GLAMOROUS, theatrical, always beautifully made-up with long painted fingernails and a penchant for calling everyone “Darling”, Leigh Sabine stood out in the close-knit, former Welsh mining village of Beddau near Pontypridd.
Her colourful stories about her life and relationships varied from person to person.
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To some, she said she had never married and had no family, while to others she would mention a husband – who she claimed was abusive and had left her – and children.
The discrepancies mattered little. Leigh was a ‘character’ with marvelous stories and was always entertaining.
But behind the flamboyant personality lurked a dark secret which only came to light after her death in October 2015.
Over the years, Leigh often talked about a medical skeleton she kept at her immaculate home, which she had from her days as a nurse.
And a macabre ‘prank’ played on her deathbed finally exposed her in the most shocking and horrifying way.
Leigh Sabine was a murderer who had secretly killed and hidden her husband’s body at home for 18 years and had abandoned her five children.
Her extraordinary story is told in The Body Next Door, a three-part documentary series that explores one of the most bizarre and shocking true crime stories of the past decade.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, one of her best friends, Rhian Lee, recalls finding the body on November, 24, 2015, 25 days after Leigh had died from cancer.
“I had over six months of counselling to help get over the trauma of the discovery,” says Rhian.
“That morning I went over to my friend Michelle’s [James] for a cuppa and we thought, for a laugh, we’d play a prank.
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“We knew about the medical skeleton wrapped up like a big package under the potting table in the garden and so we thought we’d bring it in, put it on the settee and give a knock to the neighbour to come down to see, as a joke.”
But as the pair started to cut through layer after layer of tightly wrapped plastic sheeting, Michelle froze in horror as she realised it was a dead body.
“I said, ‘Michelle, don’t be so stupid. She told us it has been out here for years. The smell and wetness is probably stagnant water.’”
But Michelle was adamant and called the police.
Police Community Officer Gareth Bishop arrived, assuming that there had been some mistake. But as he cut further through, encountering some carpet as well as plastic, there was no mistake.
DCI Gareth Morgan led the investigation that was to throw up more and more questions, which reached as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.
Mummified body wrapped 41 times
“The garden was shared by four flats,” he says. “The entrance to it was through the communal hall. There was a gate on the side but it was padlocked.
“We spoke to the occupants of the flats but no one had any recollection of seeing that body in the garden. Potentially there was a killer on the loose.”
The locals in the close community where everyone knows everybody – at least, thought they did – were frightened and now began to wonder about their neighbours.
But who was the body?
The body was in really good condition…The victim had fractures to the skull and eye socket. It was quite clear this was a homicide investigation.
DCI Morgan
The fact that it had been wrapped some 41 times had a mummifying effect, meant there was little decomposition and no maggots.
Police knew that it was a white male with receding hair, around 5’6 tall, middle aged with a gold signet ring on one finger.
But a computer search found no missing persons reports.
The victim’s DNA was not on the police database, they had nothing to compare dental work to, no CCTV evidence and no weapon recovered to match the injury.
“The body was in really good condition,” says DCI Morgan. “The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. The victim had fractures to the skull and eye socket. It was quite clear this was a homicide investigation.”
Friend became prime suspect
Michelle James, who lived in one of the four flats, was startled to find herself a prime suspect after being interviewed about the grisly find at the police station.
“Michelle was a priority witness because she had gone to the package and expected there to be a skeleton in there,” says DCI Morgan.
“There were a few things I was querying. Why had she gone to this package, why did she know there was a skeleton in there, who had told her and how long had she known it was there?”
During the interview, Michelle also mentioned her missing boyfriend, which raised a red flag.
Michelle told police that her neighbour Leigh Sabine, who had died recently, had placed the body in the package and had said she wanted it moved to her attic.
This was the first police had heard about Leigh Sabine and, as they delved into her background, they found the community had so many different stories and vague ideas about who she was.
After Michelle’s boyfriend was found and she was released from custody, Leigh Sabine became their main priority.
‘I like to be noticed, darling’
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Pastor Mary West was startled by her initial sighting of Leigh Sabine.
“When she first turned up in Beddau, for a woman in her early 60s, she was wearing denim shorts and fishnet tights, which isn’t usual,” she said.
“I asked her about this once and she said, “Well, I like to be noticed, darling.’”
