It was meant to be a new dream life in an idyllic French village. 

In their quiet cottage at the bottom of a leafy road, Anthony Rickard and Heather Comins were looking forward to spending the rest of their years together in the quaint rural town of Ménéac in Brittany. Or so it appeared.

In 2001, Anthony – or Tony, as he preferred – vanished without a trace. 

His disappearance sparked a 25-year mystery until earlier this year, when his remains were finally discovered at the bottom of a well in his garden, and his partner was arrested on suspicion of murder. 

But in an unexpected twist, she has found support from an unusual source: Tony’s stepdaughter, who has revealed shocking allegations which cast a whole new light on the mystery.

When Jenny Devine, 51, saw her stepfather’s face splashed across newspapers, she couldn’t help but feel rage. 

She says the last time she had seen Tony, she was just a teenager, and he had just been sent to prison for molesting her.

‘It was a shock, and it’s brought back so many buried memories,’ she tells the Daily Mail as she recalls the moment she heard that his skeleton had been found. 

Jenny Devine (pictured) wants to set the record straight about her stepfather, Anthony ‘Tony’ Rickard

Jenny (pictured aged 14) says she was sexually abused by her stepfather when she was a teenager while her mother was dying of cancer 

But Tony’s daughter and Jenny’s half-sister, Mary Rickard, could not contain her relief.

After all, the mystery surrounding her father’s disappearance had finally been solved, and after 25 years, she finally felt a sense of closure.

‘Justice will be served!!!!’ Tony’s daughter and Jenny’s half-sister Mary Rickard wrote in a Facebook post following the news. 

‘I will remain and always will be my father’s daughter who has lost their dad, their best friend, and that can never change! I will miss him every day till the day we are reunited.’ 

Mary’s reaction has come as a surprise to Jenny, who has spent years trying to come to terms with – and forget – the horrific abuse she says her family endured at the hands of Tony.

‘I don’t want to upset Mary,’ she says. ‘That’s not what this is about. It’s about people understanding this man was a monster.

‘He ruined so many lives.’

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Jenny opens up for the first time about the violent abuse her family endured at the hands of her stepfather – from Tony threatening to blow up their house, to brutally punching her mother, who was dying of cancer, and ultimately grooming Jenny herself. 

‘I know Mary was desperate to find her dad, and I understand she feels she has closure on that – but there’s so much more to this story than just this “poor man” who ended up down the well,’ Jenny explains. 

‘I want everyone to know what he was really like.’  

Jenny’s mother, Lynn, met Tony when Jenny was already three years old. The couple went on to have three more children, including Mary. 

Although Jenny and her brother Paul lived with their father, she remembers that things between her mother and Tony ‘weren’t always good’. 

‘[Mum] would turn up at our house at odd hours. Sometimes she’d have to stay, because she was too frightened to go back to him. It was a very controlling relationship.’

She remembers one instance in which Lynn called her father asking for help after Tony had kicked her and their three children out of the house, turned the gas on and threatened to blow the house up. 

The remains of Anthony ‘Tony’ Rickard (pictured) were found at a bottom of a well in Brittany earlier this year – more than two decades after he disappeared 

Pictured: Heather Comins, who has been arrested on suspicion of murder

File image shows the town of Meneac in Brittany, where Tony was living with his partner Heather at the time of his disappearance

Social workers were called, and Lynn was put up at a women’s refuge, but she was back with Tony shortly after. 

‘Tony had already manipulated her into going back to him.’

‘This wasn’t a one-off,’ Jenny says. ‘Over the years he’d threatened to kill my Mum many times if she left him.

‘She didn’t feel there was any way to get away from him safely. A woman in that situation can believe the man might change, and she loved him in some way – but when you’re in a controlling relationship, it’s not that easy to get out of, especially with a genuine, believed threat of death hanging over you.’ 

When Jenny turned 12, she and her brother started visiting their mother more often after she was diagnosed with sarcoma – a rare form of cancer that affects the body’s connective tissues. 

But despite her mother’s illness, the violence and abuse continued.

She recalls a time in which her mother, who had bruising on her face, told her she’d hit her head on a cupboard door. 

‘When I was a bit older she told me Tony had actually punched her in the head – one punch, but it split the top of her head open above her eyebrow, needed seven or eight stitches, and left a scar.’

Another time, Jenny witnessed how Tony pinned her mother down on the floor.  

‘This was all happening while she was going through [cancer] treatment and recovery,’ she says. 

Jenny’s older brother Paul also remembers Tony’s abusive behaviour. 

‘One thing I remember clearly was when she was having chemotherapy. Tony was lying in bed, banging on the ceiling because he wanted his tea. Mum was downstairs cooking for him, even though she was the one who should have been resting. He should have been the one looking after her,’ he tells the Daily Mail. 

