Woman murders dad over child abuse images, covers up killing for 12 years

A woman who admitted killing her father with a shovel and burying his body, wrapped in a carpet, in her back garden has been jailed for nine years.

Barbara Coombes brutally killed her dad Kenneth Coombes in January 2006 while consumed by a 'haze of disgust' after discovering he owned sexually explicit images of children.

This morning at Manchester Crown Court Coombes pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

The 63-year-old had been gardening at the Stockport home where she lived with her father when she came inside and found images of child porn in a box on the dining room table.

Coombes went to confront her 87-year-old father and struck him in the back of the head, then when he turned to face her, she struck him a second time with the spade. 　

The court heard how the mum-of-one watched her father, who had served in the RAF during World War 2, bleed to death.

His body was left unburied in the garden until the next day after she ordered a tonne of soil.

In a confession handed to officers in January of this year, Coombes said she had been mentally and physically abused by her father from a young age.

However Coombes did not tell anyone at the time of the killing and instead told a "series of elaborate lies to cover her tracks".

She continued to respond to letters and other correspondence in his name, the court heard, fraudulently claiming £189,000 in his pension and her carer's allowance.

She lied to her brother and her daughter, saying Kenneth had died suddenly from a heart condition and had been taken to hospital and cremated.

After the makeshift burial in the garden, Coombes cleared out Kenneth’s belongings from the house and continued living there. 　

The net began to close on killer Coombes in the autumn of 2017 when a local housing association officer visited the property to arrange a 'winter welfare' visit for Mr Coombes, who would have been 99 at the time.

The 63-year-old tried to rebuff the visits but suspicions were raised.

A visit was arranged and the day before that Coombes walked into a police station and confessed.

The mum-of-one had known his death would soon be discovered.

Mr Justice King told Coombes she only told the authorities when the ‘net around you became tighter and tighter up to January 18, in the sense that the authorities were seeking to see your father face to face’.

She had moved back in with her 'strict' father after splitting with her husband.

Coombes rolled his body into some carpet and buried him in the garden, having to order some more soil as it did not cover his body.

The court was told Coombes killed her father in a 'haze of disgust', and that she ‘panicked’ in deciding to bury the body.

At the time of the police search, former neighbour Terry Sever said: “To my knowledge this man Kenneth just disappeared. I was not that friendly to ask where he went. I just did not see him anymore.”