Chilling way mum who hid husband's dead body in home for 18 years without children knowing evaded capture

When the perfectly-preserved remains of a man in his 40s were discovered in the garden of a block of flats in the Welsh village of Beddau in 2015, police believed they were on the lookout for an active killer.

The man's deceased body had been bound so tightly in 14 layers of plastic packaging so as to preserve it for as long as possible.

Therefore, when fingers were initially pointed at Leigh Sabine - an elderly resident to the property who'd tipped off the body's finders that it was actually a medical skeleton in there - neighbours and friends were quick to shut down speculation that she could possibly have been associated to the grisly murder.

Leigh Sabine was immediately linked to the crime, but why? (Juliet Eden)

Forensics officers discovered that the pyjamas the deceased man had been wearing when he died were discontinued by M&S in 1999.

A Tesco bag also used in the body's bindings was dated to the late 90s, implying the murder wasn't as fresh as they'd initially believed.

It wasn't long for police to discover that their victim had been murdered by Leigh Sabine 18 years prior and stored inside of her Wales' apartment ever since.

However, the killer was never brought to justice, and to this day, the pensioner is famed for having been able to evade capture.

But how?

A body was discovered in the Welsh village of Beddau. (Juliet Eden)

Such is the question raised in a harrowing new documentary series titled The Body Next Door, which answers the vital questions that officers and residents of the village are still haunted by to this day.

It wasn't until police delved deeper into the life of Ms Sabine that they discovered that each one of her acquaintances had conflicting stories about her life.

According to her acquaintances, Leigh told one friend that she was a cabaret singer, another that her husband John had died some years prior, and a third that she had five children - though no one ever saw or heard from them.

Her accent implied some connection to a distant land - yet no one could say definitively where she'd come from - though records stated that she and John had moved to the village in 1997.

Police were able to obtain several documents Leigh had handed to them over the years, including a death certificate for her husband John Sabine.

Leigh was found guilty of murder but managed to evade capture. (Juliet Eden)

This revealed that John had died of an illness years prior, eradicating officers' initial theory that the then-unidentified remains were his.

She'd also handed out miscellaneous objects from her home - including a hoover, an ornamental frog, and elaborate jewellery.

A batch of angrily-written letters addressed to five individuals living in New Zealand who shared the surname 'Sabine' were also found unsent.

After searching their names, Welsh police managed to trace Leigh and John Sabine to a case of child abandonment in NZ, after they'd left their five children at a care home in a bid to launch a music career.

The couple emigrated to the UK in a story that hit headlines across New Zealand before eventually returning to their then-adult children.

Tragically, however, the Sabine children were unable to recover from their trauma, and only on a handful of occasions did some of the children visit their parents in the UK.

Leigh and John Sabine abandoned their five children in New Zealand. (Juliet Eden)

Eventually, however, ties were cut again with the children allegedly that though their father clearly regretted having left them behind, they'd last spoken to their parents in the mid 90s.

By this point, the timeline of the last time John Sabine was heard from or seen had skewed off in some way,

As such officers once again reassessed the death certificate found in Leigh's belongings, and found that the date of this man's apparent passing conflicted with John's official birth date.

A positive DNA match with a British man later discovered to be John's son from a previous relationship positively identified the body as that of John Sabine.

Now, all officers needed to do was to link someone to the murder.

Following a final appeal to the public, a former friend of the couple - who also hadn't seen John since the late 90s - came forward claiming that Leigh had made a bizarre phone call to her in 1997, telling her that she'd 'battered' John with an 'stone frog', because he was 'getting on my nerves'.

Believing she must have been joking, the friend brushed the remark off, and only believed it plausible when John's body had been identified.

The victim was later identified as John Sabine. (Juliet Eden)

Thankfully, officers were able to apprehend the frog which - as we say - had been given by Leigh to a neighbour.

And after analysing the ornament, officers not only discovered Leigh's fingerprints, but they'd found traces of John's blood.

It was subsequently determined that Leigh had murdered John in his sleep - with officers under the impression that she resented his references to the abandonment of their children - and had kept his remains inside her tiny, two-bedroom property for 18 long years.

All that was left to do was for officers to arrest Leigh Sabine for the murder of John Sabine.

The only catch? She couldn't possibly be sentenced to the heinous crime, as she had passed away of cancer just three months before the body was discovered.

Juliet Eden interviewed and photographed Leigh Ann Sabine a year before her death. The author has also written a book about the case, The Frog Murderer, which you can find here.

Watch The Body Next Door on Sky Documentaries and NOW.