‘The whole situation was completely wrong.

‘When [Mary] started describing him as a nice man, it felt like everything the rest of us had gone through was being brushed aside. It ignored all the abuse and made him sound like some sort of hero, which simply wasn’t true.’

There are many traumatic details about Jenny’s childhood that she has tried to forget, but those memories came flooding back when Tony’s skeleton was found earlier this year. 

‘I was only 13, very naive. As an adult I now realise I was groomed – everyone calls it that now, but at the time I didn’t understand what was going on.’

Speaking out about her horrific ordeal, Jenny recalls the day the abuse began. 

She was sitting on a chair watching television with Tony when she dozed off. 

‘I woke up because I felt someone pulling up my top. I had my head against him and could hear his heart beating really fast. 

‘He was looking down my top. It scared me, and I didn’t know what to make of it. The next day Mum asked if anything had happened the night before, but I was too scared to say what I thought had happened – I didn’t want to get in trouble.

‘It progressed very slowly from there, and I’ve blocked a lot of it out. Eventually it became full sexual intercourse.

‘It went on from age 13 until I was nearly 14 – about a year, though I don’t have an exact timescale and don’t remember a lot of it.

‘I didn’t know how to get out of it, and it turned sinister – I remember sitting on the stairs at Mum’s house, and he pulled my arm through the bannister and put his hand up my top and touched my breasts, with Mum right there in the kitchen.

Pictured: Jenny with her mother Lynn and three of her siblings

Pictured: (Top left to top right) Lynn, Paul and Jenny with Paul and Jenny’s half siblings (below) 

‘I tried to pull away and couldn’t. He also wanted me to bring my best friend round because he wanted to sleep with both of us. I just didn’t know what to do any more.’

Jenny never told her mother about what she endured. She didn’t want to upset Lynn, who did not have long left to live. 

But eventually, Tony told his wife about what he’d been doing to his teenage stepdaughter, and turned himself in to the police. 

Lynn left Tony and died shortly after he was convicted. 

Jenny never saw Tony again. Her mother was dead, and her siblings had gone to foster care.  

But she had heard that Tony had met a new partner, a 19-year-old woman named Heather. 

The pair would go on to have two children and moved to France, and in 2001, Tony vanished. 

Heather claimed that Tony had left home without explanation but his daughter Mary reported him missing regardless. 

An investigation was opened at the time but authorities failed to make any progress for several years. 

Last October, Mary launched a new appeal, demanding the investigation be reopened. 

A month later, authorities began investigating Tony’s disappearance and very quickly, suspicion fell on Heather.

The search came to a head back in May when Anthony’s skeletal remains were discovered.

Heather, now aged 56, was charged with murder this month and placed in pre-trial detention.

According to French media reports, the couple’s son told investigators that his mother had confessed to killing Anthony.

He said Heather told him that she had shot his father following an altercation in which Anthony pointed a gun at her, before she turned the weapon on him, French newspaper La Dépêche reported.

She then allegedly hid the body in the well with the help of her own father, who has also been charged.

Jenny found out that police had discovered Tony’s remains in a phone call from Mary.

‘She wanted me to be delighted about it, and couldn’t understand why I didn’t share her enthusiasm.’

Word then began to spread that his skeleton had been dug up and that Heather had been arrested. 

Mary paid tribute to Tony in a Facebook post, while friends and loved ones paid their respects. 

‘I was so angry to see his face. I don’t want to see that man. I was angry reading what [Mary] had written, because it isn’t true.’

‘My mum went through hell at the hands of this man. And then reading the comments – people saying “oh, I remember him at school, he was a nice lad” – no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.’ 

Speaking about the moment he found out Tony’s remains had been found, Paul says: ‘My first thought was that Heather may have been driven to it.

‘Knowing what Tony was like, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d spent years threatening or intimidating her. 

‘I could imagine him saying something like, “I’ll shoot you and throw you down a well.” That was the sort of person he was.

‘If that’s what happened, maybe she eventually reached a point where she thought, “It’s either him or me.” I don’t know what he was like later in life, but if he was anything like the man I knew in his late twenties and early thirties, he was a frightening person.’

Jenny says she decided to speak out in the hopes that setting the record straight about her stepfather will bring her some closure.

And even though she never met her, a part of Jenny wants to speak out for Heather. 

‘There’s no one there to speak for her either, to say she probably suffered just like my mum did at his hands. 

‘That doesn’t excuse what she is accused of doing, but there’s an understanding there. It’s not just “this evil woman who shot him.” It’s more complicated than that.’

The Daily Mail has approached Mary Rickard for comment.