A "hate-filled" woman who repeatedly stabbed her "meek and frail" husband to death and then dumped his body in her garden has been found guilty of murder.

Law student Maureen Rickards brutally killed geologist Jeremy Rickards in what the prosecution said was "a most vicious and callous way" after subjecting him to weeks of domestic abuse.

Despite protesting her innocence of any wrongdoing, the 50-year-old was convicted today (March 13) by a jury of seven men and five women at Canterbury Crown Court.

The unanimous verdict came after they had deliberated for just under six hours at the end of a four-week trial. Rickards remained impassive in the dock.

It was last summer - and just a stone's throw from the court itself - that Rickards fatally stabbed her 65-year-old spouse five times in the chest at her student accommodation in St. Martin's Road.

With two of the wounds penetrating 11cm deep and into his heart, his heavily bleeding body was then stored in a cupboard in her cluttered attic room for several days before being wrapped in bin bags and stuffed into a nylon-weave holdall.

She then hauled him down two flights of stairs and to the bottom of the overgrown rear garden where he was buried under a mound of grass cuttings.

Attempts to cover her tracks included cleaning the pools of blood from her bedroom carpet, using her husband's phone to message herself and to contact their daughter Chima, and then lying to say he had killed himself overseas.

The gruesome discovery of his remains at the terraced house was made on July 11 last year, six days after a worried and suspicious Chima had reported him as missing to police.

As a result of official enquiries, officers had gone to arrest Rickards on suspicion of fraud after it emerged she had been using her husband's bank card following his disappearance.

But when the constables searched the property they noticed her room "smelt of death" and, once in the garden, recognised a distinctive odour emanating from beneath foliage.

Having located the bag, brushed off the cuttings and dragged it out onto the lawn, they unzipped it to reveal the horrific sight of Mr Rickards's corpse.

Weighing a little over seven stone and at 5ft 8in, he was lying in a foetal position, dressed in just his underwear and his wedding ring missing.

A subsequent post-mortem examination concluded that as well as the stab wounds having been inflicted with severe force, he had also suffered multiple fractured ribs, a fracture to a bone in the neck and a broken nose.

Metal fragments were embedded in a head wound while evidence of "old, healed" fractures and strangulation injuries was also present, indicative that he had been attacked by his wife up to 10 weeks before his murder, jurors were told.

Following her arrest, police found several recordings on her phone in which she had filmed herself aggressively berating him in his dishevelled, confused and beaten state.

In one particularly distressing clip lasting more than 15 minutes and played during the trial, Mr Rickards could be heard repeatedly crying out in pain as he begged his spouse to stop striking him, only for her to sinisterly respond: "Give me five minutes. I will kill you."

She also posted a number of videos to YouTube. One lasting almost 15 minutes was filmed in her garden and zooms in to reveal the spot where her husband's body was eventually discovered.

Rickards can be heard referring to "House of Horror" and the fact "hubby's always travelling so I'm all alone", before concluding that she is "excited about life again" and a "barrister within the making".

At trial, the former Christ Church University student gave evidence over two-and-a-half days, veering from flat denials of any involvement in his death to rambling and sometimes incoherent diatribes followed by emotional outbursts and sobbing.

Having initially described her husband to the jury as her "much loved ally and confidante", she later blamed him for her predicament and even cold-heartedly exclaimed "Good riddance to bad rubbish".

The Nigerian-born mum was however steadfast in maintaining she had neither beaten nor fatally stabbed the man she had known for 27 years, had adopted her daughter and who, she said, called her "African queen".

She told the jury his bruising and fractures resulted from falls or accidents, adding she "didn't go to law school to kill my loved one".

And when it was put to her that she had killed her husband, Rickards responded: "Oh you wish."

But although she vehemently denied murder, there were times when she could not offer much by way of explanation for the weight of evidence against her.

This included not only the location of his body, the multiple injuries, and her recordings of physical and verbal abuse, but also the scientific findings from blood, DNA and entomology - the study of insect life-cycle - as well as the messages sent from her dead husband's phone purporting he was in Saudi Arabia and then her subsequent claims he had killed himself.

