First picture of war veteran ‘ killed and buried by daughter’
THIS is the first picture of the war veteran allegedly killed by his daughter 12 years ago and buried in his back garden.
Kenneth Coombes, 87, fought in North Africa with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. A friend last night described him as a ‘gentleman who served his country’.
His daughter Barbara Coombes, 63, is accused of his murder – said to have occurred on January 8, 2006 – and is also charged with claiming his pension for more than a decade after his death.
Coombes’s alleged fraud involved sending official letters to claim her father’s state pension between January 15, 2007, and January 10, 2018. The deception charge relates to her claiming an allowance for being his carer between January 7, 2006, and January 15, 2007.
Roy Cosgrove, a family friend of Mr Coombes, said: ‘I used to call him Uncle because he was a friend of my mother Lillian from when she was growing up. I used to play with Barbara.
‘He was always a gentleman who served his country and I kept in touch with Ken after growing up.’
Mr Cosgrove, 73, added: ‘I know he served in the war and wrote a book about it. He was really intelligent. He was always a nice man. One example of his generosity was when I was 16 and I got my first moped, he said, “here’s a fiver towards the petrol”.
‘Barbara went to my mother’s a few years or so before she died to say Ken had passed away from cancer. There wasn’t even any mention of a funeral. My mother was so upset.’
Mr Cosgrove’s wife Pamela, 70, added: ‘The last time I saw Ken was when he came for a meal with my mother-in-law. After that, we heard he’d had a fall and hurt his leg, then the next thing we knew was that he’d had cancer and supposedly passed away.’
Neighbours of the family in Reddish, Greater Manchester, told yesterday how Barbara Coombes, her father and grownup daughter Islay, 29, were ‘very private’. One woman, who has lived on the street for nearly 20 years, said: ‘I did speak to Kenneth Coombes a few times but he was a man of very few words. It would just be pleasantries – just saying hello.
‘Even though he was elderly, he looked quite healthy, was tallish and thin, and dressed in a casual- smart way. He walked with a military style, a sort of march. While I knew her, Barbara didn’t have a job. She’d be dressed in a sort of mismatched 1970s hippy- style. Again, she didn’t talk very much. They were very private.’
The Coombes’s family home remained cordoned off last night as further forensic searches were carried out. Coombes appeared at Manchester and Salford Magistrates’ Court yesterday – and faces a further hearing at the city’s crown court today.
‘A gentleman who served his country’