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Barbara Coombes sentenced to nine years for killing her father Barbara Coombes sentenced to nine years for killing her father
(about 2 hours later)
A woman has been jailed for nine years after pleading guilty to the manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility of her 87-year-old father, whose body she had buried in the back garden. A woman has been sentenced to nine years in prison after confessing to killing her father and burying his body in her back garden in Greater Manchester after a “lifetime of abuse” at his hands.
Barbara Coombes, 63, walked into a police station in Stockport on 7 January this year and told officers that she had killed Kenneth Coombes 12 years earlier. Barbara Coombes, 63, walked into a police station in Stockport on 7 January this year and told officers that she had killed her father 12 years earlier.
Detectives began a murder investigation and started digging up her garden in Reddish, Stockport. Two days after she confessed, police found the body of her father, Kenneth Coombes. Detectives began a murder investigation and started digging up her garden in Reddish, Stockport. Two days after she confessed, police found the body of her father Kenneth Coombes, a world war two veteran. He would have been 87 at the time of his death.
He had never been reported missing and neighbours said they assumed he had moved away. She later claimed her father had sexually abused her for more than 40 years, since she was five years old, and had used her like a “sex slave”. He raped her hundreds of times throughout her life, she told psychiatrists.
At Manchester crown court on Wednesday, Coombes pleaded not guilty to murdering him but guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. He may even have been the father of her first child, David, who died shortly after birth, her barrister, Martin Heslop QC, told Manchester crown court on Wednesday.
Michelle Colborne, QC, prosecuting, said the crown accepted the plea and could not contest the defence’s claims that Coombes had suffered “a lifetime of abuse – verbal, physical and potentially sexual, at the hands of the deceased”. When she was aged somewhere between six and nine he took her to a photography club where he forced her to display her genitals while other men took photos of her, she claimed.
She told the court that a psychiatrist had found that Coombes suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and a severe depressive illness. The abuse continued right until he died, she said. He would constantly touch her breasts even as she entered her fifth decade. She said she had no friends, no hobbies, had never worked and only rarely left Reddish her whole life.
The defendant had also suffered a series of “traumatic life events”, including being raped as a teenager and being in a serious road traffic accident. Coombes told police that she “snapped” one day in January 2006 after discovering naked baby photographs of her herself and another child among her father’s belongings. She feared she was not her father’s only victim, she said, “and a black cloud appeared over me”.
In April this year Coombes appeared in court and denied murder but admitted three charges of fraud. She acknowledged she had sent letters pretending to be her father and passed herself of as his carer to claim benefits up until the day she confessed. She said she grabbed a spade she had been using in the garden, went into the living room and hit her father on the back of the head. He asked her what she was doing and she said that she feared he would “inflict life-threatening injuries on me or kill me” and used the sharp end of the tool to slit his throat. She then wrapped his body in an old carpet and hid him from her daughter, Islay, who was then 18, and buried him the following day.
She also pleaded guilty to preventing his lawful burial. Those charges could not be reported at the time because of a reporting restriction imposed by the judge, who feared it could prejudice a trial. At Manchester crown court on Wednesday, Coombes pleaded not guilty to murdering her father but guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.
On Wednesday Coombes changed her plea. Sentencing her to nine years, judge Timothy King said he did not accept she acted in self-defence. However, he accepted she killed while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression as a result of “40 years of extreme mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of your father”.
Her rational judgment was impaired and she was unable to exercise self-control, he told her, noting that she had attempted suicide on a number of times in her youth and had self-harmed throughout her life.
The judge said he did not believe Coombes would ever have confessed had “the net not started to close in around her”. A representative of Stockport housing association had become suspicious of Kenneth Coombes’s whereabouts and was due to make a house visit the day after his daughter confessed.
The housing officer made several attempts to check on his welfare but was repeatedly sent away by Coombes, who on one occasion claimed her father – who then would have been 99 – was at a Buddhist retreat in Manchester.
For the past 12 years she had been fraudulently claiming benefits amounting to £189,125 – both his pension and carers’ allowance for herself. Her barrister, Martin Heslop QC , told the court she was caught in a “catch-22”, unable to stop claiming the money because she could not admit to anyone that her father was dead.
She never reported him missing. Neighbours said they assumed he had moved away. Coombes told Islay that he had died suddenly following blood poisoning and had been cremated.
In a victim impact statement, Islay said her heart was broken at what had happened and how she had been deceived but would stand by her mother. “I hope when this is done we can repair our relationship to something approaching normal,” she said.
Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting, said the Crown accepted the plea and could not contest defence claims that Coombes had suffered “a lifetime of abuse – verbal, physical and potentially sexual, at the hands of the deceased”.
But she questioned whether Coombes was truly remorseful for what she had done. The police officer who met her at Cheadle Heath police station when she confessed was struck by how she showed “little or no emotion”, the QC said.
The barrister noted that Coombes only began to talk of being sexually abused several months after her arrest, during her fourth interview with a psychiatrist.
In April this year Coombes appeared in court and denied murder but admitted preventing her father’s lawful burial. She also pleaded guilty to fraud and false representation.
After the sentencing, Duncan Thorpe, the senior investigating officer at Greater Manchester police, said Coombes “showed absolutely no concern for what she had done and denied everyone the chance to say goodbye, as Kenneth lay buried at the bottom of his own garden, just metres from her own bedroom window.
“Despite having years to tell someone what really happened, she only came forward when she had no other choice.
“The impact on the family and friends of all concerned cannot be underestimated. As these tragic events have come to an end I hope that the family can now move forward with their lives.”
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