EVA RHODES BRUTALLY MURDERERD AND ROBBED IN HUNGARY ON THE 10^th OF SEPTEMBER 2008!

Eva Rhodes, a well-known animal lover and animal rights activist, who ran a sanctuary in Böny near Györ, Hungary for homeless mistreated animals was last seen on 10 September at 5.30-6pm in her car at the bus stop in Böny. There she spoke to her friend and colleague from England, Gerry William James, and pointed out that the man she had in her car was newly engaged to help to look after the animals while she would go for an overdue treatment for her back pains. We are grateful for any information on the identity of this man. He had a dark complexion (like a Roma).

On 18 September her sister reported Eva missing to the Györ police. The police found her two old white cars with the key inside at her courtyard. Her office was ransacked and the new Toshiba laptop type A200 missing.

According to Eva´s veterinary doctor, Dr.Sandorfy, the animals had not been fed for approximately 3 days, therefore some died or were in poor condition. Those who knew Eva´s love and dedicated work for the animals will know that she would have never left them unattended.

Therefore, Eva must have fallen victim to possible homicide or some violent attack or some health trauma. However, she is not in hospital.

Eva Rhode´s work in Hungary for 12 years was not always well received. She was hunted by many, including by the authorities and she repeatedly received threats and smeermails. She was living alone at the sanctuary, almost without help, she was living in fear but she would not leave her animals.

We are asking everyone for help and information, any small hint could be of importance. Thank you

Please call the local police (tel:107) and/or the following numbers:

Majlath Judith (Eva's sister in Vienna)	0043 1 5357516	in German, English, Hungarian, Italian;
Sophie Barta (Eva's daughter)	0044 (0)7776140710	in English, Hungarian, Italian in England

Or any British Embassy, since Eva Rhodes is a British Citizen.

The Foreign Office in London ask for the Hungarian Desk 0044 2070080138

Sworn statement and submission of Sophie Barta & Judith Majlath (29.04.2010)

Submission to the Gyor Moson Sopron County Court. Formal complaint of Bias against the court, hearing the case of the murder of Eva Rhodes. April 2010. comprising both Judge Koszler and the prosecution service as represented by Pribusz Agota.

We are today 29th April 2010 under the impression, from how the judge, Koszler and prosecutor, Pribusz have been conducting the trial to date, that the only explanation we can find, because there are no other reasonable explanations, so, there is nothing else we can presume, than that the court may be biased.

The points that indicate that the judge cannot be reasonably believed to be conducting a fair trial are stated below and that the prosecution service as an arm of the police cannot reasonably be believed to be impartial are justified by witness statements, some already in the hands of the police for 18 months and the ugyesz and judge since Decemeber 2009 and suppressed in the prosecution of the prosecution of this trial.

The Court and the Police together have been in litigation agaist Eva Rhodes and Sophie Barta since 2001. Sophie Barta took the police to Court of Human Rights in Strassbourg for Human Rights abuses, after the physical assault on her and her mother by policeman Horvath Zoltan Peter, after breaking in to Eva Rhodes property with no cause was suppressed by the police. The Hungarian state was found guilty and ordered to pay compensation.
The Gyor Moson Sopron County Court is currently being taken to the Human Rights Court in Strassbourg by Sophie Barta for similar Judicial Process abuses.

Therefore the court is prejudiced against both the deceased and the deceased representative for nine years, and cannot be reasonably be expected to provide a fair trial.
The suppression by the police of an investigation into the victim’s suspicious disappearance was continually highlighted by the victim’s sister Judith Majlath and she was ruthlessly pursued by the chief of Police Szabadfi Arpard with threats of legal action in order to silence her requests for an investigation. There is no other reason available to us than at best bias and at worst police involvement in the victim’s murder. Thus from the very top of the police hierarchy she is threatened.
Legal Opinion on the conduct of the Judge regarding the suppression of factual evidence provided to the court from the victim’s representative’s lawyers, much of it also in the hands of the police since September 2008, and both the Prosecutor and Judge Koszler since December 2009 – providing incontrovertible evidence of premeditation and the factual inaccuracy of the murderer’s testimony – much of it collated through investigations initiated by Judith Majlath, the victim’s sister and the refusal by Pribusz to call her as a witness and Judge Koszler’s refusal to allow the family and witnesses to speak.

Is that there is no record of this behaviour in other similar trials, particularly as Judith Majlath, the deceased sister was instrumental in pointing out the murderer Augusztinyi Csaba and Timar Anita as two prime suspects as early as October 2nd 2008. Please find all the suppressed witness statements, expert witness statements all (in Hungarian), Expert witness Forensic Anthropologist Julie Roberts ( English), articles from the Blikk Newspaper which in short set out some of these points referred to, (in Hungarian.) Article from the Daily Mail online 26th April 2010. Included in file 1.

These include statements from Timar Anita, Judith Majlath, Gal Erzebet ( referring to death threats received by the victim from Horvath Zoltan Peter, policeman), Nagy Laszlone, Gerald James, Szabo Jozsef, and Vet Dr.Sandorfi Tibor.. And in addition, statements presented to the Prosecutor Pribusz Agota who forwarded these statements to Judge Koszler on her own responsibility and word . These statements the police refused to hand over to the prosecution are from Rugovics Peter, Lengyel Istvan, Lengyel Agnes, Lengyel Daniel, Tremmel Ildiko, Farkasne Ottilia, Ihasz Beatrix, Polgar Veronica. Accompanied by an appeals for a murder investigation dated Feb 12th 2009 and March 9th 2009.,from Judith Majlath, and a later letter to Pribusz. Included in File 1.
Why did the judge suppress evidence regarding the victim’s last telephone calls, also presented in the above mentioned, file 1, and her last meeting less than two hours before her murder, where she happily states that A.Csaba is going to look after her sanctuary while she visits England to claim her pension and operate on a failing hip and collapsing spine. Factually testifying to the absolute invalidity of the murderer’s testimony regarding their ( his and his victim’s) relationship and conversations. The victim was obviously entirely innocent of the murderer’s intentions and he clearly actively misled her into believing that he was happy to manage caretaking of the sanctuary in her absence. Testified to precisely, in the witness statement of Nagy Laszlone, and the testimony of Gerald James, the last person to see her alive less than two hours before her murder. Yet the court has refused to hear these witnesses and Pribusz actively chose not to call them – their exclusion can only be reasonably due to wilfull suppression of evidence contradicting the murderer and thus bias.
The outright rejection of the representatives petition presented to the court at 8.35am on the first day of the trial, asking for a new murder investigation from an outside police force, and the invitation of British Forensic Experts to Hungary to assist in this, as according to their professional opinion the Hungarian Forensic reports are unacceptable because a forensic examination of the murder and burial sites was never undertaken and one of the main witnesses never even had the remains in her possession to analyse.

Please find the petition and forensic report analysis observations enclosed in File 2.

The facts to establish the cause of death were available at the time, an opportunity abused by the police, but still possible according to the British specialist questioned. The judge’s refusal to collect all available scientific evidence in order to establish the facts is incontrovertible and can only reasonably lead to a conclusion of bias. The active refusal of the prosecutor Pribusz to ask her own police to further investigate or to request further conclusive forensic examinations with the entire bias of police questioning and her own questioning directed towards preserving the contradictory and nonsensical replies of the murderer intact, can only reasonably be explained by bias .
The refusal of the judge to take in to evidence photographs provided by Judith Majlath and the Police taken in September 2008, clearly and absolutely refuting the murderer’s testimony as to his living conditions and the animals living conditions, thus negating his testimony as to his mental state, again pointing to pre medititation and his ability to lie, with out question by the authorities.

The refusal of the judge to hear the family and receive this photographic evidence is remarkable – the only reasonable explanation yet again is bias. The photograph showing the broken through wall, above the connecting door between the murderer’s quarters and the victim’s quarters and the broken door lock indicate that the murder may have taken place in the victim’s own home a simple fluorescence blood test has yet to be undertaken in the victims or murderer’s quarters, thus it cannot be excluded as the murder or associated scene. Neither the judge not the Prosecutor have asked for this despite repeated requests – such a refusal to ask for basic evidence which would establish the facts, can only reasonably lead to a conclusion of bias.
The question of the Victim’s special protective dogs who lived in her quarters as they bit all strangers, and were found and let out by the police on the 18th September 2010 after eight days being locked up with no food and water. This naturally explains the condition of her quarters which were;
a. ransacked by the murderer in his search for money and valuables.
b. ravaged by the dogs who turned over the rubbish in search of food and will have naturally covered the area in excrement.

The pictures reproduced in court on video were willfully and disgracefully misrepresented at the court, as the Victim’s mode of living. However, using Timar Anita’s own witness statement that Augusztinyi Csaba was frightened of dogs, it begs the question why he took on the job at the sanctuary and why the victim’s protective dogs were locked away, which again points to actively to premeditation. And these questions have never been actively pursued by the prosecution, which one would expect or by the judge – thus leading to the reasonable suspicion of bias.
The judge with the collusion of the prosecution has railroaded this trial through with such speed that the victim’s lawyers have had no time to prepare for the trial, no time for translation and their questions and representations have anyway been inevitably rejected and refused and anyway they have been prevented from properly questioning the murderer and the handful of witnesses actually called. The court has refused with the agreement of the prosecution to provide any translation facilities when needed at the beginning of the trial. Also noticeable is the Judges and Prosecutions willingness and unusual readiness to protect key witness Anita Timar from legal questioning in court. On the flimsiest of GP’s letter, usually unacceptable in a Hungarian court where serious psychiatric evidence is required, Anita Timar is being heard alone at her home, by the Judge and Pribusz with the exclusion of the two sub judges (tanacs) and the exclusion of the other legal representatives. This highly abnormal behaviour can only be reasonably attributed to bias.
The noticeably hostile behaviour of the judge and the prosecutor, who refusing to speak to the victims sister, but cosying up to the murderer in public shows a tangible hostility toward the still living family members, given that the victim’s daughter has now developed Multiple Sclerosis and the victim’s sister is nearing seventy years of age and is clearly devastated by her and the family’s treatment at the hands of the very authorities who you would expect to be supporting them. We can only reasonably attribute this unnecessarily cruel behaviour to bias.

This is the sworn statement and submission of Sophie Barta , Judith Majlath. Dated: 29th April 2010, Gyor, Hungary.

Petition from Sophie Barta (19.04.2010)
To the Gyor Moson Sopron Court in the case of the Murder of Eva Rhodes British citizen case no: B.1362/2009/23-I.szam

Sophie Barta on 19th April 2010, the representative of Eva Rhodes, nee Majlath, hereafter referred to as 'the victim', murdered by the hand of Augusztinyi Csaba d.o.b.31.08.1979, Hungarian. By his own confession.

Sophie Barta hereafter also known as 'the representative or victim's representative' formally, requests and petitions the court as represented in the body of the Judge, Judge Koszler to reconsider the question of the translation of the court file. A photocopy of which was received in the Hungarian Language on Friday April 16th 2010, by the representative, precisely one working day before the trial start date of Tuesday 20th April 2010.

The court has already been asked to provide a transcript of the court file in English and an Interpreter – which given that the mother tongue of both the victim and her representative are English – is the only way in which the rights of representation may be effected in fact. This normal and natural request has been refused by Judge Koszler even though it is within his gift.

Given that this refusal is to the detriment of the Victim, we request Judge Köszler to reconsider his previous judgment on this question and thus we again request the court to provide a written transcription of the court files in English.

We again request the court to provide an Interpreter and ongoing translation of the court proceedings as this is the only foundation for a fair and just hearing where the Victim is actually represented in fact, as provided for in Hungarian Law.

It would be contradictory for Hungarian Law to provide for such legal representation of the Victim in her trial and the presiding Judge to effectively nullify this possibility.

Should the Judge see fit to grant this natural request and act according to the spirit of the Hungarian Law, that provides for the rights of the Victim, this will be gratefully acknowledged.