There was also evidence from two fellow tenants, a local taxi driver, the owner of a Canterbury-based Airbnb and a bar worker at the Thomas Ingoldsby in Burgate who all told the court of their concern at the visible facial cuts and bruising Mr Rickards sported in his final days.

One of those housemates - Danny Matcham - had also told the court how, one night around the time Mr Rickards had last been seen by anyone, he had heard "bumping" noises down the stairs before seeing Rickards in the back garden a few minutes later.

But in refuting that account, she claimed in court that Mr Matcham, or one of his friends, was responsible for her husband's demise.

Further prosecution evidence came from a local handyman who Rickards had asked to mow the overgrown lawn, telling him she would "deal" with the cuttings herself, as well as the reports of a strange, unpleasant smell at the rear of the property.

In the days her husband was 'missing', Rickards was also seen in several shops in the city purchasing a number of cleaning products including Vanish carpet shampoo, Febreze air freshener and stain remover.

When it was suggested that one of her own phone recordings she had dubbed "Operation Let's Clean This Garden' captured the grisly sound of the holdall being moved in the foliage and grass piled on top, Rickards bizarrely claimed the noise may have been from opening packets of fake grass she had bought online.

"That was not me burying Jeremy. Sorry to disappoint you," she told the court.

Any threats to kill him, including one overheard in the background of Mr Rickards's last ever phone call made on the evening of June 8 to EE customer services, were, she claimed, said "out of frustration" or even fabricated by AI.

But prosecutor Nick Corsellis KC told the jury that there could be "no doubt" Rickards had stabbed her husband and, in doing so, intended to murder him.

"Jeremy Rickards was a meek and mild man. He posed no threat to anyone and had not fallen out with anyone. No one bore him any ill will. Except one person and one person alone - Maureen Rickards," he said.

"In some cases a motive to kill is not immediately obvious. Sometimes, a person does something so horrific and diabolical that it is impossible to comprehend and deduce why.

"But here you do have the clearest evidence that Maureen Rickards did want to kill him. Because she told you so when she repeatedly said to Jeremy Rickards that she wanted to kill him just days before he was killed.

"Why? Maureen Rickards herself gave an insight into what you need to have to do something so heinous. Hate. A most powerful emotion.

"And she was - and is - full of it. 'Good riddance to bad rubbish' says it all."

Her assertion that someone else was responsible for killing her husband, storing his body in her cupboard and then dumping him in a bag she had bought online from Temu was, the prosecutor said, part of her plan to "clean up, cover up and stitch up".

He added that anyone capable of doing what she claimed in order to frame her and going undetected would have to be "more than a criminal mastermind" to "defeat all of science, forensic science and logic".

"This has been a sad and disturbing case. Sad for Jeremy Rickards above all, who met his end in the most appalling of ways and whose body was treated with the utmost disrespect," said Mr Corsellis.

"Sad for Chima Rickards who has lost her father. The person she did call Dad.

"It is, and has been, disturbing to see how Maureen Rickards treated such a frail and meek man.

"Disturbing to see how she voiced her intention to kill him. And haunting to acknowledge that that is exactly what she did."

The court heard the geologist, who specialised in precious metals, would often spend months abroad with his work and then live with his wife in the privately rented, multi-occupancy house on his return.

Home to five tenants, all had been given notice to leave in July so it could be renovated. At the time of her arrest, only Rickards remained.

Although Mr Rickards had his own shared accommodation in Canterbury and was staying at the St. Martin's Road property in the weeks leading up to his killing, he had unexpectedly phoned his brother Anthony Rickards in Middlesbrough on June 2.

He told him he was "having problems with Maureen again" and asked if he could visit and stay for a few weeks.

But his sibling never heard from him again, the jury was told.

The day after that call, Mr Rickards moved into the holiday let in Canterbury, arriving late at night with his wife and in a bruised and vulnerable state.

By the time he left three days later and returned to St. Martin's Road, he was still dressed in the same clothes, had no money and was so weak he could not knock on the door.

He also had a large gash to his forehead, two black eyes and a "cauliflower" ear and, when asked what had happened, said his wife was "in a bad mood".

It was the following day - June 7 - that Rickards recorded herself threatening to kill him as he pleaded with her: "Please stop hitting me, love."

