How man's body that had been hidden for decades inside wife’s home without their five kids realising finally got identified

Back in 2015, Welch police were forced to investigate a stomach-wrenching crime that would haunt them in the years to come, after a body was found in the garden of a block of flats in the tiny village of Beddau.

Upon initial impression, the corpse - dressed in a set of pyjamas and bound tightly in 14 layers of plastic - appeared to belong to a male in his mid 40s.

What initially struck investigating officers was how remarkably the gruesome remains had been preserved, implying that whoever had killed the mystery man had done so recently.

Police were also left subsequently stunted when it came to identifying the individual.

His fingerprints were nowhere to be found on police records, and no missing persons report had been filed matching the body's description.

So, in a close-knit village where the residents live happily within one another's pockets, not only were officers on the hunt for the name of their victim, but they were on the hunt for a killer.

Such is the subject of a harrowing new documentary series titled The Body Next Door, which landed on Sky and NOW at the weekend.

The two women who discovered the body - both of whom were residents of the apartment block in question - later told police that an elderly neighbour named Leigh Sabine had tipped them off that the packaging contained a medical skeleton, something they'd hoped to use in a prank.

Officers' hopes of interviewing Ms Sabine over the women's claims were quickly dashed, however, when it was discovered that she had passed away of cancer just three months before the body was found.

Acquaintances of the late resident also came to her defence when police named her as a person of interest, demanding to know how a woman in her 80s could possibly have committed such a heinous crime.

It wasn't until authorities dove deeper into the seemingly sinister life of Ms Sabine that a whole hoard of conflicting stories about her emerged.

Before her passing, Leigh had told one friend she was a cabaret singer. She'd told another that after she and her husband John moved to the village in 1997, he'd tragically died of an illness. And she told a third that she had five never-before-seen children.

Some friends of Leigh had kept documents she'd handed to them prior to her death - including a death certificate for John - which was later obtained by police.

This eradicated speculation that John Sabine was the body in question.

The widow had also handed out miscellaneous objects from her home - including a hoover, an ornamental frog, and some elaborate jewellery.

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

After searching their names, Welsh police traced Leigh and John Sabine to a case of child abandonment in NZ, after they 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 reunite 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 fivesome visit their parents in the UK.

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

At this point in the investigation, 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 discovered in the body's bindings was also dated to the late 90s, implying the murder wasn't as fresh as they'd initially believed.

Suspicious that the body still belonged to John Sabine, 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 Leigh 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.

In order to definitively connect Leigh with the crime, they needed to apprehend the ornamental frog.

Thankfully, as we say, the frog had been handed by Leigh to a co-resident of the apartment prior to her death.

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 harboured his remains inside her tiny, two-bedroom property for 18 long years.

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.