Woman Found Guilty of Killing Her Husband and Hiding His Body in a Duffle Bag in Their Backyard

A woman has been found guilty of murdering her husband after killing him and burying his body in their backyard in England.  

The body of Jeremy Rickards, 65, was found in a duffel bag in the garden of the home he shared with his wife Maureen, 50, in Canterbury, Kent, in June 2024. He had been stabbed to death, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Jeremy and his wife of 27 years lived in a building with other tenants — he was last seen on June 7, 2024. His death was determined to have occurred between June 8-26, according to the CPS.

The CPS reported that after Jeremy’s death, a tenant “heard something heavy being hauled down the stairs at night” and saw Maureen in the backyard. Neighbor Oksana Kandaurova told the court she noticed a smell “from rubbish or an animal corpse” while tidying up her garden on June 14, per BBC News.

Maureen was convicted of murder following a trial at Maidstone Crown Court on March 13. 

The defendant used her husband’s bank cards to go shopping and purchase cleaning products after his disappearance. She then messaged their daughter from his phone — firstly saying he’d traveled to Saudi Arabia and, in a later message, that he planned to take his own life. This caused the daughter “concern” and she reported her father missing to the police, the CPS said.

Authorities determined that Jeremy’s body “was originally put in a cupboard” in his wife’s bedroom as pools of blood were found inside the cupboard and on the floor beneath it “consistent with the victim lying on it.” Stains also appeared on the ceiling of the apartment below.

The body was then “wrapped in bin bags” and placed into “a large canvas bag and hidden under grass cuttings at the bottom of the garden.” Maureen’s DNA was also found on one of the bin bags that the body was wrapped in leading to her arrest, the CPS said. 

A post-mortem showed that the victim suffered domestic abuse at the hands of his wife as he appeared to have been “strangled weeks before” and had “recent rib fractures.” Witnesses also claimed they saw the victim with cuts and bruises on his face before his death. 

The CPS used evidence from a recording made by the defendant of her striking her husband to prove her abuse towards him before his death. In the recording, she said she “will do him harm or kill him.”

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

James Fisher from the CPS South East said in a statement that the defendant built “a web of lies” to cover up her husband’s murder and called her “a callous abuser” who “subjected Jeremy to unimaginable pain and suffering.”

“She subjected her partner to a campaign of sustained abuse, before viciously murdering him,” he said. “…Maureen lied about the cruelty and violence she inflicted on Jeremy … [she] has never taken responsibility for her actions nor shown any remorse for murdering Jeremy.”

“…Despite her efforts to disguise what she had done; Maureen has today been brought to justice for her husband’s brutal murder. Our thoughts remain with Jeremy’s family and friends at this difficult time.”

The defendant will be sentenced on April 9, per BBC News.