Should the Judge act in contradiction to the spirit of the law granting rights of representation of the Victim in her trial and again refuse to provide for Mother tongue translation and interpretation of court documents and proceedings.

Then the representative of the Victim requests a minimum three months to have the court file professionally translated herself – this being the absolute minimum time given by the English Translation Services as necessary.

That the court proceedings be audio recorded by the court, that the Victim's representatives be given adequate time for those recordings to be transcribed into English as the case proceeds.

That the Victim's sister Judith Majlath be allowed to be present at all times on all occasions to interpret for the Victim's representative, even though the representative call her as a witness oral and written and even though the representative also be a witness oral and written.

We, the aforementioned Judith Majlath and Sophie Barta are therefore happy to oblige the Judge, by providing our oral and written testimonies before any other testimonies are given – in keeping with the Hungarian Court Protocol, so that we can be present without interference through out all the subsequent proceedings, ie. The entire trial.

We further wish to draw to the courts attention the following very important questions regarding the hostile witnesses called in the indictment by the prosecutor / defence and mentioned in the court fájl, a copy of which was recieved from the court on Friday 16th April 2010.

The presence of Vidakovich Gabor Policeman accused and found guilty amongst other members of Gyor police for human rights violations against my Mother the victim and my self in the suppression of evidence in an assault against my Mother and my self by a member of Gyor Police in 2001 and part of an going litigation through the Hungarian Supreme Court and thereafter to Strassbourg again where the prejudicial actions of the Gyor Court will be investigated – leads to the question about the impartiality of the Gyor Police and especially from amongst the highest ranks, Gyor Police Chief, Szabadfi Arpad who despite a legal letter recieved by him in autumn of 2008 warning him that the use of Vidakovich Gabor in relation to my Mother's missing persons investigation first as an accused for which the police were availing themselves of an arrest warrant, then as a fugitive for alledged theft of Puss in Boots Funds found to be malicious lies and utterly without foundation even though she was dead and utterly unable to represent herself and the Gyor Town Hall Kozjegyzo's seeming attempts to incriminate her with the police in conjunction – was and is contrary to normal police codes of practice. Szabadfi Arpad continued to use Vidakovich Gabor to take the murder confessions, on site testimonies and carry out various other 'police work' relating to my Mother, the Victim.The Police hunting down of my Mother, use of the Nepszabadsag and Kisalfold ' newspapers' by the authorities to publish not only factually inaccurate but slanderous misrepresentations of her character and former life and work continued until her remains were actually found.

Her sister Judith Majlath was threatened with court action by Szabadfi Arpad for continuing to request a real missing persons investigation and exerting pressure through the interventoin of our MP for Kensington Mr. Malcolm Rifkind and the international media. Meanwhile the Gyor Police chief wrote an extremely unpleasant letter about my Mother to Hungarian Police Chief Bence Jozsef which Judith Majlath read in the police files and was refused permission to copy, after which the letter was removed from the police file – we have not had access to it since. During the eight months that the police continued to deny that the circumstances of the Victims disappearance were suspicious they refused several offers made by the British Police to investigate the disappearance of one of their Nationals – as the Hungarian Police are well aware of International Protocol it is remarkable how they refused to allow any independent investigation into her disappearance and suddenly found the murderer and some wandering remains when the International pressure for a British Investigation began apace.

Further of interest to the court is the hostile witness Nagy Peter ( and any witnesses he may bring forward) of Emberek az Allotokert Charity fame, known by Gyor locals as the Allatok az Emberekert Charity because of the alledged direction of money flow within the Charity. I first met Nagy Peter, Jahoda Maya and others whose names i cannot remember at least as far back as 1994, when my Mother and I went to Nagy Peters' house outside Gyor where he kept a few dogs in some outbuildings behing his house – the Emberek az Allatokert (sic) were collecting money for animals they did not support, they had no sanctuary. We Eva Rhodes and Sophie Barta had a sanctuary, had the 24hr a day seven days a week telephone number 0630 290 3535 and the general public were calling us because the EAA numbers were switched off. So we were doing the work, called to collect dogs hanging by their necks by bus stops, to rescue and rehome cats and kittens displaced by the flooding Danube, house dogs saved from dog fighting rings etc etc,... It was when Nagy Peter and other EAA members refused to home any of the dogs, use EAA funds to supply our sanctuary, which was effectively the only sanctuary in Gyor, or provide food, labour or any support of any kind that we realised we had to set up our own Charity, and thus Puss in Boots ( Csizmas Kandur ) was born. Please note, we accepted their absolute right not to support us in any way – however – we claim the right to this day, to be free of slander, calumny and sabotage from what ever motivation the EAA or any other organisation may have.

The court may like to note that Eva Rhodes stated in August of 2008 quite clearly to her daughter and Grand daughter that she had the evidence to take EAA members, the Kisalfold and the Gyor Kozjegyzo to court, for slander, corruption, fraud etc,.... and she went to various lawyers in Gyor to ask them to institute proceedings. She did not discuss the details because of the presence of her grand daughter, however she was confident and happy because finally she was getting her permit for the sanctuary renewed and in the Gyor jurisdiction which gave her access to labour provided by the Gyor Onkormanyzat... She believed that this is why the Gyor Kozjegyzo was refusing to sign the document, that she was obliged to sign by law.... ours, only to speculate for the moment.

The court should note, that as ever my Mother is under attack by Emberek az Allatokert even using the trial of her murderer to legitimise his defence by providing evidence which is factually inaccurate 1 and misleading 2.

Now the Victims representative wonders what the connection is?

We wish to draw the attention of the court to the fact that the court may not deem the Victims rights to be adequately represented by the Police Prosecutor, with the negligent to say the least, Police investigation. The police, police prosecutor and Gyor courts waged a war of vendetta on Eva Rhodes and Sophie Barta for the last nine years and therefore cannot be considered able to represent her best interests.

As mentioned before hand, the police denied that the disappearence of the victim was suspicious despite numerous witness statements to the contrary of which most are curiously missing from the court file and despite several legal appeals by the Victim's sister Judith Majlath, rejected outright by the police until International pressure began to grow and the British Police were making themselves available ... and being suspiciously, refused.

The Victim's representative states for the record that the police refusal to investigate the Victim's disappearance as suspicious, their refusal to investigate a murder for eight months and their refusal to allow the British Police to Investigate her murder and their curious absence of thorough questioning of the murderer, total absence of forensic specialists involved on the crime scenes leads us to question either their competence or their neutrality.

It is therefore to be further drawn to the attention of the court, the nonsensical indictment provided by the hungarian State Prosecutor, which is in direct contradiction to both the Hungarian State's own Pathologists report and to the confession of the murderer himself.

We draw the courts attention that it is quite extraordinary that the court would allow such a trial to proceed on the basis of a technically and factually flawed indictment.

We request the Judge to consider whether in the interests of a fair trial, the indictment should be returned for re drafting, so too the obviously negligent police investigation which fails to establish the facts by omission and these both to a prosecutor and police force outside the Gyor Moson Sopron jurisdiction – as with the police failing to establish the facts of the case – which could be established to far greater precision with will – the Judge is unable to adjudicate on the matter.

We draw the courts attention to a point of serious concern to the forensic experts both in Hungary and Britain and to the Victim's representative. But noticeably absent from Police investigation - the question of the missing torso, which apparently got up and left the alledged scene of it's burial, leaving it's skull and and a few non related bones behind. This very unscientific, though quite miraculous ability of the torso to vanish into thin air leaves the Forensic Scientists with a very basic request – that in order to establish the facts of the case - leaving the miraculous to religion, where it belongs – a new and thorough forensic examination of the alledged murder and burial sites be undertaken to establish the facts of the case.

Science states clearly that therefore the murderer's confession contains some large and very pertinent factual omissions, that are not questioned by the police extraordinarily.

Not to mention the implausible time frame within which this slightly built man alledges to have conducted a highly brutal and bloody murder, and then carried out a thorough search of the victims property to steal, and then carried out a thorough and complete removal and destruction of all pertinent evidence, and a burial on another property in the pitch dark and rain. All verging on the miraculous and quite outside the scientific probabilities ... although I understand the Gyor forensic Laboratory has provided an amusing if highly unprofessional report of burn times for a pig.

In the light of the urgent need for a scientific evaluation of the crime scene which after has yet to take place.

We request that the court now formally obliges the British Police and their Forensic Specialists, with an invitation which formally accepts their offer to investigate this 'now' murder with the conspicuous co operation of (an external to Gyor) Hungarian Police Force.

We request that the British Police be allowed to question the murderer and his assistants in his escape, and any other persons they hold as possibly useful witnesses or as having access to useful evidence, pertinent to establishing the facts of the case. As I may remind the court, is common practice in cross boarder criminal investigations and where co operation agreements exist.

Here in, for the moment, lies the statement of fact, request and petition to the Court of Gyor of Eva Rhodes Victim, by the hand of Sophie Barta, daughter and mortal representative of the victim.

26.04.2010

by David Williams

'Scandalous cover-ups' threatening trial of man accused of killing John Lennon's actress friend Eva Rhodes

The distraught family of a former British model and actress friend of John Lennon will today ask a Hungarian court to stop the trial of the confessed murderer amid allegations of a 'scandalous cover-up' by investigators.

Caretaker Csaba Augusztinyi has admitted killing animal rights campaigner Eva Rhodes, setting fire to her while she was still alive and then watching her burn while talking on the telephone to a dating agency.

But lawyers for her London-based daughter Sophie Barta and sister Judith Majlath want to present 'compelling evidence' to the murder trial in Gyor, north-west Hungary, of what they call a 'deliberately flawed investigation' to protect others implicated in the brutal killing.

Murdered: The body of Eva Rhodes, who made a film with Yoko Ono in the 1960's, was found seven months after she disappeared

They are to ask for Scotland Yard detectives to be called in - a move possible because the victim is British - and highlight evidence from a UK scientist which raises new questions about how Mrs Rhodes died.

For 12-years the 65-year-old grandmother had cared for abandoned cats and dogs at a sanctuary near Gyor, 65-miles from Budapest, funded partly by donations from animal lovers in England and a gift from Yoko Ono, with whom she made a film in the 1960s.

But in September 2008 Mrs Rhodes, who had been the target of a hate campaign and had clashed with local police while running the Puss in Boots Animal Trust, disappeared and it took months of pressure by her family, backed by former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, before she was listed as a 'missing person' and her remains eventually found over seven months later.

Under Hungarian law a victim can be represented at a murder trial by next of kin but in a move described by lawyers as 'unknown in living memory,' the judge in Gyor last week refused to allow her daughter to present her evidence.

'There are huge holes...abuses in this case and it seems that no one in authority wants justice done or the truth of what happened to Eva to be known,' said Ms Majlath, a co-laureate who won the Nobel Peace Prize for mine action work.

'One has to ask why they don't want the truth known or us raising awkward questions about the involvement of others in this horrific murder and scandalous cover-up.

'What is taking place in court is a mockery, it is not a murder trial, it is a circus.'

Among more than two-dozen points the family raise are:

Police have been negligent and an officer found guilty of human rights violations against Mrs Rhodes played a leading role in the inquiry
Evidence went missing from files
Witnesses have been intimidated
No competent forensic examination was every carried our at the sanctuary or spot where body parts were found
Evidence from the pathologist directly conflicts with the confession of the killer
Donations sent from UK to the sanctuary were diverted after the murder but have not been traced.

Most disturbing, said Miss Barta, from Chelsea, south-west London, is the absence of a torso 'which apparently got up and left the alleged scene of burial, leaving its skull and a few non related bones behind.'

Search party: Eva Rhodes family have made a series of allegations against police

Augusztinyi, 31, who had been working at the sanctuary, told the court he had struck Mrs Rhodes with an axe handle and then set fire to the body, twice having to use petrol to relight it. He claimed he had not been paid and had been struck with a dog lead.

