Man jailed for murder of his wife after re-trial

A MAN who killed his wife and manipulated his own child in a “wicked” plot to get away with murder has been jailed for life — eight years after being cleared of the crime.

- BY TRISTAN KIRK

Robert Rhodes, 52, cut wife Dawn’s throat at their Surrey home in 2016 as their marriage crumbled.

He plotted the murder for months, and duped their child — who was under 10 — into helping him carry out the fatal attack.

Rhodes, a carpenter, then spun a web of lies to pretend he had inflicted the fatal wound to his wife in self-defence and “gaslit” his child into supporting his false story.

He thought he had got away with it when he was acquitted at an Old Bailey trial in 2017.