Our thanks to Martin for this on MailOnline. You’ll note from the headline (above) that greater offence is taken at Coombes for fraudulently claiming her dead father’s pension, than for killing him. Most of the article consists of criticisms of the dead man’s character, as if that mitigates his murder and burial in the back garden. A flavour of that:

Bill Coombes, a former bricklayer who has a daughter, Islay, 29, with his ex-wife from their seven-year marriage, also told MailOnline that his former father-in-law could be ‘domineering.’

Other relatives described the ex-soldier, who served as a bombardier in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in the Second World War, as ‘difficult’. [J4MB: Many of the men who served in that war, as in all wars, were scarred mentally from their experiences. It’s not surprising he was ‘difficult’.]

Mr Coombes, who took his wife’s name after they married, said of his former father-in-law: ‘He was a domineering man, a real control freak…

Former neighbour Terry Sever, 70, remembered Kenneth Coombes being very strict with Barbara and her daughter.

He told MailOnline: ‘If he wanted to watch something on television, her and her daughter used to have to go out of the room. He was very strict.

Four years ago we reported the story of a 56-year-old woman who (with the help of two buried her husband in the rockery, and pocketed over £77,000 of benefits and pension payments on his behalf, over the course of four years afterwards. Extracts from the MailOnline piece:

A wife who secretly buried her dead husband under a garden rockery and continued to collect his benefits payments for four years was jailed yesterday.

Rebekah Sturdey disposed of her husband Geoffrey’s body on their isolated small holding – and pocketed over £70,000…

The 56-year-old carried out the secret burial with two other women after he died aged 60 of a suspected heart attack.

A court heard Mrs Sturdey told investigators her husband had gone on a touring holiday around Europe.

But checks revealed he had no valid passport and a £20,000 aerial and land search was launched by a specialist forensic team to find his body in a plot on the land near Tregaron, West Wales.

Sturdey buried her husband with the help of his paid carer, Boqer-Ore Adie and Adie’s daughter, Karmel…

Mr Rees (prosecutor) said: ‘He was buried in a rockery at twice the depth of a normal grave. [J4MB: Presumably in an attempt to hide the burial even from an aerial search? Such burials are sometimes visible from above, as growth of vegetation is unusually vigorous as a result.]

‘The women later admitted the rockery was the easiest place to bury a body but it was what he wanted. [J4MB: The women’s claim is simply taken as true. Switch the gender, such a claim would NOT have been taken as true.]