He then claims to have moved her charred remains into a wheelbarrow and buried her in a pit where he usually dumped the sanctuary's dog excrement.

But when eventually Augusztinyi, who had been captured on CCTV with his employer on the day she died, was arrested and the body found, the torso and other parts were missing.

'There are wounds to the skull, including one hole, entirely inconsistent to what the murderer says happened, the torso is missing and there has been no thorough forensic examination of the murder or burial sites,' said Miss Barta.

Aminal lover: For 12 years Eva Rhodes ared for abandoned cats and dogs at a sanctuary near Gyor, near Hungary

'Hungary is Britain's partner in the EU, a British citizen has been murdered, the course of justice perverted and we believe accomplices are still at large...how can this have been allowed to happen ?'

Miss Majlath added: 'We have consulted an expert and according to him my sister's body and her bones could not have disintegrated.

'The recovered bones are only a part of what there should be. Three litres of gasoline and a few pieces of wood are not enough for someone to have burned so completely.'

The family say that backed by Mr Rifkind, they have repeatedly appealed to Foreign Secretary David Miliband for help and that without their campaign nothing would have been done to try and find Mrs Rhodes.

Scotland Yard officers, who have been briefed on the case, and forensic experts are on standby but can only investigate formally on the invitation of the Hungarian government.

Mrs Rhodes, whose family left Hungary in the late 1956, rose to prominence as a model and actress in London in the 1960s. Her stunning looks attracted the attention of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were looking for an actress to star in a film they were making called Rape, about the ontrusion of the camera in everyday life.

Eva married British architect Mark Rhodes. The couple later divorced and she established the sanctuary using £150,000 of her own money.

The centre - and Mrs Rhodes - are well known in Hungary, especially after she was reunited on TV with Yoko Ono when Rape was shown to great acclaim at a festival in Vienna.

In the Sixties, all Mrs Rhodes had received for her role had been a album signed by John and Yoko and the promised £25,000 fee did not materialise.

On learning of Mrs Rodes' new life with animals the widow of the beatle 'made good' the outstanding debt - the money going to the sanctuary.

What happened to my Mother?
Evi Rhodes (as she was known to her friends) much loved mother and grandmother, and the midwife to the birth of several thousand new unexpected lives, who brought joy to hundreds of families over a twenty year period and provided sanctuary to those animals and people who could no longer cope with the rigors of the modern world. She was last seen on the 10^th September 2008, she was extremely close to her grand daughter Agatha and had devoted the second half of her life to the charity she set up in the 1990's The Puss in Boots Trust, to provide a twenty four hour/ 365 day a year service for animal rescue and re-homing in north western Hungary. We are proud to have been part of that work and devastated by her loss.

The local police have not in our opinion behaved in a normal manner regarding her disappearance and we believe murder. Her home was never sealed as a crime scene, forensic experts did not attend the scene until months after she had gone missing, by which time press and hundreds of individuals had been through the property pilfering and ransacking. Everything in her home has been stolen, down to the kitchen sink and the water pipes and it was not until after three months that the police even put out a missing persons poster and that was only under intense pressure from the family and European media coverage.br />
The Rt Hon David Miliband and Sir Malcolm Rifkind (as our local MP) have been contacted in this regard and no response has been forthcoming so far. We wonder why the Hungarian police did not contact the British Police to help in the search, they say that they have been 'hampered' in their search by lack of equipment, yet Scotland Yard are more than happy to cooperate when invited to do so. Crucially this help has never been requested.
We believe that a Policeman who had a grudge against her and a Roma man with whom she was last seen may be involved in her disappearance, and that she is no longer alive. The circumstances of her disappearance are suspicious and she would never have abandoned her life - her animals, grand daughter and daughter.
Sophia Barta and Agatha Barta. Feb 2009.

In our desperation to find Eva, we have started a new website www.csizmaskandur.com, this has become necessary because her existing web site has been taken from her, along with a great number of her animals, by some so called animal loving organisation in Györ. This organization appears to be collecting vast donations from all over Western Europe, but particularly in Austria and Germany, for more on this, please read our website in German.

Of course our main focus is to find Eva Rhodes, a British citizen, and to inform you on Eva`s tragic disappearance, [she has been missing since the 10th of September], The web site is also there to give an insight into her immense love and care for animals, her desperate battle in Hungary, a country with an appalling record on animal abuse and no rights. We will try to do justice to her dedicated work and love for animals. It is the most tragic time in my life to have to look for my sister in a country where the police simply do not care, where there is overwhelming bureaucracy, and corruption is rife.
The English version of the website is not finished yet. We have focused on Hungary, since this is where Eva's property is and Animal Sanctuary was and from where she disappeared, and where the Györ Animal Peter Nagy Organisation " Emberek Allatokert Alapitvany" is situated. It is also from here that "Eva's tragic story is being "sold" to donors in the most disgraceful manner, her dogs are being sold, and she is being libeled on the internet, We are also of course focusing on Austria and Germany.
I never knew what so called "animal welfare" was about, and what a gigantic business it is. Poor Evi was in the way...........she fought against all this.. Please help me to find my sister.
Judith Majlath
0043 153 57516

18.04.2010
Murder Case Eva Rhodes: Murder Trial opens on Tuesday in Györ

Rhodes’ family makes serious allegations against police, hopes lie with the courts

Györ/Budapest/Vienna 19th April 2010– On Tuesday Csaba A. will be indicted on charges of murder at the regional court in Györ, Hungary. In September 2008 Eva Rhodes who rescued and cared for abused animals at her Sanctury near Györ– a former model in the 60s , who played the lead role in a John Lennon-Yoko Ono film – disappeared near Györ, According to Hungarian media reports, the police had long adhered to the charge of manslaughter., however it has been changed to murder with robbery. The victim’s family - her sister, disarmament activist Judith Majlath, based in Vienna as well as the daughter Sophie B. and the granddaughter Agatha both living in London – demand justice for a horrendously cruel and brutal murder and hope for a fair trial.

The defendant is accused of slaying and burning Eva Rhodes in the courtyard of her sanctuary in Böny near Györ. Majlath, who unremittingly investigated and forced the police to investigate the case as crime and not merely a missing person ,studied relevant documents ,supplied evidence, helped tirelessly the entire investigation, makes serious allegations against the police. The result of the negligence of the unprofessional police work is now the “in adequate and weak indictment”. Evidence has not been secured in time, which impeded a thorough and accurate reconstruction of the murder. It is tragic that , it is still not established whether Eva Rhodes was still alive when the killer set her on fire, and where all her remains are,” so Majlath.

According to Hungarian media – possibly biased or even launched – this is “merely” a case of manslaughter in affect. Majlath is alarmed. The defendant was a boxer and he was well aware of the power of his blows. “My last hope rests with Justizia, the judge in charge is renowned for his professionalism and correctness”, says Majlath, who will be present at the trial together with her niece.

The director of the Austrian section of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded International Campaign to Ban Landmines calls for justice in her former home country to uncover the truth around the murder of her sister and to pass a fair verdict. In 1956, Majlath and her sister had to flee Hungary after the Hungarian revolution had been defeated.

After the disappearance of her sister had been reported, the police wasted valuable time and for months, contrary to evidence, claimed that there was no indication of third-party responsibility. The crime scene had not been protected by the police and the victim’s car had not been examined, all forensic evidence was lost right from the beginning. Even the victim’s phone directory with the name and mobile number of the accused in huge letters had been ignored. Her sister had received several threats before she disappeared and was frightened, but again the police turned a blind eye to it. Majlath speaks of an “Outrages police scandal”.

About 12 years ago Eva Rhodes went to Hungary and set up an Animal Sanctury for abused animals to rescue and care for them as well as find new homes for them. She was bitterly persecuted by the locals , other animal organisations and the police. She was brutally murdered on the 10th September 2008 at her Animal Sanctury in Böny - Hungary.

Translation based on the APA PR with added information.

2009

British Beatles Fan Club

Star of John & Yoko's film 'Rape' found murdered

The British Beatles Fan Club were saddened to read of the recent discovery of the body of Eva Rhodes (nee Majlata), in Hungary.

Eva starred in John and Yoko's film Rape and became a close friend of the pair.

The film was made in 1968 and at 77 minutes, shows Eva (who spoke very little, if any, English) relentlessly pursued by a cameraman, through streets, a cemetery and a park. At one point she almost walks into the path of an oncoming truck, before being cornered in an apartment, where her tearful pleas to the camera were completely ignored.

John said of the film: "We are showing how all of us are exposed and under pressure in our contemporary world. This isn't just about the Beatles. What is happening to this girl on the screen is happening in Biafra, Vietnam and everywhere."

Eva disappeared from her home in Hungary last September. Her family reported her disappearance but the Hungarian police didnt take the claims seriously. This in spite of Eva's car being found abandoned and her house ransacked and computer files destroyed.

Eva Rhodes's family had moved from Hungary to England when she was a child. She became a successful model as well as starring in Rape. She returned to Hungary 12 years ago to set up the Puss in Boots Animal Trust and was a major campaigner for animal welfare. Hungary is a leading producer of fur for the textile profession. Cat and dog fur is often used as imitation or as faked fur and Eva tried to stop this trade.

The Hungarian government had turned a blind eye to the animal slaughter that had been occurring in their country. Eva was a strong campaigner against this slaughter and may have been seen as a threat to the government. This may explain the lack of help her family received after her disappearance.

Eva's body was found buried close to her home. She had been battered to death and her body burned. An employee of the sanctuary has confessed to her murder; the motive he gave was a dispute over pay. He gave no reason for ransacking her house and destroying sensitive files on her computer.

17 July 2009 -

This Pressrelease is based on the APA release 14.July, with added information!
The original text of the APA release is enclosed in the news section.

Murder of Eva Rhodes is creating a stir up in Great Britain

Subtitle: Ex-Foreign Minister Rifkind criticises stance of the Hungarian authorities: investigation errors and fabricated news reports?

London/Vienna - British MP and former Foreign Minister Sir Malcolm Rifkind has criticised the stance of the Hungarian authorities in the case of Eva Rhodes who was murdered in Western Hungary. He has been concerned that the Hungarian authorities "had not supported and informed" the relatives of the murder victim "in an appropriate manner", a letter by the MP to the British Foreign Minister David Miliband states. Rifkind called upon Miliband "to take adequate steps" to make sure that Eva Rhodes´s sister and daughter will be "supported in an appropriate manner" in the future.

In a further letter to Eva Rhodes´s sister, Austrian Judith Majlath, Rifkind reaffirmed that he would continue to watch this case. It was possible that there had been "mistakes" made by the Hungarian authorities in handling the case of Eva Rhodes and that "imprecise reports" had appeared in the Hungarian press. Still he saw no reason for the United Kingdom to intervene with the Hungarian authorities. The case was under the jurisdiction of the Hungarian authorities and it was important that investigations on the circumstances of the murder would "now go their way".

The sister, disarmament activist Judith Majlath, has been outraged that articles have been launched in the Hungarian press which presented the murder of her sister as an act committed in the heat of the moment. This is incompatible with the police files known to her and her own investigations. There is danger of prejudice that the Hungarian public is being prepared for the fact that the perpetrator, who had confessed the crime, would be only presecuted of manslaughter and not for murder. Majlath is demanding full clarification of the crime as well as an investigation (coroners inquest ) of the remains of her sister in the United Kingdom where the daughter and granddaughter of Eva Rhodes live.

Majlath criticised in particular that she had not been able to participate in a police press conference in Györ after the discovery of the remains in April. Her sister had received death threats in the past and she was threatened before she died .It was shocking that the Hungarian “Nepszabadsag” (in an article on the murder case, full of inaccuracies and offensive language about the victim and her family) reports "almost sympathetically about the perpetrator". Moreover, the fact that animals which had disappeared from the sanctuary of her sister after the crime, were now being offered for sale in Austria by an animal welfare organisation raised many questions. Eva Rhodes not least had been threatened by alleged animal rights activists in Hungary and a particular animal organisation in Györ.

