A woman accused of murdering her husband and dumping his body in her back garden has told a jury she believed he had killed himself after not hearing from him.
Giving evidence today (March 4) at Canterbury Crown Court, former law student Maureen Rickards denied being responsible for Jeremy Rickards’s death, describing him as “a gentleman, ally and confidante” who she loved very much.
The 50-year-old, who was studying at the city’s Christ Church University at the time of her arrest last year and has described herself as a “barrister in the making”, also told jurors they bought rings together to renew their wedding vows five months before his body was found.
Rickards is alleged to have repeatedly stabbed the “frail and vulnerable” geologist in the chest and through the heart after subjecting him to weeks of domestic abuse.
The prosecution case is that she then stored his body – dressed in his underwear – in a cupboard in her bedroom before wrapping him in bin bags and putting him inside a nylon-weave holdall.
It is then alleged she moved him from her loft room, down two flights of stairs, and to the hiding place at the bottom of the overgrown rear garden and under grass cuttings at her student accommodation in St. Martin’s Road, Canterbury.
The grim discovery of his decomposing body was made on July 11 last year, six days after Mr Rickards had been reported missing by the couple’s daughter, Chima Rickards.
She became concerned about the 65-year-old’s whereabouts after receiving texts and WhatsApp messages purportedly from him saying he was in Saudi Arabia, and then from her mother claiming he had committed suicide while abroad.
But it is alleged that the communications were in fact sent by the defendant using her dead husband’s phone.
The final independent sighting of a “bruised and battered” Mr Rickards had been on June 7 and he was last heard from when he contacted EE customer services to top-up his mobile the following day.
Nigerian-born Rickards told the jury she had last seen her husband of 27 years on June 12 – and that he was now “living free in heaven” while she was “in dire straits”.
In a series of questions posed by her barrister Ian Henderson KC at the start of her evidence, she was asked outright if she had murdered her husband.
“Never, no”, she replied.
“Did you stab him five times?” he continued. Rickards simply answered: “No.”
“Did you store his body in the cupboard in your room?” asked the lawyer. “Never, no,” came the answer.
When questioned as to whether she had moved her husband’s body into a holdall, she said: “No. I weigh less than 50kg. I cannot lift Jeremy down those stairs.”
Mr Henderson repeated the question, to which she again replied: “No.”
He then asked if she had put the holdall in bushes in the garden and covered the bag in grass. Both times she said: “No.”
Asked about purchasing cleaning products to use in an attempt to clean blood from the carpet, Rickards told the court she would often clean her carpets before adding: “There was no pool of blood to suggest Jeremy had been stabbed in that room.”
However, she said blood was caused from his constant falling “down the stairwell and next to the bed”.
She then told the jury she had last seen her husband on June 12 after she woke up with him asleep beside her, felt ill and had gone to see her doctor.
Asked where she thought he had gone between that date and her arrest a month later, Rickards said: “Middlesbrough to see his brother, Saudi Arabia for work. That’s it. I didn’t think anything about it.
“He would usually go from Middlesbrough to Saudi or Malawi or Egypt, where he was working.”
She told the court she had no further contact with him after that date and believed he had committed suicide, due to “his job not being forthcoming” and what she described as their daughter “betraying” them over a house purchase.
Rickards added her husband was “always talking about committing suicide” and she believed he had done so within a week of June 12.
The court heard the couple had met at Mali airport in west Africa in 1997 and married two years later before moving to the UK.
Rickards’s daughter had been born from a previous relationship and was later adopted by Mr Rickards. She was schooled in London and the couple were said to have travelled “significantly” in connection with his job.
Places they lived included Canada, the Middle East, Zambia and Nigeria. Rickards told the jury her spouse would go “wherever there was gold and diamonds”.
In the early 2000s, Rickards had studied at the London College of Fashion and then took up law in Canterbury in 2019.
She told the jury she and her husband were separated between 2016 and 2018 but thereafter, he worked abroad for several months at a time and on his return to the UK lived with her, his brother or in a Travelodge
She had moved into her multi-occupancy student house in 2021 and, at the time of the alleged murder, was packing up to leave as the property was due to be redecorated by the landlord.
Asked by Mr Henderson to describe her relationship with Mr Rickards up until the end of 2023, she told the jury: “Jeremy was a gentleman, my greatest ally and only confidante.
“I loved him very much and we had a great time in our 27 years of marriage and union. I loved him very much.”
But she said that as he neared retirement age he became “more anxious and more depressed” about not doing the job he loved.
This, she added, impacted on their relationship and her studies. “It made me more depressed,” she said. “I became more ill physically. It was overwhelming for me to handle everything.
“But I still loved him as a person and as a spirit.”
As well as recalling how they had celebrated Chima’s doctorate graduation in November 2023, Rickards also spoke of their visit to a branch of H Samuel in February last year to mark their anniversary.
The shopping trip had been recorded by Rickards and was played to the jury. In it, she could be heard being shown what the assistant described as an 18 carat gold “forever diamond” ring.
Asked about health issues they suffered from, Rickards said her husband had cataracts and mobility problems, became a heavy drinker and would often fall, injuring himself.
On one occasion in May last year she recalled how she had learnt he had tripped by a taxi rank in Burgate and two strangers had called her using his phone.
However, the court was told he insisted on coming home and not wait for an ambulance.
Rickards also told the court she had been diagnosed with acute pancreatitis which caused her to lose a lot of weight, suffer from dizzy spells and rely on a walking stick.
Following the discovery of her husband’s body, a post-mortem examination revealed that as well as his five stab wounds he had what were described as neck injuries which had been caused five to 10 weeks prior to his death.
Mr Rickards was also found to have “old” fractures to his ribs.
But his wife told the jury she was not aware of any such neck injuries, and that his fractures may have related to a car accident he claimed to have been involved in.
Asked about a large gash to his forehead that two of her housemates had seen Mr Rickards with on June 6, his wife said it was caused when he had stayed at a local airbnb for three days from June 3.
“He hit his head. No one can pin it on me. Jeremy banged his head there….I didn’t inflict it on him,” Rickards explained.
She then told the jury: “Now he is dead, living free in heaven. I’m in dire straits. My degree is gone. My freedom is gone. I’m not enjoying this ride.”
During the trial, numerous recordings she filmed on her phone and found by police post-arrest have been shown to the jury.
They include footage of the garden in which she laughs as she mentions “Hammer House of Horror”, as well as a tenant in the house who she told the court had “an ominous presence” and ones of her husband lying on the floor in an apparent dishevelled and confused state.
Asked why she had made them, Rickards said as “a deterrent and defence” in case anything was to happen to herself, Mr Rickards or the housemate.
She denies murder between June 7 and July 11, and will continue giving evidence on Wednesday.
