Jeremy Rickards, 65, was found dead behind the property in St Martin’s Road, Canterbury, on July 11 last year, and his wife Maureen has now been jailed for life Maureen Rickards was arrested for fraud, and then police found her husbands body
An aspiring barrister murdered her husband and hid his body in the bush of their garden.
Jeremy Rickards, 65, was found dead behind their house on St Martin’s Road on July 11 last year, and now his wife Maureen has been slapped with a life sentence.
Maureen, 50, was found guilty of his murder on March 13 after a trial at Canterbury Crown Court. On Wednesday April 9, she was handed a life sentence at the same court and told she’ll have to serve a minimum of 22 years behind bars.
Kent Police began hunting for Mr Rickards after a family member reported him missing on July 5. Maureen told the cops that he had jetted off to Saudi Arabia for work and died there, however the police could not find any evidence of him leaving the country.
A deep dive into his mobile phone revealed he had last topped it up on June 8, marking the final record of him being alive. The search for the missing man also involved checking out his bank card usage, which led to CCTV footage of Maureen spending with it in shops between June 20 and 30.
She was arrested for fraud on July 11 and, as the police searched her house, they discovered Jeremy Rickards’ body in the garden.
He had been stabbed five times in the chest, and also had non-fatal injuries that were inflicted about ten days before he died, plus others believed to have been caused at least five weeks prior.
Maureen Rickards was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder, triggering a homicide investigation.
The investigation revealed that Jeremy Rickards had been spotted with facial bruising at a Canterbury pub on May 17, where he told an employee he’d been in a car crash. Video footage from Maureen’s phone, dated late May to early June, captured her berating her husband and the sounds of physical abuse.
On June 26, gardeners were called to the property and Maureen requested they leave the cut grass under some bushes. This is where Jeremy Rickards’ remains were later discovered.
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”.
Detective Inspector Colin McKeen from Kent Police didn’t mince his words when he said: “Maureen Rickards carried out the vicious murder of her husband Jeremy before attempting to hide his body in their garden. She then sought to frustrate the investigation and has repeatedly refused to admit what she did, forcing a trial at which a jury saw through her deception.”
He added: “She will now serve many years in prison. I cannot imagine how difficult this investigation and trial has been for Mr Rickards’ family and I only hope that the conclusion of the case gives them some comfort as they continue to grieve.”
