A 50-year-old English woman, Maureen Rickards, was found guilty of murdering her husband, Jeremy Rickards, back in June 2024. After stabbing his husband to death, Maureen then stuffed his body inside a duffel bag, only to hide it in their backyard.
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According to the Crown Prosecution Service, the Rickards lived in a Canterbury, Kent building alongside other tenants. Their neighbors would oftentimes see Jeremy with several injuries. Reportedly, when asked about them, he said on one occasion that "Maureen was in a bad mood with me."
Before he went missing on June 7, witnesses said that they saw Jeremy with a cut on his forehead. His eyes and ears were bruised and they encouraged him to seek medical treatment at a local hospital. However, that never came to be. Due to the estate of his body and by analyzing the presence of insects, authorities determined that Maureen stabbed Jeremy to death sometime between June 8 and June 26.
After he was murdered, a tenant heard something heavy being hauled down the stairs. Subsequently, that same tenant saw Maureen Rickards in their backyard. Evidence showed that, before moving her dead husband to the backyard, she had stored his body in a cupboard. Pools of blood were found inside it.
Maureen would then remove Jeremy's body from the cupboard, wrap it in bin bags, and stuff it inside a duffel bag. She would place the duffel bag underneath grass cuttings in the garden. She would later instruct a handyman to cut the grass and place the resulting cuttings under the bushes. This was just an attempt to further conceal the body.
Body Found
For weeks after murdering Jeremy, Maureen proceeded to go shopping while using his murdered husband's cards. Eventually, Maureen messaged her daughter while using Jeremy's phone. She tried to convince her that Jeremy had moved to Saudi Arabia.
Maureen's daughter became suspicious and thought that Maureen had taken hold of Jeremy's phone. Maureen, in an attempt to dissuade her from pushing forward, told her daughter that her father, Jeremy, had taken his own life in Saudi Arabia.
It was then that her daughter reported her father missing. Police eventually found the body stuffed inside the duffel bag in the backyard. They arrested Maureen Rickards who pretended to be surprised over the jarring discovery.
Investigations confirmed that Maureen's DNA was inside one of the bin bags she used to wrap the body of her husband. Moreover, a post-mortem revealed that Jeremy had been strangled weeks before his death and that he was recovering from sustained rib features.
"She subjected her partner to a campaign of sustained abuse, before viciously murdering him," James Fisher, from the Crown Prosecution Service South East said. "The attacks on Jeremy became more severe in the run-up to his murder, leaving him frail, battered and bruised, with everyone who came into contact with him concerned for his wellbeing."
Maureen Rickards was found guilty of murder. She will be sentenced on April 9, as per BBC News.
