The remains of a man who suddenly disappeared were found in his wife's garden..
Little was known of former cabaret singer, Lee Sabine, who was married to former accountant John Sabine who vanished.
Having moved to Australia and New Zealand with their children in the 1960s the couple disappeared from the lives of their sons and daughters before moving back to Wales where they settled in the village of Beddau, Wales in 1997.
It wasn't until after Lee's death from cancer in 2015 that the true horror of what happened to John Sabine came to light.
A practical joke resulted in his decayed and partially-preserved skeleton being discovered in the same garden that Lee had spent so many hours tenderly transforming.
As a community was left reeling with the discovery it quickly transpired that the odd lady with green fingers was a murderer who had killed her husband with a stone frog.
Police arrived at their Trem-y-Cwm block in November 2015 and discovered decomposed human remains on the patio .
A pathologist identified evidence of foul play after finding a blow to the back of the head on John Sabine's body and a murder inquiry was launched.
Anne, known as Lee, and John Sabine had met after she nursed him through his injuries sustained in the Korean War and they married in 1960.
They moved from the UK with their four children to Australia in the 1960s where their youngest daughter was born. They later moved to New Zealand.
Walesonline told how the couple's children described their childhood as traumatic and their parents were absent for most of their lives before permanently becoming estranged. Lee Sabine's son Steve even condemned his "evil" mother for abandoning him at the age of six.
He said: "They dropped us off somewhere and never came back to pick us up. They said they were going to come back the next weekend. I was probably six or seven years old.”
The children were taken into care by New Zealand's social services but the couple appeared back in their children's lives in 1985, around 17 years after they had abandoned them.
But shortly after that reunion his parents again left Steve, his brother, and three sisters. It had a devastating impact on them with the couple's son Martin taking his own life in 2000.
Steve said: “They came back when I was 23 and tried to make amends and it hit the news here. We lived in Australia for a while when we were kids and their story was that because he was an accountant he had ripped someone off and came to New Zealand with the money.
“My mother was a cabaret performer and they said they went back to Australia for that. But he got arrested and she stayed out there with him and things just escalated from there. At the time, as a young man, I wanted a family so I just let it go.
"People asked why we took them back but we said that all our lives all we wanted was to have a mother and a father. We had never had that. But it only lasted a few weeks.
“They were worried they were going to get thrown in jail – that’s why they bolted. It was always all about them. They took me to a budget hotel in Auckland and said they were going to come back and see me in a couple of days. But they never did.
“Things got really messy. People would ask about my parents and I would say they were dead.”
Maureen Boyd, a friend of the couple in New Zealand, had know them through a kennel club. She said: "They were personable but, oh my, what an enigma. They were a very involved in the show dog world. She was very involved, as he was, with springer spaniels.”
The couple later moved back to south Wales and settled at Trem-Y-Cwm in Beddau, near Pontypridd, in February 1997.
Mr Sabine disappeared later that year and was never seen again. He was 67 years old. But he was never reported missing and his name continued to appear on the electoral register.
Speaking about his father, Steve said: “My father was actually a good man, a soft-hearted man. But she was a conniving bitch. She controlled him but he loved her to pieces.”
Lee continued to live in the flat and quietly carried on with life following her husband's disappearance. In 2012 she was interviewed in a magazine called RCT Homes in which she spoke about her life.
It noted how she had “made it her mission to turn a neglected garden, which she shares with three other tenants, into a little piece of paradise”.
She said: "Coming from New Zealand I’ve grown up with dirt. I love being outside and I’d rather be mucking around in the garden than sat in front of the television. I do really love living in Beddau and feel part of the community – it’s a special place.
“But when I first arrived 16 years ago nobody was doing anything with the garden – it looked pathetic and neglected. The neighbours thought I was mad when I started going out and working on the garden every day – especially as mine was the only flat with no views of the garden.
“I was doing a lot of digging and it was hard work but I knew I could do something beautiful. This is my property, my home – and I want to feel proud and I wanted my neighbours to be able to feel proud too.
“The hard work paid off and my neighbours now love the garden. They can all see it from their flats and, because of all the seating I have designed, we can sit outside together and catch up.
“Every summer I host a barbecue and all the neighbours come. It is a ball and it’s brought us closer as neighbours. We all appreciate how special the space is and it’s really coming together. I’ve chosen some plants that you would find in New Zealand to bring a little bit of the exotic to Beddau.”
She also penned a disturbing letter to the Pontypridd Observer in 2010. It said: "God, if there is one, is dead. Lucifer is alive and thriving.”
The letter concluded: "The world is more heavily populated now than in the era of Jesus – and I imagine Lucifer smiling! Paedophilia, wars and many, many other horrors because of religion.
“Women carry burden and therefore have compassion and reason to protecting [sic] life – so ‘let them in boys’. A wise man will change his mind many times – a fool never.”
PC Joy Nicholls, beat manager for Beddau, later told Mr Sabine's inquest she had been given the impression by Lee that her estranged husband still lived in New Zealand.
“She referred to him as a b******,” PC Nicholls added. “I would describe her as likeable but not someone I would trust. She was a very strong-willed character and would continually do what she wanted to do.”
Almost 20 years after her husband's disappearance Lee Sabine succumbed to brain cancer and died on October 30, 2015, at the age of 74 in the belief that she had taken her dark secret to the grave and no-one would discover what had happened to her husband.