For months Majlath had in vain requested to have a murder investigation opened which was repeatedly refused. The Hungarian police finally confirmed on 22 April that Eva Rhodes had indeed been a victim of murder. A thirty year-old man confessed to have slain, burnt, buried and robbed Rhodes on the courtyard of her animal sanctuary in Böny-Szölöhegy.

Free translation from German by AB and JM

5 May 2009 - Telegraph Online

Eva Rhodes and Yoko Ono: one of the most violent movies ever

I was flicking through the news pages of one of the broadsheets last week when a photograph of a young woman caught my eye. It was in black and white, and seemed to have been taken some time in the 1960s. Slender, attractive, long flowing hair: she looked like a model or an aspiring singer on her way to a party down the King's Road. She also looked strangely familiar. The caption said her name was Eva Rhodes, but that didn't ring any bells.

"A star model": Eva Rhodes in the 60s

The story accompanying the photograph was grisly and upsetting. Eva Rhodes, it turns out, was born in Hungary in 1943, becoming a refugee in 1956 after Stalin's tanks rolled into Budapest. She moved to Austria, then later to London. She became a model, and married an architect, before relocating to East Anglia where she reinvented herself as an antiques dealer.

In the early 1990s she returned to Hungary, using her life savings to establish an animal sanctuary called Puss In Boots that by 2008 housed seventy dogs and fifty cats. There, probably in September last year, she was murdered by one of her employees who battered her to death, set fire to her, then carted away her remains in a wheelbarrow before burying them 200 metres from the sanctuary. They were only discovered last week.

The reporter mentioned in passing that, in the 1960s, Eva had appeared in a film entitled Rape and directed by Yoko Ono. That film, the memory of which I've been trying to get out of my head ever since I first saw it a couple of years ago, is one of the most disturbing pieces of conceptual art ever made.

In her minimalist outline, Ono described it as "Rape with camera". Its entire story - though that word suggests a level of fictional artifice that its cine-verité form resists - goes like this: "A cameraman will chase a girl on a street with a camera persistently until he corners her in an alley, and, if possible, until she is in a falling position."

It's likely that many people, perhaps as a result of Imagine, associate Ono with pacifism. However, the art that initially made her name on the underground circuit, was anything but gentle. In Cut Piece, which she first performed in 1964 in Tokyo, she invited members of the audience to approach her on stage and cut away at her clothing with a pair of scissors so that, by the end of the piece, she was left covering her breasts.

The following year, she appeared in Satan's Bed (1965), a film made by the husband-and-wife team Michael and Roberta Findlay who a decade later would find notoriety following the release of Snuff (1976). Satan's Bed is an exploitation flick, a rather nasty one at that, in which Ono played a kimono-wearing immigrant who travels to New York to marry a guy involved in the drug trade. She can't speak English and soon finds herself in a cheap hotel room where she is raped by a gangster in the concrete business.

Rape was shot in November 1968, at a time when Ono was recovering at Great Charlotte Street Hospital after a suffering a miscarriage. In it, cameraman Nick Knowland comes across a young woman (Eva Majlata, as she was then known, although she is not named in the film), walking through Highgate Cemetery in north London. He starts to tail her. She's surprised, but initially stays calm. She tries to engage Knowland in conversation: "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" "Parla Italiano?" She seems not to speak English. If he understands her, he does not let on, and does not reply to her.

Discomforting: Eva Rhodes in 'Rape'

Gradually she gets tetchy. To her the camera resembles a weapon. She speeds up, tries to move away. He follows her, quietly and persistently. "I've really had enough," she exclaims. "What are you going to do with this film?" she demands. "Why are you making this film? For whom?" Agitation and fear mount. At one point she nearly gets run over by oncoming traffic. She gets in a taxi, but the cameraman follows her.

The second half of the film is even more discomforting to watch. Eva appears to have been tracked down to her flat. She blurts and cries out. A telephone rings and she babbles desperately into it. Tears smudge her make-up and she hides her face. She implores the cameraman to go away. She has been caged, cornered. Then, suddenly, the film stops (though some prints include a coda in which Ono and Lennon are shown singing "Everybody had a hard year").

Rape, in both its simplicity and substance, has its roots in ideas about control and about tracking that Ono was exploring long before she met Lennon. It bears some resemblance with 'Black Piece II', a set of instructions she published as part of her 1964 book Grapefruit, in which she orders: "Walk behind a person for four hours."

Some critics saw the film as a critique of fame and the emergence of paparazzi culture. Certainly, at moments it recalls a famous image from Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) in which David Hemmings's photographer has a model (Vanessa Redgrave) splayed out before him on the floor of his studio: here is the violent collision of glamour, advertising, fashion and sexualized visual culture that was becoming commonplace during the 1960s.

Lennon proposed a more political interpretation of Rape. Speaking after the film's broadcast on Austrian television, he argued: "We are showing how all of us are exposed and under pressure in our contemporary world. This isn't just about the Beatles. What is happening to this girl on the screen is happening in Biafra, Vietnam, everywhere."

Watching Rape today, it's hard not to think of it as primarily a film about the aesthetics of surveillance, as well as about the relationship between technology and individual identity. One astute contemporary reviewer claimed that Rape "does for the age of television what Franz Kafka's The Trial did for the age of totalitarianism." It anticipates the explosion of interest among a wide range of artists today - Sophie Calle, Julia Scher, Chris Petit, Hasan Elahi - in exploring the dynamics of watching and being watched.

Equally, Rape can be seen as an extreme work of art, a companion piece to Michael Powell's equally dark Peeping Tom (1960), that prefigures the rash of slasher and stalker films such as John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) that have since become staple multiplex fare. It also dramatizes the arguments about the voyeuristic and exploitative nature of the male gaze later articulated by Laura Mulvey in her famous essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' (1973).

I've met a number of people who have seen Rape and they all confess in perplexed fashion to deriving thrills and - yes - pleasure from it. The film maker Jonas Mekas once claimed: "Two things are interesting to watch as the film progresses: one is the girl - and the other is the audience." Rape speaks to the present moment when reality television routinely manufactures narrative formats designed to stimulate and exploit our perverse desire to see cruelty inflicted on people we have never met.

One under-emphasised element of Rape has been its potential status as a film about migration. Viewers have sometimes been mystified as to why Eva doesn't report the cameraman or phone the police. Her lack of English is one reason. But it's also been suggested that as someone living in the country illegally she may, in her confusion and anxiety, have seen the film makers as representatives of the law or of state authority.

That's speculation, of course. But a very suggestive speculation. Eva's words are neither translated nor subtitled. She's alone, in the dark even though it's daytime. And so are we. Does that linguistic gulf create a space of indifference, a zone of amoral licence, that 'frees' us to watch her being tracked in this brutal fashion? Perhaps her vulnerability has as much to do with her being an unpapered refugee as it does with her gender. Ono, herself a migrant to Britain, experienced both misogyny and racial hostility as soon as she started going out with Lennon.

Rape, described by critic J. Hoberman as "one of the most violent and sexually charged movies ever made - even if flesh never touches flesh", has mainly been shown in art galleries or at one-off screenings at special retrospectives of Ono's work. It has never been released on video or DVD, and remains shrouded in mystery: some writers have wondered whether Eva knew that she was taking part in a film. Her fee was a signed album from John and Yoko and £25,000, although she only received the money many decades later. However, according to one contemporary reporter, her appearance led to her winning "a contract as a star model".

Ono, speaking about the film to Scott McDonald in 1989, revealed: "A lot of my works have been a projection of my future fate. It frightens me. It simply frightens me. I don't want to see Rape now. I haven't seen the Rape film in a long time, but just thinking about the concept of it frightens me because now I'm in that position, the position of the woman in the film."

As far as I can ascertain, no one ever interviewed Eva Majlath - or Eva Rhodes - about what she thought of the film. Now we'll never know.

The Austrian Times 27 April 2009

Eva Rhodes killer facing trial in UK

The alleged killer of former John Lennon model Eva Rhodes could face trial in the United Kingdom.

The British Embassy in Budapest said that although Rhodes had been living in Hungary and was killed in the country by a Hungarian, as she was a British citizen her killer could face trial in the United Kingdom.

In a statement to Hungarian media the embassy said: "As a British citizen we have taken over dealing with this case and will make sure it is brought to a proper conclusion. One of the factors that still has to be decided is whether the murderer will have to face justice in Hungary or in Britain."

The statement was made after Hungarian police confirmed that the body discovered recently in a Hungarian wood was certainly that of Eva Rhodes.

"Eva Rhodes, 65, director of the animal shelter in Bony, was murdered," said spokesman Zsolt Banhalmi of the Gyor-Sopron-Moson county police.

"The suspect is a man of 30, arrested on Tuesday in Budapest, who worked at the victim's animal shelter," he added.

The suspect admitted he had fought with Rhodes over his pay and had struck her several times on the head, killing her, police said.

They said he was photographed on CCTV camera with Eva buying a mobile phone for the foundation which she paid for.

The murderer is also accused of stealing the dead woman's laptop.

After taking her money and laptop computer, he tried to burn the body but failed to do so entirely when it started to rain. He buried the remains not far from the animal shelter.

He led police to the body after confessing to them.

The investigation continues.

The Budapest Times 27 April 2009

Charred body of British former model dug up

The body of Eva Rhodes, a British former model who went missing in September 2008, was found last Thursday near the dog shelter she set up upon returning to Hungary in the 1990s.
Forensic pathologists quickly determined from the burned remains that the woman was a victim of a violent crime. After her disappearance, the sister of the 65-year-old woman asked the police to launch an investigation into a possible murder, but investigators determined at the time that there were not enough facts to support murder or any other crime, despite her home having been ransacked.

After more pressure, a search for a missing person was launched and the local police force offered a reward for information. A 30-year-old man, who was arrested in a shoplifting case, is being charged with the murder of Rhodes. He admitted to killing the woman last September after failing a lie detector test.

Apparently the two got into an argument about financial matters and the employee of ten days hit Rhodes on the head several times, killing her.

According to the the Mosony Sopron County Police the killer told them: "I poured petrol on her and tried and tried to set fire to the body but it would not start,” as it was raining. “I must have tried for an hour but it would not burn.”

He then proceeded to get rid of the body, but the fire lit to burn it was extinguished by rain, so he decided to bury the remains in the adjacent courtyard. It was the suspect himself who pointed police officers to the spot where the body parts were put in the ground.

Rhodes was born in Hungary, but emigrated to Austria then to England after the 1956 Uprising, where she became a model and an actress. She returned to the country in the early ’90s and started an animal shelter near the Austrian-Hungarian border.

24 April 2009

Man 'Admits' Killing 1960s Model Eva Rhodes

A man has reportedly confessed to murdering former British model Eva Rhodes and burying her burnt body just yards from her home.
Ms Rhodes - who once appeared in a 1960s film by John Lennon and Yoko Ono - disappeared in September 2008 from the animal sanctuary she owned and ran in Hungary.

Police have said a 30-year-old former worker at the remote refuge confessed to her murder after agreeing to take a lie detector test.

The alleged killer led them to the spot in nearby woods in Bony, western Hungary, where he said he had buried her body after trying for more than an hour to set fire to it.

"I started beating her on the porch and kept hitting her until she stopped moving. Then she didn't move any more," the worker, who has not been identified, reportedly told Mosony Sopron County Police.

"I poured petrol over her and tried and tried to set fire to it but it wouldn't ignite. I must have tried for an hour but it wouldn't burn.

"So I took her body to the woods, dug a hole and buried her."

The man was identified as a suspect early in the investigation after CCTV footage showed him with his 65-year-old boss on the day she disappeared.

He had always denied being responsible for her death until Tuesday's polygraph test showed he was lying about her last day at the refuge, police said.

