Lee Sabine was known by her neighbours as the mysterious oddball living next door, in the small village of Beddau in Wales. Some called her a fantasist, others said she was a liar, either way she left an impression on everyone she encountered.
But Lee Sabine had a secret; a secret she had been guarding for decades.
Kept inside the confines of her home was a decaying corpse, concealed in 40 layers of plastic wrapping. After the body was discovered in 2015, Sabine quickly became a suspect and the case became one of the most peculiar murder mysteries in Welsh history.
The police had a prime suspect but they were presented with two problems: the suspect was dead and the victim's identity was unknown.
This investigation is revisited in the three-part documentary The Body Next Door, which is streaming on Stan. As someone who watches a lot of true crime documentaries, I can confidently say that this is one of the most enthralling ones I've ever seen.
It might start out as a run-of-the-mill murder investigation but the three-part series quickly evolves into so much more.
The true story that inspired Stan documentary The Body Next Door.
In November 2015, a month after Leigh Ann Sabine died of brain cancer, one of her friends Rhian Lee found a body in the village's communal garden — but at first, she thought it was a 'medical skeleton' that Leigh spoke about often.
"That morning I went over to my friend Michelle's [James] for a cuppa and we thought, for a laugh, we'd play a prank," Lee told The Sun.
"We knew about the medical skeleton wrapped up like a big package under the potting table in the garden and so we thought we'd bring it in, put it on the settee and give a knock to the neighbour to come down to see, as a joke."