. Investigators were told that Rhodes had manipulated the child into lying to police and had staged the scene to support his false claim of self-defence.

Both Rhodes and the child were found with knife wounds at the scene in 2016. Those injuries were initially presented as having been inflicted by Ms Rhodes. But the child later disclosed that after killing his wife by slitting her throat, Rhodes deliberately injured himself and ordered the child to inflict further wounds on his back. He then cut the child’s arm so deeply that it required stitches under general anaesthetic.

The new evidence met the strict threshold required to overturn an acquittal under the double jeopardy rule, which permits a retrial only when fresh and compelling material emerges after a defendant has been cleared of a serious offence.

Following the retrial, the jury unanimously found Rhodes guilty of murder and the related charges.

He is due to be sentenced on January 16, 2026.