Ms Rhodes' sister Judith Majlath - who campaigned for a wider investigation into her disappearance - said: "I have known since last September that something like this must have happened.

"I've tried to tell the authorities, but they just wouldn't listen to me. I'm in deep shock and sorrow."

Ms Rhodes' family feared she had been murdered after falling foul of local farmers and clashes with police over her sanctuary licence.

Ms Majlath added: "The Hungarian investigation was a joke - they refused to accept they even needed to investigate at first and even when trained sniffer dogs specialised in looking for corpses found indications that my sister had been murdered they still refused to act."

The one-time beauty queen's disappearance provoked an international row when MP Malcolm Rifkind accused the Foreign Office of not doing enough to press Hungarian authorities to widen their investigation.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband had dismissed her disappearance as a missing persons case saying there was no "hard evidence" of a crime.

Ms Rhodes was born in Hungary and emigrated to the UK in the 1960s, where she became a model and actress.

She returned to Hungary 12 years ago to open a sanctuary for stray cats and dogs following her divorce from her husband.

23 April 2009 -
(By Duncan Campbell)

Remains found in Hungary may be British ex-model

Man in custody over discovery near animal sanctuary run by Eva Rhodes, who went missing last year
The remains of a woman, believed to be a former British model and actor missing since last year, have been found in Hungary. It is understood that the discovery was made near an animal sanctuary run by Eva Rhodes, who had been feared murdered. A man is in custody.

Hungarian police said that a 30-year-old man who had worked at the sanctuary run by Rhodes had confessed to the crime and had taken them to where her remains were hidden. The police believe that the motive was robbery, as money and a laptop were stolen.

Her sister, Judith Majlath, who lives in Vienna, has campaigned for the case to be investigated. She was travelling to Hungary today to meet the police, who she felt did not hold a proper investigation.

"It is the most horrendous day of my life," she told the Guardian last night. "She was battered to death and then put in a fire and then her remains carted away in a wheelbarrow and buried only 200 metres from the sanctuary. Her remains have been there for all that time and yet the police did not find them. I am disgusted."

Majlath added that "it was a pathetic amount of money that was stolen. It is so sad that Eva, who gave so much and did so much good, should die in this way. She dedicated her whole life to this and she ended up on a pyre."

Rhodes was born in Hungary in 1943 and became a refugee in 1956, moving first to Austria and then to London. She became a successful model, appeared in the John Lennon and Yoko Ono film Rape, and married an English architect.

After moving to East Anglia, she worked as an antiques dealer, but returned to Hungary in the 1990s to Gyor, near the Austrian border. There she set up an animal sanctuary called Puss in Boots which, by last summer, was providing a home for about 70 dogs and 50 cats.

She became a much-quoted figure in the local media on animal welfare issues, and had a number of confrontations with people she felt were not treating animals properly.

She was last seen on 10 September with a young man in a local supermarket. The man bought a phone and the pair were seen later by an Englishman who lived nearby and knew Rhodes. Later, her house was found to have been ransacked, with many items stolen.

A spokesman for the Hungarian embassy in London said police had done everything possible in their search for Rhodes. A reward had been offered and four officers were still pursuing inquiries, long after most investigations would have been closed, he said.

23 April 2009 - Telegraph Online
(By Allan Hall in Berlin)

Body of former model Eva Rhodes found buried in Hungary

The battered body of former British model Eva Rhodes has been discovered in Hungary more than seven months after she disappeared in mysterious circumstances.

The body of former British model Eva Rhodes has been discovered in Hungary

The former beauty queen and associate of John Lennon was found just yards from her home after a colleague at an animal sanctuary allegedly confessed to beating and burning her body before burying her.

Her family had been campaigning for a proper investigation into her death after Hungarian and British authorities initially ruled out foul play.

Hungarian-born Mrs Rhodes, 65, came to England as a child and had a successful early career as a model including an appearance in a film by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

She returned to her homeland 12 years ago but disappeared from her animal sanctuary last September, triggering fears from her family that she was in danger.

The police initially refused to take their concerns seriously but eventually agreed to investigate and arrested one of her colleagues who was seen with her on the day she vanished.

On Tuesday, the former worker at the remote refuge 200 miles from Budapest confessed to her murder after being asked to take a lie-detector test.

The unnamed man led them to the spot in nearby woods in Bony where he had buried her body after trying for more than an hour to set fire to it.

The alleged murderer of the former London socialite told detectives his motive had been robbery.

"I poured petrol over her and tried and tried to set fire to it but it wouldn't ignite. I must have tried for an hour but it wouldn't burn," he told detectives at Mosony Sopron County Police. "So I took her body to the woods, dug a hole and buried her."

The man was identified as a suspect early in the investigation after CCTV footage showed him with his boss on the day she disappeared.

He had always denied being responsible for her death until the polygraph test showed he was lying about her last day at the refuge.

"I started beating her on the porch and kept hitting her until she stopped moving. Then she didn't move any more," he finally told police.

Ms Rhodes' sister Judith Majlath – who campaigned tirelessly for a wider investigation into her disappearance said it hand confirmed their fears.

She said: "I have known since last September that something like this must have happened.

"I've tried to tell the authorities, but they just wouldn't listen to me. I'm in deep shock and sorrow."

Ms Rhodes' family feared she'd been murdered after falling foul of local farmers and clashes with police over her sanctuary licence.

Her sister Judith said: "The Hungarian investigation was a joke – they refused to accept they even needed to investigate at first and even when trained sniffer dogs specialised in looking for corpses found indications that my sister had been murdered they still refused to act."

Many locals and police dismissed claims of foul play saying she had simply gone home to the UK.

Her home had been ransacked and a laptop computer and telephones were stolen. Her office records and files were partially destroyed and her car was found abandoned nearby.

Mrs Rhodes was a passionate animal rights activist and used her life savings to set up the Puss in Boots Animal Trust in Hungary 12 years ago.

She took in stray and abused cats and dogs but also campaigned tirelessly for better treatment for animals and an end to Hungarian puppy farms – a move that meant she clashed frequently with local police over their lack of interest in cases of animal cruelty.

She was so unhappy with the way Hungarian police treated her she lodged a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld her assertion that police had acted "over-aggressively" towards her.

The victory however did not end a hate campaign against her that included death threats, and eight months ago she vanished, leaving behind all her possessions.

Rhodes was last seen in a Gyor mobile phone shop on September 10 with her alleged killer who she had recruited to help her run the sanctuary.

Eva was formerly married to British architect Mark Rhodes. The couple later divorced and she established the sanctuary.

In the Sixties, all Mrs Rhodes received for her role in the Lennon/Ono film was an album signed by John and Yoko and a promised £25,000 fee never materialised.

But later, on learning of her new life with animals, the widow of the Beatle 'made good' the outstanding fee with all the money going to the sanctuary.

23 April 2009 - Times Online (by Hannah Fletcher)

Battered body of ex-model Eva Rhodes is discovered in Hungary

A man has been arrested after the body of a former British model and actress who disappeared almost eight months ago was found in Hungary.

Eva Rhodes, 65, who appeared in a film by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the 1960s, had been missing since last September. Her battered body was found buried close to the animal shelter that she ran in Bony, northwest Hungary. The 30-year-old man arrested on Tuesday worked at the shelter and was seen with Ms Rhodes on September 10, the day she vanished.

A spokesman for the Gyor-Sopron-Moson county police said the man had admitted the murder, after arguing with Ms Rhodes over his pay. He struck her several times on the head and, after stealing money and her laptop, tried to burn Ms Rhodes’s body. When it began to rain, he buried the remains instead, the spokesman said.

Ms Rhodes’s sister, Judith Majlath, who lives in Vienna, was scathing about the police: “The investigation was a joke; at first they refused to accept they even needed to investigate.”

Ms Rhodes used her savings to set up the Puss in Boots Animal Trust 12 years ago, giving sanctuary to 70 dogs and 50 cats and fighting against puppy farms, which brought her into conflict with neighbours and local police.

25 March 2009 - Wien (APA)
Austria/Hungary/United Kingdom/crime/CEE

Hungary: Confusion over disappeared British Animal rights activist Eva Rhodes
subtitle: Police general threatens to file charges against the sister of the disappeared for criticizing the work of the police

Vienna (APA): The case of animal rights activist and British citizen Eva Rhodes who disappeared in Hungary over six months ago has taken a surprising turn. The Head of the policy department competent to investigate in the region, Arpad Szabadfi threatened to file charges against the sister of the disappeared, Austrian disarmament activist Judith Majlath according to an article in the Hungarian daily newspaper "Blikk" since she was constantly criticising the work of the police. Meanwhile, Majlath´s application to initiate a murder inquiry because of the disappearance of her sister was rejected.

The local newspaper "Kisaföld" reported under the headline "The General files charges due to criticism" on the intention of the Police General to initiate proceedings against the critic so inconvenient for the police. "The Police General Szabadfi Arpad is filing charges against Judith Majlath, because she criticises the work of the police in connection with the search for her sister Eva Rhodes, since the family is convinced that not everything is being done to find Eva Rhodes", it is written there.

Majlath was also informed on Tuesday that the Györ police authorities had rejected her application of 9 March 2009 to investigate for murder in the case of Eva Rhodes. The rejection of the detailed application was based on the reason that there were no grounds for suspicion that would enable the conclusion that Eva Rhodes was murdered.

The sister of the disappeared, the Director of the Austrian Section of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines which received the Nobel Peace Prize and of the international Cluster Munition Coalition is shocked at the news from Györ. "I fail to understand all this. I am filing charges against X with a list of indications upon the advice of the police and now I am threatened by the Head of the Police in Györ with charges because I am criticising on an international level the lack of success of the police in finding my sister. We live in an open Europe without borders. The police themselves are conceding that they are completely in the dark as to her whereabouts."

The police had not provided "any evidence whatsoever" that Eva Rhodes had not been murdered. Still, it has been stereotypically claimed for six months that no crime had taken place. As of yet, there had also not been a cooperation with English investigators of Scotland Yard.

In Györ, still proceedings against her disappeared sister and her daughter were taking place in a matter because of which Hungary had been convicted by the European Court of Human Rights, Majlath criticised. "They are looking for the disappeared with an arrest warrant, not as a possible murder victim." After filing charges against X as recommended by the police still no investigations are undertaken for murder but the person filing the charges herself was now facing charges for her criticism on the work of the police. "I fail to understand all this. This does raise some “reason for questions", Majlath said.

She would love to "heap praise on the work of the police", bury her sister and leave Hungary for good like in 1956, Majlath said to APA. By the threat of charges because of criticism on the work of the police she felt like “back in the dark ages of communism”. In any case, she was not going to stop making use of her right to freedom of expression.

Translated from the orig.German text by AB & JM

17 March 2009 - Mail Online
David Miliband slammed for failing to assist hunt for animal-loving former 60s model feared murdered in Hungary

Foreign Secretary David Miliband was accused today of failing to take action over a British former model feared to have been murdered in Hungary.

Her family believe Eva Rhodes, who appeared in a John Lennon and Yoko Ono film, was killed because of her work running an animal sanctuary.

The 65-year-old grandmother disappeared in September after becoming the target of a hate campaign and clashing with local police.

Disappeared: Eva Rhodes as a young model

Hungarian authorities say they are treating it as a missing person case but her family are convinced she has been killed.

MP Malcolm Rifkind has accused the Foreign Office of not doing enough to help find out what has happened to her.

Mrs Rhodes was last seen with a Roma man who worked at her Puss in Boots Animal Trust near the town of Gyor in north-west Hungary.

Although her bank account has not been touched, her office had been ransacked, laptop stolen and her car found parked outside her home with its doors open.

Ms Rhodes in more recent times. She disappeared while in Hungary

In his letter to the Foreign Secretary, Mr Rifkind says Mr Miliband's argument that it was a missing persons case, not one of murder, was 'very disturbing'.

He said there was 'hard evidence' of a crime and the Foreign Secretary should do more to put pressure on the Hungarian government.

