Family attacks 'appalling cover-up' as inquest opens into ex-model’s murder

An inquest into the murder of a former British model and actress will this week hear new details of her death — and claims of a police cover-up.

The body of Eva Rhodes, a friend of John Lennon, was found buried in woods near her Hungarian home in 2009, several months after police and government officials claimed she had left the country.

A caretaker at the animal sanctuary she ran later admitted killing the 65-year-old with two blows to the head. He was jailed for 13 years.

Tomorrow an inquest into her death will open in Westminster and hear details from a report which Mrs Rhodes’s family claim directly contradicts the findings of the Hungarian authorities and proves there has been an “appalling cover-up”.

The report by Gaille MacKinnon, a forensic anthropologist and archaeologist, said there was evidence Mrs Rhodes was the victim of “a sustained physical attack, rather than ‘punched in the face and hit once on the head with an axe’.”

The expert, who has worked on mass graves in Bosnia and helped with the identification of bodies in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, said there were a number of “post-mortem injuries” which also appeared “suspicious”.

Mrs Rhodes, a passionate animal rights activist, was born in Hungary but moved to England as a child, later marrying British architect Mark Rhodes.

She became famous as an actress and a model in the Sixties and met Lennon and Yoko Ono when they chose her to appear in a film called Rape, about the intrusion of the camera in everyday life. She later moved back to Hungary and spent 12 years running the Puss in Boots sanctuary, which was partly funded by a gift from Ono.

However, she clashed with local police and one officer in particular, accusing them of assaulting her and her daughter.

Mrs Rhodes’s sister, Judith Majlath, said: “This totally contradicts the Hungarian findings which state that she died from one punch to the face and a blow to the head. This shows that she was beaten to death and that this was a cruel murder.” Mrs Rhodes’s body was dismembered and set alight and most of it has never been recovered.