Horrifying case of woman who joked about having a joke skeleton in her garden that was actually her husband

Leigh Ann Sabine is the subject of Sky’s new true crime documentary The Body Next Door

When the neighbors of Leigh Ann Sabine, who had just passed away, went to grab what they thought was a plastic skeleton from her garden, they had no clue about the creepy murder story that was about to come to light.

For a long time, Leigh had been sharing with her neighbors in the Welsh village of Beddau, Pontypridd, that she kept an old medical skeleton in her apartment, which was a reminder of her past job as a nurse.

When she died in 2015, the ‘skeleton’ was found among Leigh’s things that were thrown away in a shared garden close to her apartment. Her neighbor, Michelle James, thought it would be funny to take the skeleton and use it to play a trick on another neighbor.

The next events unfolded like a real-life crime story that feels like it came straight out of a scary book.

Leigh Ann Sabine had long joked about having a medical skeleton in her flat. (Juliet Eden)

Michelle and a neighbor found what they believed was a skeleton covered in plastic. As they started to unwrap it, they were shocked to find out it was actually a dead body.

Right now, there’s a three-part documentary series on Sky called The Body Next Door. It tells the real story of Leigh and what happened to her husband, John Sabine, who went missing in 1997.

After the discovery, Michelle would first be taken into custody as a suspect in the murder, unless DNA tests showed that the remains were actually John’s.

When the police found out that the body was John’s, they started to investigate more about Leigh’s life.

Later on, the police found out that John and Leigh used to live in Australia, where they had five kids together. They ended up leaving their children at an orphanage in New Zealand.

A chilling murder case would be uncovered after her death. (Juliet Eden)

The police looked more closely at the pajamas found on John’s body and the shopping bags that were used to wrap him. They figured out that he probably died in the late 1990s. They also noticed some signs of blunt force trauma to his head. But even with all this information, they still couldn’t figure out the exact date or cause of his death.

Until a former friend of the Sabine’s came forward with some damning evidence.

Remembering a creepy phone call she had with Leigh back in 1997, the woman said that the ex-nurse told her she had hit John with a stone frog because he was really annoying her.

The woman didn’t really think about the talk they had until she found the body. The phone call was enough to connect Leigh to her husband’s murder.

The police eventually found the ornament, and it had some of John’s blood on it along with Leigh’s fingerprints.

Leigh would claim John had died from an illness. (Juliet Eden)

The officers finally managed to piece together a case and reason behind John’s death. They believed that Leigh had killed her husband while he was sleeping and then kept his body hidden in her apartment until she passed away.

The police thought that Leigh might have felt angry at John because he was upset about leaving their kids behind.

As for the responses of their children, daughter Jane Sabine would later go on record saying: “I have no doubt my mother was capable of murder.”

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,

You can watch The Body Next Door on Sky Documentaries and NOW.

Featured Image Credit: (Juliet Eden)