'Practical joke' led to the chilling investigation of mum who hid husband's dead body in home for 18 years

When Michelle James discovered a tightly-bound package in the building's shared garden back in 2015, she believed she'd uncovered a medical skeleton - at least according to her neighbour.

Her neighbour, an 'eccentric' elderly lady from the floor above a block of flats in the tiny Welch village of Beddau, had tipped her off on the supposed contents of the package months earlier.

However, Michelle never got around to following up on the claim.

It wasn't until she and a friend planned to use the doctor's device to pull a prank, however, that the pair finally sliced their way into the lengthy parcel, to make a gruesome discovery that would haunt locals of the village for years to come.

A body was discovered in the Welsh village of Beddau. (Sky/Now)

Wrapped within 14 layers of plastic was the perfectly-preserved corpse of a man who appeared to be in his 40s.

Investigating officers were quick to take note of the remarkable condition that the deceased remains had been kept in, implying whoever killed this mystery man had done so recently.

"We thought we'd bring it in, put it on the settee, and then knock the ceiling for the neighbour to come down just to play a prank," Michelle told press at the time of their discovery, as per the BBC.

When asked who had given her false information of the contents of the package, the shaken women directed officers to their neighbour named Leigh Sabine, who'd died of cancer three months before the unidentified man was found.

Though pals of the elderly lady quickly shut down speculation that she could possibly have had anything to do with the grisly murder, police soon discovered that each one of Leigh's acquaintances had conflicting stories about her life.

Leigh was immediately suspected of the crime (Sky/Now)

According to friends and neighbours, Leigh - who'd moved to the village in 1997 - told one individual that she was a cabaret singer, while telling another that her husband, John Sabbine, had died some years prior, and a third that she was a mother to five kids - though no one ever saw or heard from them.

A death certificate for her husband, which claimed he'd died of an illness years prior, was found by friends and handed to police, initially eradicating theories that the anonymous victim was that of John.

Leigh had also handed out some random objects from her home - including an ornamental frog.

A batch of unsent notes were also recovered in her property addressed to five individuals living in New Zealand who shared the surname 'Sabine'.

Welsh police subsequently managed to trace Leigh and John Sabine to a case of child abandonment in New Zealand after which they emigrated to the UK, leaving their children behind.

Leigh and John Sabine abandoned their five children in New Zealand. (Sky/Now)

Though the couple later returned in the hope of rekindling their relationship with their kids, 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 when they went back.

Ties were eventually severed again, with the children having last spoken to their parents in the mid 90s.

By this point, the timeline of John Sabine's last sighting seemed to skew off in some way.

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 prior relationship positively identified the body as that of John Sabine.

A death certificate for John Sabine was found in Leigh's possession. (Sky/Now)

After police issued a final appeal to the public, a former friend of the couple - who also hadn't seen John since the late 90s - came forward alleging 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'.

The friend brushed the remark off as a possible joke.

Thankfully, however, officers were able to apprehend the frog 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'd resented his references to the abandonment of their children - and had kept his remains inside her tiny, two-bedroom property for 18 long years.