Mr Rifkind, a former foreign secretary, contrasted the case with that of French student Ophelie Bretnacher who went missing in Budapest in December and whose body was found in the Danube last month.

In that case French detectives were called in by Hungarian authorities after French president Nicolas Sarkozy intervened.

Mr Rifkind said: 'If it is possible for the French authorities to act in this way with some success I am not aware that there is any reason why the UK could not do the same.'

He was writing on behalf of Mrs Rhodes's sister Judith Majlath, who lives in Vienna and his Kensington constituency.

She told the London Evening Standard: 'I wrote to Miliband on 18 December last year and I still have not got a personal reply to my letter.

'When a French national disappeared in similar circumstances the French demanded action and got their police sent in.

Mystery: The town of Gyor, where Eva Rhodes went missing

'The British Foreign Secretary is just sitting on his hands repeating the Hungarian excuses like a parrot. I want to know what happened to my sister and I believe only a police force such as Scotland Yard can help.'

Mrs Rhodes, whose family left Hungary in the Fifties, was working as a model and actress in London in the Sixties when her looks attracted the attention of Lennon and Ono.

They cast her in a film they were making called Rape, about the intrusion of the camera in everyday life.

In her youth, Eva appeared in a film by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

She established the animal sanctuary for abandoned cats and dogs 12 years ago after divorcing her husband, architect Mark Rhodes.

Her family believes she made enemies after she campaigned against dog fighting and the use of animals in lab experiments.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: 'A UK police force can only take action at the invitation of the government of the country where a person has gone missing.

'Colleagues at our embassy in Hungary have regularly checked with the local police in Gyor. They are fully aware of our concerns.'

17 March 2009 - Evening Standard by Justin Davenport, Crime Correspondent
Miliband 'failed to help hunt for model feared murdered abroad'

FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband was accused today of failing to take action over a British former model feared to have been murdered in Hungary.

Her family believe Eva Rhodes, who appeared in a John Lennon and Yoko Ono film, was killed because of her work running an animal sanctuary in Hungary.

The 65-year-old grandmother disappeared in September after becoming the target of a hate campaign and clashing with local police. Hungarian authorities say they are treating it as a missing person case but her family are convinced she has been killed.

MP Malcolm Rifkind has accused the Foreign Office of not doing enough to help find out what has happened to her.

Mrs Rhodes was last seen with a Roma man who worked at her Puss in Boots Animal Trust near the town of Gyor in north-west Hungary.

Although her bank account has not been touched, her office had been ransacked, laptop stolen and her car found parked outside her home with its doors open.

In his letter to the Foreign Secretary Mr Rifkind says Mr Miliband's argument that it was a missing persons case, not one of murder, was "very disturbing".

He said there was "hard evidence" of a crime and the Foreign Secretary should do more to put pressure on the Hungarian government.

Mr Rifkind, a former foreign secretary, contrasted the case with that of French student Ophelie Bretnacher who went missing in Budapest in December and whose body was found in the Danube last month.

In that case French detectives were called in by Hungarian authorities after French president Nicolas Sarkozy intervened.

Mr Rifkind said: "If it is possible for the French authorities to act in this way with some success I am not aware that there is any reason why the UK could not do the same."

He was writing on behalf of Mrs Rhodes's sister Judith Majlath, who lives in Vienna and his Kensington constituency. She told the Standard: "I wrote to Miliband on 18 December last year and I still have not got a personal reply to my letter.

"When a French national disappeared in similar circumstances the French demanded action and got their police sent in. The British Foreign Secretary is just sitting on his hands repeating the Hungarian excuses like a parrot. I want to know what happened to my sister and I believe only a police force such as Scotland Yard can help."

Mrs Rhodes, whose family left Hungary in the Fifties, was working as a model and actress in London in the Sixties when her looks attracted the attention of Lennon and Ono.

They cast her in a film they were making called Rape, about the intrusion of the camera in everyday life.

She established the animal sanctuary for abandoned cats and dogs 12 years ago after divorcing her husband, architect Mark Rhodes.

Her family believes she made enemies after she campaigned against dog fighting and the use of animals in lab experiments.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "A UK police force can only take action at the invitation of the government of the country where a person has gone missing.

"Colleagues at our embassy in Hungary have regularly checked with the local police in Gyor. They are fully aware of our concerns."

13 March 2009 - The Calgary Herald
Sister says missing ex-model was murdered

The sister of British former model Eva Rhodes, who disappeared last September in Hungary, filed murder charges in Gyor Thursday to push the Hungarian police to treat the case as a crime.

"I have filed charges against unknown persons for murder, with the Gyor-Sopron-Moson county police," Rhodes' sister Judith Majlath, who lives in Austria, said.

"It is a scandal that the Hungarian police has found nothing since Eva went missing on Sept. 10," she added.

Meanwhile, British MP Malcolm Rifkind also called for Scotland Yard to investigate Rhodes' case, in a letter to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a copy of which was sent to Agence France-Presse.

"It is deeply worrying that the Hungarian authorities are still treating (it) simply as a missing person case," Rifkind wrote.

Rhodes, 65, who operated an animal shelter in Bony, a village in western Hungary near the Austrian border, was last seen in September in the company of a still unidentified man she had hired to replace her at the shelter while she was to go away for medical treatment, according to Majlath.

Majlath said Rhodes had had several disputes with Bony residents and with the local police.

12 March 2009 - Budapest (AFP - Agence France Presse)
Hungary-Britain-missing-police

Missing former British model in Hungary was murdered: sister

BUDAPEST, March 12, 2009 (AFP) - The sister of British former model Eva Rhodes, who disappeared last September in Hungary, filed murder charges in Gyor Thursday to push the Hungarian police to treat the case as a crime.
"I have filed charges against unknown persons for murder, with the Gyor-Sopron-Moson county police," Rhodes' sister Judith Majlath, who lives in Austria, told AFP.
"It is a scandal that the Hungarian police has found nothing since Eva went missing on September 10," she added.
Meanwhile, British MP Malcolm Rifkind also called for Scotland Yard to investigate Rhodes' case, in a letter to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a copy of which was sent to AFP.
"It is deeply worrying that the Hungarian authorities are still treating (it) simply as a missing person case," Rifkind wrote.
Rhodes, 65, who operated an animal shelter in Bony, a village in western Hungary near the Austrian border, was last seen in September in the company of a still unidentified man whom she had hired to replace her at the shelter while she was to go away for medical treatment, according to Majlath.
She insisted that her sister had been murdered six months ago and that the Gyor-Moson-Sopron County police's decision to treat it as a missing person's case was "sheer negligence and a scandal".
Police had been "ignoring all the evidence pointing to the need for a murder inquiry," she added.
"A dedicated woman like Eva would never have left 130 animals and simply walked out on them."
Majlath said Rhodes had had several disputes with Bony residents and with the local police.
Meanwhile, three sniffer dogs, specialised in detecting dead bodies, had picked up a scent on the back seat of Rhodes' car in October but police did not follow up this lead until February, Majlath added.
The police, who put up a one-million-forint (3,333 euros, 4,251 dollars) reward for information on Rhodes, have argued that there is not enough evidence to launch a criminal case.
"We are examining every single tip that could lead to clues but to start a criminal investigation we need evidence," police spokesman Tunde Kocsis said.
Moreover, there was virtually no difference between an investigation for murder or for a missing person, he said.
"We would have done the same in a criminal investigation too."
Rhodes was born in Hungary in 1943 but fled to Austria in 1956, before emigrating to the United Kingdom in the sixties where she became a model and actress, playing in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's film "Rape".
She returned to Hungary in the late 1990s.

12 March 2009 - Wien (APA)
Austria/Hungary/United Kingdom/crime/CEE

The case of Eva Rhodes: Rifkind is demanding action from Miliband
subtitle: UK ex-Foreign Minister is criticising Foreign Office and demands involvement by Scotland Yard in the investigations

Vienna/London (APA) UK Foreign Minister David Miliband is coming under domestic political pressure because of the position of his Ministry in the case of British citizen Eva Rhodes who has been missing in Hungary for six months. The prominent Tory MP and ex-Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind criticised the Labour Head of Office in a letter for merely repeating the Hungarian position on the matter and not doing anything for involving Scotland Yard in the investigations.

Rifkind considered Miliband´s argument that it was not a case of murder but that of a missing person in a copy of the letter available to APA "very disturbing". A growing number of indications justified the assumption that Eva Rhodes who disappeared six months ago had been murdered or "has lost her life in comparable circumstances. There were many indications as to the fact that she would have never abandoned the animals of her animal sanctuary and simply disappear, Rifkind emphasised.

High-level Hungarian police officers had emphasised towards the sister of the disappeared, Austrian disarmament activist Judith Majlath, that there were no objections to co-operation with the British police. In the case of French student Ophelie Bretnacher who had been missing for months and then been found dead in the Danube there had been co-operation between the Hungarian and the French authorities. This co-operation had been requested by the French authorities while London had not put forward a similar request, Rifkind criticised.

He was of course aware, Rifkind further wrote that for such police co-operation the formal requirement was that the first request must come from the Hungarian authorities through Interpol. He would however ask Miliband to let the Hungarian authorities know "in quite strong terms" that the United Kingdom would welcome such a request given that we are dealing with the disappearance of a British citizen

Previously, the Foreign Minister had referred to the responsibility of the Hungarian authorities for the investigation of the disappearance of the British animal rights activist. British police units like Scotland Yard could only become active upon request of the government of the respective country in such cases, Miliband emphasised in a letter to Rifkind who had asked the Foreign Minister about the state of affairs in the investigations in the case of Eva Rhodes.

Meanwhile, Judith Majlath has lodged a formal murder complaint against X in Hungary and requested a murder inquiry. She is accusing Hungarian police of "catastrophic negligence" in their investigations and of having ignored numerous indications as to a crime. For instance, Eva Rhodes had been threatened only on the day before her disappearance. "I am fed up with this game of ping-pong. I demand from the Hungarian authorities to start a murder inquiry at once and investigate the crime committed after six months of delay and no results and I demand that Scotland Yard is invited to participate given that we are dealing with the death of a British citizen", Majlath reaffirmed speaking to APA.

Eva Rhodes has disappeared near Györ since 10 September 2008.

Translated from the orig.German text by AB & JM

9 February 2009
by Chris Irvine British animal welfare worker feared murdered in Hungary
A British model and actress turned animal welfare worker is missing and feared murdered by her family, because of her work at an animal sanctuary in Hungary.

Providing a home for more than 100 stray and abused dogs and cats, Eva Rhodes became a well-known figure in the local media on animal welfare issues

Eva Rhodes became a successful model in the UK after moving to London in the 1960s following spells in Hungary and Austria.

She attracted the attention of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were looking for an actress to appear in their film Rape, about the intrusion of the camera in every day life.

Mrs Rhodes, who was married to British architect Mark Rhodes, moved back to Hungary after she divorced to set up the Puss in Boots Animal Trust sanctuary in Gyor, close to the Austrian border.

Providing a home for more than 100 stray and abused dogs and cats, she became a well-known figure in the local media on animal welfare issues.

But this resulted in confrontations and disagreements with people she felt were not treating animals properly and a court case resulting from one such disagreement was due to be heard shortly after her disappearance.

Mrs Rhodes, 65, was last seen four months ago in the company of a young man she had recruited to help at her sanctuary.

Although her personal bank account has not been touched, the sanctuary was found ransacked and donations sent from England have mysteriously disappeared.

Her sister, Judith Majlath, who lives in Vienna, believes Mrs Rhodes was targeted and murdered, either as the result of her animal welfare work or a robbery. She also argues the Hungarian police, who Mrs Rhodes reportedly clashed with over their lack of interest in animal cruelty cases, has not conducted a proper investigation, claiming they hired sniffer dogs to examine Mrs Rhodes' car, which was found at the sanctuary and they discovered evidence of a dead body on the back seat.