There were various accounts of her being a famous cabaret singer, a dog breeder, a nurse, a drugs counsellor.
She kept her flat immaculate and tended the communal garden.
On the wall of her living room is a blown-up black and white newspaper framed photo of her as a younger woman in her “cabaret” years, looking glamorous with curly blonde hair and ornate, dangly ear-rings.
The exact movements and location of where the body was kept over the years have never been fully established.
Some say it was always in the garden, others actually in the house – the attic or under her bed.
“I think it could have been in the house at some stage, because she would hire industrial carpet cleaners and always kept her windows open,” says Rhian.
“I definitely don’t think there was space for it under the bed, so it was probably in the attic.”
‘Always talking about the skeleton’
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Lynn Williams, who became close to Leigh as she battled brain cancer and acted as her carer, added: “She was always talking about moving the skeleton.
She adds: “We were sitting around the table having a cup of tea one day and she mentioned the skeleton again and I said, ‘Well, I hope it’s not a real one.’
“And she pointed her lovely red nail and said, ‘You never know, Lynne.’”
Rhian recalls: “Leigh was sociable. She would often ask us over for a glass of wine but if we brought up family chat she would close it down.
“One day I was there with my friend, Elaine, who has now passed away, and Leigh talked about moving the skeleton to the attic again.
“Elaine asked why she was always going on about it and Leigh picked up her glass of wine, had a swig from it and said, ‘All will be revealed, my darlings.’ Elaine replied, ‘You’re freaking me out.’ And she left.”
Abandoned kids to go travelling
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As the investigation continued, the trail led to New Zealand and Australia where it emerged Leigh had been married to accountant John Sabine.
They had emigrated to New Zealand in the 60s and abandoned their five children – two boys and three girls then aged between two and 11 – in a nursery in Auckland.
They spent a decade in care while Leigh and John moved to Sydney and she focused on building a new life and career as a singer there.
In 1984 they returned to New Zealand and made contact with their children but their daughters Jane and Lee-Ann, reported them to the authorities and tipped off the local media.
They fled, later returning to the UK and eventually to Wales and the coal mining area Leigh had come from.
John Sabine was 67 when he was last seen alive in 1997 but no one in Beddau remembers him. Meanwhile, Leigh continued to claim his pension and put it into their joint account.
Three weeks after the body was found, police got a breakthrough when a relative came forward to provide them with a DNA sample. It matched the remains, confirming the victim to be John Sabine.
Killed with stone frog
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Then a friend of Leigh’s named Valerie Chalkley, who had known the couple when they lived in Reading in the 90s, contacted the police about a call she received from Leigh in 1997, shortly after she had moved to Beddau.
Valerie asked if she was still with John, joking that she thought they might have killed each other by now.
Sabine replied, “I have killed him. I hit him over the head with a stone frog.”
“The problem with Ann was you never knew if she was telling the truth or not,” she says.
But DCI Morgan remembered Michelle James saying Leigh had told her to take what she wanted from her flat after she died.
He asked her if she had taken a stone frog. She had.
Leigh had kept it by the side of her bed.
Pathologists matched it against the cluster of injuries and skull fractures on John Sabine’s head and found the distinctive shape of its leg and eye fitted the marks exactly.
The Glamorgan valleys coroner Andrew Barkley recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
“These were terrible circumstances,” he said. “Precisely what happened will never truly be known but it is without doubt that foul play was the cause of death and consistent with being caused by the stone frog.”
He added that there was no recorded history of domestic violence or signs that Leigh Sabine acted in self-defence.
‘A conniving b***h’
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Her son, Steve Sabine, now living in Taranaki in New Zealand, places the blame for their appalling childhoods firmly with his mother.
“My father was a good, soft-hearted man, but she was a conniving b**h,” he says. “I could never forgive him for what he did but I still believe he was manipulated and he fell in love with an evil woman. That was his biggest crime.”
Rhian has never forgiven her former friend, either.
“She knew she was dying, she knew what she’d done, so why didn’t she confess? They couldn’t have locked her up anyway.
“She would probably have been in hospital with the police by the side of her bed but they couldn’t have locked her up by that stage and Michelle and I wouldn’t have gone through what we did.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
“Basically, she got away with murder.”
The Body Next Door is on Sky Documentaries and NOW TV from Sunday August 11
