A woman who allegedly walked into a police station and said she had killed her father more than a decade ago has been charged with murder and fraud.
Barbara Coombes, 63, sparked a huge murder investigation on Sunday, before police found a body in the back garden of her family home in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
The remains are believed to be those of her father, Kenneth Coombes, who friends said suddenly ‘vanished’ around 12 years ago.
Mrs Coombes faces charges of murder, preventing the lawful and decent burial of a dead body, fraud by false representation and obtaining a pecuniary advantage.
The mother-of-one former factory worker will appear before magistrates in Manchester today.
Police found a body, believed to be that of pensioner Kenneth Coombes, in the back garden of a semi-detached house in Stockport this week after his daughter, Barbara, went to police. She has now been charged with murder, fraud and other charges
Forensics experts have spent two days at the the semi-detached house in Greater Manchester
Yesterday Mrs Coombes’s ex-husband, Bill, 63, revealed she was suffering from stomach cancer.
Bill Coombes, a former bricklayer who has a daughter, Islay, 29, with his ex-wife from their seven-year marriage, told MailOnline that his former father-in-law could be ‘domineering.’
Other relatives described the ex-soldier, who served as a bombardier in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in the Second World War, as ‘difficult’.
Mr Coombes, who took his wife’s name after they married, said: ‘He was a domineering man, a real control freak.
‘He liked to humiliate people and make them feel small and that included Barbara and Islay.’
It is believed Mr Coombes, former bombardier from the Royal Regiment of Artillery, was 87 when he died in 2005.
Police discovered a body on Tuesday evening and have questioned local residents to find out when Mr Coombes was last seen
Police had a number wheelie bins delivered to the house as they gathered evidence this week
Ex-serviceman Kenneth Coombes, believed to be the victim in the case, had originally lived with his wife Mary, two sons and daughter Barbara at the semi-detached house to the south-east of Manchester.
But his wife is understood to have left him, taking the two sons with her, and she died in the 1970s not long after they split.
Barbara Coombes is understood to have moved back in with her father after she split from her husband.
She lived at the house with her daughter and her father, before he suddenly disappeared over a decade ago.
She is understood to have been living at the house ever since.
Police moved in and dug up the garden of the semi-detached home where locals said children used to play after a woman went to police and said she had killed her father
Former neighbour Terry Sever, 70, remembered Kenneth Coombes being very strict with Barbara and her daughter.
He told MailOnline: ‘If he wanted to watch something on television, her and her daughter used to have to go out of the room. He was very strict.
‘To my knowledge this man Kenneth just disappeared. I was not that friendly to ask where he went. I just did not see him anymore.
‘From 1995 I was home virtually all day and I do not remember him passing my front window and I am sure he would have done.
‘It just all seems so unreal, like something from the television. I wish I could remember more, but I do recall the woman’s father being strict.’
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