"We are very unhappy that the police seem to have treated it as a missing person case and not as a crime," she said.

"As a result, her house was not closed off for a proper investigation and vial time was lost in looking for her."

Peter Kalotai, from the Hungarian Embassy in London, said there was no evidence of murder and Hungarian police were treating it as a missing person's case.

He said they were treating the case seriously, as police had set up a four-man investigation special unit, as well as offering a £3,000 reward for anyone with any information.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman confirmed Mrs Rhodes was reported missing in September 2008, the Metropolitan Police had been contacted and their Mutual Legal Assistance Team was providing a family liaison.

She said: "Full consular assistance has been provided to the family. Staff at the Embassy in Hungary are in contact with the Hungarian authorities."

8 February 2009 -
(By Duncan Campbell)
British animal welfare worker in Hungary feared murdered
A British woman who was a model and actor in the 1960s is feared murdered, possibly because of her work running an animal sanctuary in Hungary. Her family claim that the Hungarian police have failed to carry out a proper investigation and want the Foreign Office to take action to ensure that the case is investigated properly.

Eva Rhodes was born in Hungary in 1943 and became a refugee in 1956, moving first to Austria and then, in the 1960s, to London. She became a successful model, appeared in a John Lennon and Yoko Ono film, Rape, and married an English architect, from whom she later parted amicably. After moving to East Anglia, she worked as an antiques dealer but decided to leave Britain, eventually returning to Hungary in the 1990s to Gyor, close to the Austrian border.

In Hungary, she set up an animal sanctuary called Puss in Boots which, by last summer, was providing homes for around 70 dogs and 50 cats, as well as the occasional ferret, duck and donkey. She organised vaccinations and sterilisations for them all and became a well-known and much-quoted figure in the local media on animal welfare issues. While running the sanctuary, she had a number of confrontations locally with people who she did not feel were treating animals properly, and this led to disagreements with local officials. A court case resulting from one of those incidents was due to be heard shortly after her disappearance.

The last sightings of Rhodes were on 10 September, when she was seen with a young man in a local supermarket. The man bought a phone and the pair were seen later by an English man who lived nearby who knew Rhodes. After that, the trail went cold. Her house was found to be ransacked and many items stolen, including her laptop, paintings, and even electric plugs and piping. Her sister, Judith Majlath, who lives in Vienna and travelled to Hungary when she received no reply from Rhodes, believes that her disappearance, which she is certain is a murder, was either the result of her activity on behalf of her animals or a robbery.

"According to Eva's vet, the animals had not been fed for approximately three days," said Majlath. "Those who knew Eva's love and dedicated work for the animals will know that she would have never left them unattended." Majlath said that there were "several people who wanted to get rid of her".

Majlath said she felt that the Hungarian police had not mounted a proper investigation. She hired her own sniffer dogs to examine Rhodes's car, which was found at the sanctuary, and said that they discovered evidence of a dead body on the back seat.

"We are very unhappy that the police seem to have treated it as a missing person case and not as a crime," she said. "As a result, her house was not closed off for a proper investigation and vital time was lost in looking for her. They have taken no forensic evidence."

Last Friday, Majlath had a meeting with the deputy chief commissioner of the Hungarian police, Istvan Hazi. She said that he had told her he had no objections to Scotland Yard being involved in the investigation if the local police agree. She is now trying to make this happen. "I will not stop searching for my sister and her killer," she said.

Majlath, an antiques dealer and the director of the Austrian section of the Cluster Munition Coalition, was also critical of the Foreign Office for not being as active as the French authorities had been over the recent disappearance in Hungary of Ophélie Bretnacher, a French exchange student. The Foreign Office said that full consular assistance had been provided to the family.

A spokesman for the Hungarian embassy in London said that the Hungarian police had done everything possible in their search for Rhodes. A reward has been offered and a four-person police unit is still pursuing inquiries long after the normal time for such investigations to be closed, he said.

16 January 2009 - The Daily Mail
(By David Williams)
Murder riddle over the 60s model who caught John and Yoko's eye
A former British model and actress who once rubbed shoulders with John Lennon is missing, feared murdered - because of her love of animals.

For 12 years Eva Rhodes has cared for abandoned cats and dogs at a sanctuary in Hungary funded partly by donations from animal lovers in England and a gift from Yoko Ono, with whom she made a film in the 1960s.

But four months ago the 65-year-old grandmother, who had been the target of a hate campaign and had clashed with local police, vanished and her family believe she has been killed.

Stunning: Eva Rhodes in the 1960s. She vanished four months ago, aged 65, and her family believe she has been killed

She was last seen in the company of a young Roma man she had recruited to help at her Puss in Boots Animal Trust near the town of Gyor, on September 10.

Although her personal bank account has not been touched, the sanctuary has been ransacked and donations sent from England mysteriously diverted.

'We believe she has been murdered and the body possibly disposed of,' said her sister Judith Majlath.

She added: 'Despite all the evidence that she is the victim of crime, she is merely being treated as a "missing person" by the Hungarian authorities, whose indifference is shameful.'

Miss Majlath, who lives in Vienna, flew to Britain this week to join Mrs Rhodes's Chelsea-based daughter Sophie in pleading with Foreign Secretary David Miliband to ask Hungary to treat the disappearance as a criminal case.

Miss Majlath said there had been a long-running dispute between police in Gyor and her sister over the sanctuary.

It ended with a victory for Mrs Rhodes in the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld her claim that police had acted over-aggressively towards her.

Eva worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on their their film, Rape

'There are many elements in Gyor who will not be sorry that Eva has disappeared and one of them is the police,' Miss Majlath said.

'There is trafficking in dogs in Hungary and people treat animals in a very diffirent way to the UK. Many of those who lived near the sanctuary considered Eva an eccentric English woman who brought them unwanted attention.'

Some of the animals sold by the traffickers, she said, end up being used in dog-fighting and lab experiments.

Mrs Rhodes, whose family left Hungary in the 1950s, began working as a model and actress in London in the 1960s.

Her stunning looks attracted the attention of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were looking for an actress to star in a film they were making called Rape, about the intrusion of the camera in everyday life.

Eva married British architect Mark Rhodes. The couple later divorced and she established the sanctuary using £150,000 of her own money.

The centre - and Mrs Rhodes - are well known in Hungary, especially after she was reunited on TV with a surprised Yoko Ono when Rape was shown to great acclaim at a festival in Vienna.

In the Sixties, all Mrs Rhodes had received for her role had been an album signed by John and Yoko and the promised £25,000 fee had not materialised.

On learning of Mrs Rhodes's new life with animals the widow of the Beatle 'made good' the outstanding debt - the money going to the sanctuary.

Hungarian police insist they are treating the disappearance of Mrs Rhodes seriously.

17 January 2009 - Austrian Times
Hungarian police backtrack over missing Lennon model
Hungarian police have finally agreed to investigate the disappearance of a British animal rights activist and former model who vanished four months ago after her family in Austria started a campaign accusing them of negligence.

Eva Rhodes, 65, who was a friend of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, was a passionate animal rights activist and used her life savings to set up the Puss in Boots Animal Trust in Hungary 12 years ago. She took in stray and abused cats and dogs but also campaigned tirelessly for better treatment for animals and an end to Hungarian puppy farms - a move that meant she clashed frequently with local police over their lack of interest in cases of animal cruelty.

She was so unhappy with the way Hungarian police treated her she lodged a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld her claim that police had acted over-aggressively towards her.

The victory however did not end a hate campaign against her that included death threats, and four months ago she vanished, leaving behind all her possessions. Her offices and home had been ransacked and the cats and dogs she loved were left unfed and uncared for.

Yet despite her family raising the alarm Hungarian police who had clashed frequently with Rhodes ruled that her disappearance was a private matter - and refused to investigate.

But yesterday (Fri) after a campaign by her family sister Judith Majlath who lives in Vienna, Hungarian police said they would open an investigation - and reluctantly posted a 3,000 GBP reward for information about the woman's disappearance.

Rhodes was last seen in a Gyor mobile phone shop on September 10 with a local man who she had recruited to help her run the sanctuary - but since then nothing has been seen or heard from her.

Last week her sister Judith staged a press conference to force the current backtrack by Hungarian police and said: "The police told me there are no signs that her disappearance could have been the result of violence despite all the evidence to the contrary. The truth is they can't even be bothered to investigate it."

Judith added: "I am sure she has been murdered and the body disposed of, but despite filing a complaint I realised soon that they only way the Hungarian police were going to do something was if they had no choice - and that would only happen if they had pressure - I've made sure they had plenty of that. Their negligence is a disgrace."

Miss Majlath, who lives in Vienna, Austria, also flew to Britain to join Mrs Rhodes's Chelsea-based daughter Sophie as part of the campaign for action, pleading with Foreign Secretary David Miliband to ask Hungary to treat the disappearance as a criminal case.

Eva, 65, had run the sanctuary in the remote Gyor-Moson-Sopron County tirelessly and in spite of local opposition. Her family say she had even carried on despite receiving a series of ever more aggressive threats.

When they visited the sanctuary after she vanished they found it had been ransacked, equipment smashed and computers stolen.

But until yesterday police had continued to insist it was clear Rhodes had simple left of her own will and claimed any investigation would "invade her privacy."

Budapest police spokesman Istvan Kormos said: "Foreigners are safe in Hungary. Most of them who are reported missing chose to keep their privacy and simply do not wish to contact their family and friends."

Eva had worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on their film, Rape, about the intrusion of the camera in everyday life.

Her family left Hungary in the 1950s, and she began working as a model and actress in London in the 1960s.

Her stunning looks attracted the attention of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were looking for an actress to star in a film they were making.

Eva married British architect Mark Rhodes. The couple later divorced and she established the sanctuary.

In the Sixties, all Mrs Rhodes had received for her role had been an album signed by John and Yoko and a promised 25,000 pound fee had not materialised. On learning of Mrs Rhodes's new life with animals the widow of the Beatle 'made good' the outstanding debt - the money going to the sanctuary.

9 January 2009 - Wien (APA)
Austria/Hungary/France/crime/police/CEE
Hungarian Police reward offered for information on the disappearance of Eva Rhodes
Subtitle: Sister convinced that it was a violent crime- TV channel: In Hungary currently 4500 foreigners missing
Vienna (APA)- There is not even the slightest trace of British animal activist Eva Rhodes in Hungary, even four months after she disappeared on 10 September 2008.
The police who are still not investigating this case as a violent crime, are apparently completely in the dark as to her whereabouts. Speaking with APA, her Austrian sister Judith Majlath is desperate, since police authorities in the Hungarian town of Györ are apparently planning to close the Rhodes file. At least a public reward of 1 Mio. Forint (3680 Euro) was offered this week for anyone who can find the Eva.

The police who are still not investigating this case as a violent crime, are apparently completely in the dark as to her whereabouts. Speaking with APA, her Austrian sister Judith Majlath is desperate, since police authorities in the Hungarian town of Györ are apparently planning to close the Rhodes file. At least a public reward of 1 Mio. Forint (3680 Euro) was offered this week for anyone who can find the Eva.

"There are so many indications that my sister was murdered. Why are they not investigating the case as a violent crime?" asks Majlath. The police in Györ are responsible for an "incredible degree of negligence." The animal sanctuary of her sister in Böny had been literally ransacked and the police have not taken any measures against acts of theft and vandalism. "These thefts are not being investigated by the police at all, you could literally wait for these thieves in the house" said Majlath who has been repeatedly to Györ in the last couple of weeks.

Self-proclaimed animal activists had literally stormed the premises on 19 September, taken the animals and sold them, some of them to Austria, Majlath criticized. Whatever possible trace of forensic evidence there was has therefore been erased.

