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 selfdefence 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.