Maureen Rickards: Wife who hid husband’s body in garden convicted

A woman who killed her husband and hid his body in their garden after “terrorising” him for years has been found guilty of murder.

Maureen Rickards, 50, stabbed to death Jeremy Rickards, whom she was married to for 27 years.

The 65-year-old’s remains were discovered at their Canterbury address by police on 11 July, 2024, six days after he was reported missing by his step-daughter.

Rickards had killed him before initially storing his body in a cupboard in her bedroom. She then wrapped it in bin bags, put it in a large holdall and moved it to the garden, Canterbury Crown Court heard.

James Fisher, senior crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), told the BBC Mr Rickards was the “victim of an abusive relationship”.

“She subjected her partner to a campaign of sustained abuse,” he said.

“The attacks on Jeremy became more severe in the run-up to his murder, leaving him frail, battered and bruised.”

Rickards even recorded herself committing the assaults at times, Mr Fisher added.

A postmortem of Mr Rickards’ body showed he had been strangled weeks before his death and was also recovering from recent rib fractures, according to the CPS.

Mr Fisher said Rickards had not shown any remorse for the murder.

“She has never given an explanation as to why it happened and what went on previously,” he said.

The prosecutor said investigators had to unpick a “web of lies” by Rickards, including her claims his injuries came from a car accident.

During cross-examination, Rickards told jurors she was being “set up”.

“Something scary is going on,” she said. “This is spooky, this is scary.”

Ahmed Osman, who has lived in the Rickard’s previous property on St Martin’s Road since December, told the BBC he found out what had happened three months after moving in.

“It was bad news,” he said. “A big crime [happened] here”.

Andrea Whitfield, a resident of the road for some 15 years, called the murder “unsettling” for the whole community.

“Its incredible to imagine that happened right on our doorstep,” she said.

“We always think of a woman as being a victim [of domestic violence], but unfortunately in this case… it was a man.”

Opening its case in court, the CPS said Rickards had used her husband’s phone to send messages on 27 June to both herself and her daughter to say he had gone to Saudi Arabia.

Rickards sent her daughter a text the next day claiming he had taken his own life.

It said: “Jeremy is dead. He took his own life… there were witnesses. I was asleep.”

Her daughter replied to Mr Rickards: “Mum said last night, before I had to block her again, that you’re dead and you killed yourself.

“So I don’t know if this is really you or just her having taken over your phone again.”

Mr Fisher told the BBC Mr Rickards’ daughter found the messages “very strange”, particularly as they were not in his normal wording.

She then reported Mr Rickards missing.

When the authorities recovered Mr Rickards’ phone, the messages had been deleted.

Mr Rickards was killed sometime after 7 June 2024, according to the prosecution. His body was hidden under grass cuttings in the garden.

Mr Fisher said investigators found Rickards had used her husband’s bank card after he was reported missing.

Police initially arrested her for fraud, he said.

During a search of her property, one police officer said they could smell a decomposing body, said Mr Fisher.

He told the BBC that since Mr Rickards’ body was found some time after his death, the prosecution had used an expert entomologist to determine when he had died through the presence of insects in his decomposing body.

A neighbour, Oksana Kandaurova, told the court she noticed a strange smell while tidying up her own garden some days before a family event on 14 June.

“It wasn’t like anything else, like the smell from rubbish or an animal corpse,” she said.

“It was the first time I had felt such a smell.”

Ms Kandaurova said she avoided going into the garden after that because of the smell, which she described as “very unpleasant”.

Philip Blunden, a domestic violence specialist at the CPS, said cases where domestic abuse led to murder were “thankfully relatively rare”.

But he added: “We’ve all got to be vigilant.”

Rickards, who did not react when the verdict was read out in court, will be sentenced on 9 April.