Majlath points to parallels between the disappearance of her sister and that of French student Ophelie Bretnacher who was in Hungary as an Erasmus Exchange Student and who was last seen in Budapest on 4 December. In that case, Hungarian investigators were proceeding on the assumption of suicide although parents and friends of the girl did not consider this to be a credible hypothesis, Majlath told APA, referring to recent media reports. According to the news agency MIT, Hungarian police had only declared on Tuesday January the 6^th, that there were no indications as to a crime. A criminal complaint by the parents on account of abduction had been dismissed.

She has spoken by telephone this week with the father of Ophelie Bretnacher and discussed the possibility of doing media work together, Majlath reported. It was "shocking" that the parents of the French student had been sent away with the same arguments. The police was arguing in both cases that the case could only be investigated as criminal once there was evidence as to violent crimes. "But how can you find criminal evidence if you are not looking for it", asks Majlath.

The Hungarian TV Channel TV2 recently reported that 4500 foreigners were missing in Hungary. However, police authorities had claimed in the cases of her sister and Ophelie Bretnacher that these were "absolutely exceptional cases". "They apparently want to sweep disappearances of persons under the carpet", Majlath commented bitterly. The disarmament activist who is campaigning for a ban on antipersonnel mines and cluster bombs, is traveling to London on Saturday to get in touch with British authorities.

Eva Rhodes fled to Austria at the time of the Hungarian revolution which was struck down in 1956. Subsequently, she became a British citizen. Later, she returned to Hungary and set up the animal sanctuary close to Györ. She has been missing since 10 September.

09.01.2009 - SALZBURG (SN).
What really happened on 10 September 2008?
That day four months ago on which Eva Rhodes disappeared close to Györ, in Hungary under mysterious circumstances. Four months during which her sister Judith Majlathasked herself this question over and over again. "I am sure that Evi fell victim to a crime", said the Vienna resident.

The prologue: In 1956, Rhodes and her sister fled from Hungary to Austria. Both then became Austrian citizens. But while Majlath remained Austrian, Rhodes moved on. As an actress, model and antique arts dealer she travelled the whole world and finally married an Englishman. "After her divorce she wanted to transform her great love for animals into a profession and set up an animal sanctuary in Hungary", Majlath told us. There, Rhodes looked after maltreated and abandoned animals and campaigned for their protection. However, in her new home she increasingly encountered resistance.

"In particular, she was a thorn in the flesh of other animal activists", Majlath said. The reason: Rhodes campaigned against the trade in dogs from Eastern European countries and received subventions from the Hungarian state. Also with the Hungarian police there were problems. "Local police appeared at Evi´s and wanted to take her to the police station. She resisted and palpabilities ensued on the part of the police", says her sister.

Rhodes sued and took proceedings up until the European Court of Human Rights. She prevailed. "The problem is that those policemen against whom Evi brought proceedings are now looking for my sister that disappeared. You can imagine their attitude towards her", says Majlath. The police in Györ would not want to know anything about that. And also not say anything about it. "We only answer questions in Hungarian", police spokeswoman Tünde Kocsis explains in good German in response to a SN request.

The fact is that only this week a public reward of 1 Mio. Forint was offered (around 3700 Euro). For Majlath this was a late decision. Many questions remain open for her: Who is the young man who was seen with Rhodes on the day she disappeared? Who were the persons that filmed Rhodes with a video camera before she disappeared? And why is the police in Györ not investigation on account of a violent crime but only looking for a missing person?

Majlath is now travelling to England to increase the pressure on the British authorities-they are in charge of Rhodes as a British citizen- which, however, have remained inactive to date. "I am convinced that Evi is dead. She would never have abandoned her animals", says Majlath who cannot stand the prospect of nobody wanting to find out what happened during the last hours of her sister.

23.12.2008 - Wien (APA)
Kriminalität/Vermisste/Österreich/Ungarn/CEE
Schwester der vermissten Eva Rhodes: Vorwürfe gegen Polizei in Ungarn
Utl.: Polizei in Györ ermittelt nicht wegen eines Gewaltverbrechens, sondern sucht immer noch nach einer Vermissten
English Translation from the APA (Austria Press Agency)
Crime/missed /Austria/Hungary/CEE
Sister of missed Eva Rhodes: Allegations against Police in Hungary

Subtitle;Police in Györ is not investigating this case as a crime but still as that of a missing person

Vienna, 23.12.2008( APA)Disarmament activist Judith Majlath, the sister of Eva Rhodes who has disappeared from close to Györ, Hungary, and has been missing since 10 September, raises serious allegations against the police investigations in Hungary. Police authorities responsible for the area around Györ are still not investigating on account of a crime but had prolonged the status of animal activist Eva Rhodes as "missing person" for a further month. A few days ago, the Director of the Austrian Section of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) criticized the Police in an interview with the Austrian Press Agency (APA) on Monday.

Employees of the British Police Authority Scotland Yard (Eva Rhodes is a British citizen) had made it clear in connection with police investigations in Hungary that there had apparently been "serious shortcomings" in Hungary. She was shocked that the status of a missed person had been prolonged, since it is now four months since her sister went missing and despite existing indications of a crime, said Majlath. To Majlath´s dismay, the Police Officer responsible for the case in Györ had announced that she was now going to learn English as a necessity to investigate Eva Rhodes disappearance. "The case there is being played really low-key, on a very low level."

The Györ Police were arguing that there had already been a search on a large scale in the vicinity of the animal sanctuary on 9 October, one month after the disappearance. Majlath herself was present at the search. In which many vehicles and around 80 police, but only two search dogs had been employed and had gained the impression that this had been an "orchestrated media show" for the TV teams present. "That was a charade for the media. I would have wished to see fewer TV teams and more search dogs", criticized Majlath. In the gravel pits which exist in this area none had been searched. Furthermore, apparently so much budget had been spent on this police action that today not even " Information Wanted" posters can be printed.

She organized a search herself with dogs and their handlers who were specially trained in the search for “the dead” people. These dogs had examined her sister´s vehicle. Three dogs had “signaled ” independently of each other, on the back seat of the car. The key was still in the ignition. However, this was not the only indication that her sister could have fallen victim to a crime, Majlath specified. Eva Rhodes had last been seen on 10 September 2008. Since then, there has been no call or any other sign of life from her. Her office had been ransacked and a laptop been stolen. Majlath considered it inconceivable that her sister would have voluntarily abandoned the dogs and cats in her sanctuary, Majlath said.

Since the "disappearance" the premises have been plundered, "the Police are not protecting the house." Judith Majlath refers to the fact that Hungary lost proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against her sister and her sister’s daughter in 2002 due to the disproportionate intervention by local police authorities in response to alleged nuisance emanating from the sanctuary. The Court had sentenced Hungary to a financial compensation of 3000 EURO and to restitution of court expenses of 3500 EURO. "You can imagine what the Györ police’s attitude towards my sister is. They would not even want to find her", Majlath said.

Eva Rhodes fled to Austria in 1956 when the Hungarian revolution was struck down by Soviet troops and later accepted British citizenship. Recently, the 65-year-old confided to an acquaintance that she was going to travel to the UK to get treatment for her slipped disk. For this reason she had employed a young man who was seen with her in the car on 10 September, to care for her animals, in her absence. Since 10 September when she went missing, this man has disappeared.

Eva’s post has been diverted to an unknown address, we are asking the public NOT to send any donations or cheques to Eva or to her Trust “Csizmaskandur” for the animals, since there are no longer any animals at the Sanctuary & Eva is missing. Since Evas disappearance donations were handled by a secretary closely linked to the Animal Organisation Emberek Allatokert in Györ. Most of the local authorities are unhelpful and in support of this particular organisation.
JM January 2009

A Hungarian 'Puss in Boots'
By Patricia Johnson (written in 2005)

I was visiting Hungary this winter and found to my great surprise a Hungarian/British lady running an animal sanctuary near Gyor, on the edge of a forest called Szolohegy. As a former vet nurse, I was intrigued.

One day I had found a little stray dog running nervously around the baroque city of Gyur. I was trying to take it back to my hotel room, but was told at the reception desk that there was a lady who would not only take the little dog into her sanctuary but also find a new home for it. So I rang the number given to me, and that’s where my story begins.

A charming English voice told me that I could take the little dog to the sanctuary but, if not, she would come and collect it from my hotel. By this time I was so intrigued to see where this place was that I took a taxi to Szolohegy - being only eight miles from Gyor - with my little friend, who seemed totally undisturbed by the ride, and was happy to curl up in my lap. After twenty minutes we arrived on a bumpy road to the sanctuary, which is on the edge of this lovely forest. Mrs Rhodes, the owner of the Puss in Boots Animal Trust & Sanctuary, opened the gate, with five happy jumping dogs around her. I noticed immediately how affectionate and well-fed the animals were. Mrs Rhodes attended first to our little stray friend and, as it was a small dog, she put it into her dog nursery, which was an enclosure with about six small dogs running about with plenty of space and several straw-filled huts to go into. My little friend was vaccinated and examined by Mrs Rhodes, and was given a worming pill. She said she would prefer to isolate the newcomer for six to seven days, just to be sure it was not carrying any illness, while the vaccine took effect, but she had not yet had enough money to build proper quarantine kennels.

Mrs. Rhodes had hoped to start fundraising and to build a few kennels this coming spring. She then took me around the sanctuary where 45 dogs are housed in several enclosures with shelters filled with straw. As we went along, I saw all the dogs running to the gates of the enclosures and, as Mrs Rhodes put her hand through they all jumped with joy and licked her hands.

I have rarely seen such happy and loving animals - it was like a big family! We then went on to the cat sanctuary, which is built onto her own house. I could hardly believe my eyes when we went in. A large room with two bunk-beds, cat baskets of all sorts, with coloured cushions and blankets. What a delightful sight, with about 60 cats looking very well fed and lazy in the mid-day sun. A big chinese stove with a crackling wood fire, lovely warm blankets, and an English cat-flap leading onto a sun-lit terrace which extends to a long cat-run. What heaven! Clean and tidy, with bowls of fresh water and dry food. As we went in, again I noticed the affection of the cats towards Mrs Rhodes. Some of them were jumping straight on to her shoulder, and rubbing on her face, as only cats do. They all have names and she was telling me about their individual habits. ‘Mushi’ was a great shoulder-jumper, but ‘Cindy Crawford’ talked - and she really did!

Then we sat down in her busy, messy office, which also housed a sick cat, separated as she was brought in with a nasty skin problem, and Mrs Rhodes was worried that the others might catch it. Over a cup of tea, she was telling me how difficult it is to run a sanctuary in Hungary, as there was little culture to treat animals as lovingly as she did, and often she is not appreciated for her work, but even attacked! She also has great difficulties in finding staff. Carers are not trained, are often irresponsible, and amount to not much more than cleaners. Her workload is enormous, she is running her trust and her sanctuary single-handed, with very little outside help. She is re-homing, sterilising dogs and cats, treating them for various illnesses and injuries. She has to take the animals to the vets in Gyur and even getting food is a constant battle. Having seen all this with my own eyes, I pledged myself to go back to London and raise whatever help I can, for her sanctuary.

Well, here is what she needs:

First of all money to build these quarantine kennels for the dogs, more runs and better winter shelters. She needs a mid-sized van to carry animals and their food, and the cats need a sick room, and a quarantine room for five to six cats to be built on to the existing sanctuary. She needs to raise a minimum of £30,000 to keep the sanctuary open, as the Hungarian authorities are now asking for a permit which includes quarantine facilities. Also goods are welcome: blankets, feeding bowls, baskets, dog and cat flea collars…
Volunteers are urgently needed in Hungary. Accommodation and basic food provided. Plus a responsible couple or single person needed to run the sanctuary during owner’s absences: 3 months minimum. Accommodation, basic food and wages. Also in London, helping Mrs Rhodes with fundraising and general office work when she is in London.

* I beg all people with a heart for animals - please help this lovely place to stay open to so many happy animals.

EVA RHODES BRUTALLY MURDERERD AND ROBBED IN HUNGARY ON THE 10th OF SEPTEMBER 2008!