Former British and New Zealand night club singer, Lee Jones, also known as Mrs Ann Sabine, who with her husband, John, put their children in a nursery home in 1969. Photo / Supplied
Former British and New Zealand night club singer, Lee Jones, also known as Mrs Ann Sabine, who with her husband, John, put their children in a nursery home in 1969. Photo / Supplied
Media archives have revealed details surrounding the infamous Sabine couple, who travelled in and out of the country with barely a backwards glance at the five children they abandoned in the 1960s.
Just yesterday it was revealed that Ann Sabine, otherwise known as Lee Martin, may have killed her husband John Sabine almost two decades ago.
She is thought to have claimed thousands of pounds by pretending he was still alive and had left her.
A mystery accomplice may have been involved in moving the remains of her husband from her flat.
His skeletal remains were found in an outside area at his wife's flat in South Wales just weeks after her death at 74 in October this year. Her son Steven called his estranged mother an evil woman who led his father astray.
He told WalesOnline: "If anyone was going to do it, she was going to do it. My father was actually a good man, a soft-hearted man. But she was a conniving bitch. She controlled him but he loved her to pieces.
"I could never forgive him for what he did but I still believe he was manipulated and he fell in love with an evil woman. That was his biggest crime."
Articles dating back to the mid-1980s showed the couple lived a transient lifestyle between Australia and New Zealand.
Mrs Sabine, who also seemed to have a third alias, Lee Jones, appeared to have been a night club and cabaret singer. Her husband worked as an accountant.
Leigh Sabine, believed to have murdered her husband John Sabine.
Just a year after they left the country in February 1969 she was reported by the New Zealand Press Agency as working in a Perth night club.
At the time the couple claimed to have gone to Australia in the hopes of saving enough money for a family home.
"We were struggling and we needed money," Mr Sabine told the journalist as his wife reportedly "struggled against tears".
When interviewed 15 years after having abandoned her two young sons and three daughters, Mrs Sabine once again claimed she'd only ever done it out of love.
John Sabine, believed to have been the victim of his wife.
An Auckland Star "exclusive" published on September 19, 1984: "Runaway mum: I did it for love" described it as a "family dream went wrong".
Mrs Sabine told the reporters after years of living with a guilty conscience it was time to come clean.
The couple had left for Sydney in 1969, leaving the five children aged from 2 to 11 in an Auckland nursery - reportedly to further Mrs Sabine's career as a cabaret singer.
"We were poor and had no money at the time," said Mrs Sabine, who then went under the name of Lee Martin. "We went there on a four-week contract hoping the money would be enough for a deposit on a house in Auckland.
The couple were eventually reunited with their children in July 1984.
At the time the two sons, Steven, then 22, Martin, 20, and daughter Susan, 25, were reported to have quickly accepted their parents' return, though the younger two, Jane, 19, and Lee-Ann, 16, found this harder.
"There was a strangeness - almost cold feeling - when we first met," Mrs Martin told the Auckland Star.
She claimed the reason it had taken some time, after they'd returned to the country, to find their children was because they were fearful of disrupting their children's lives and of being rejected.
"We felt cheap, dirty. But we adored our children and wanted to be with them so badly."
However, a day later Auckland Star reporter Jenny Wheeler revealed in her article; "Runaways here in 70s say dog clubs", contrary to the couple's claims it was likely they'd returned to New Zealand in 1972 - four years earlier than they'd claimed.
"Dog owners revealed today that the Sabines, now living under the names of John and Lee Martin, were prominent dog show competitors in the lower North Island.
"New Zealand Kennel Club records show Mr and Mrs Martin were living in Wellington and importing English Spring Spaniels for showing from 1972 onwards," the article read.
And while the couple had blamed dire poverty for their inability to care for their children, those in the dog circles at the time claimed neither showed any hint of being short of money. "Mrs Martin had a reputation for being a very good hostess who did 'everything right' when she entertained," the article read.
It reported the pair had moved from Wellington to Masterton, followed by Hamilton a few years later, before returning to Auckland to "rebuild" their lives with their children in the middle of 1984.
However, the family reunion was short-lived with reports by an Australian network, Nine Network, indicating the youngest girls, Jane and Leanne, were evicted not long after moving in with their parents.
A confrontation between Jane and her estranged mother led to her appearing in court, in September 1984, on an assault charge that was later dismissed.