However, after June 8 he was neither seen nor heard from again, with scientific evidence placing his body in the cupboard for a minimum of six to seven days and then in the garden by early July at the latest.

The court heard it was on June 26 that Rickards paid £20 to have the grass mown, despite the fact she was due to move out and the lawn had, by her own admittance, only been cut twice in the three years she had lived there.

The following day Chima received a WhatsApp message "supposedly" from her father and saying he had arrived in Saudi Arabia.

Rickards then sent an almost identical one to herself from her husband's phone before she replied to him with "27 years we were blessed, bye my angel, have a great life because I most definitely will".

However, by the next day she was angrily accusing Chima of betrayal and then telling her that her father had killed himself overseas, giving a specific date of June 9.

Mr Corsellis told the court it was this WhatsApp exchange with her mother which led Chima to alert the authorities on July 5 about her concerns.

She knew her mum had previously taken control of her dad's phone, and realised the messages supposedly from him were littered with the kind of emojis he did not use.

With embassy, passport and hospital checks yielding nothing, an officer went to see Rickards at the student house two days later but found no trace of her husband having been at the property.

She claimed they were separated and, although Mr Rickards would occasionally stay with her, she had not spoken to him "for weeks".

She also said he had possibly taken a job in Saudi Arabia or gone to see his brother.

But when CCTV emerged of her using her husband's bank card in a number of shops, she was arrested - and the decomposing corpse found.

Hidden in a ream of A4 paper and inside a plastic bag tied up in a curtain were his two phones.

when re-arrested on suspicion of murder, Rickards exclaimed "Murder. Murder. Did you say murder?" and then asked "Found what body?"

The court was told the exact date of death could not be ascertained due to the body's decomposition.

Chima did not give evidence in person during the trial but in a statement read to the jury on her behalf she described her parents' 25-year marriage as an "unpleasant representation of love".

No victim impact statements were provided from either Chima or her dad's brother. The prosecutor informed the judge they had chosen to "grieve in private".

Rickards will now be handed a mandatory life term when she is sentenced on April 9, with trial judge Mr Justice Kerr deciding the minimum time she will have to serve before any chance of parole.

Thanking the jury and excusing them from future service for 10 years, he told them: "It's not been an easy trial, it has gone on for some weeks, you have stuck to the task and got through it. For that I am deeply grateful.

"I discharge you with the thanks of the court for your service to this country and to justice."

Speaking outside court following the guilty verdict, DI Colin McKeen of Kent Police Major Crime spoke not only of Rickards's "cruel and horrifying" actions towards her husband but also the need for victims of domestic violence to seek support and help.

"I just want to say while this conviction can never bring Jeremy back, I just hope that it brings some solace to the family who are dealing with a very difficult time. But I understand this can never bring him back," he said.

"What this case has shown, it's been a sad case, there's been some dreadful evidence heard. The pain and suffering subjected to Jeremy Rickards in his final days is quite horrifying, cruel, and I hope they can find some solace in this outcome today.

"What this does raise, once again unfortunately, is the danger of domestic violence in our community and how severe it can become, and I just want to urge anyone suffering from domestic violence to come forward to Kent Police, to our local partners, charitable organisations, for support.

"This is especially the case as shown here with male victims of domestic violence who we know under report.

"If there are any good points to come from this extremely sad case, it would be that people come forward and report and seek the assistance that they need to get through really difficult times.

"All I can say from Kent Police is we will listen, we will investigate cases and we will prosecute offenders where we can. So please do come forward and seek the help that you deserve."

Referring to the numerous recordings made by Rickards as she abused her husband both physically and verbally, the detective described them as "a difficult listen and a difficult watch", demonstrative of her "wicked" behaviour.

"It really did show the case for what it was, which was a prolonged, dangerous, violent act against Mr Rickards," he continued.

"We have been at Canterbury Crown Court for four weeks now. We have seen no remorse from Maureen Rickards about what happened to her husband Jeremy, her husband of 27 years.

"There is nothing to suggest any ill will from Jeremy towards Mrs Rickards and yes, we have shown that she has shown no remorse in that regard."