Man accused of wife murder ‘staged scene to make it look like she took own life’
A “coercive and controlling” man raped his wife and then suffocated her before “staging a scene” to make it look like she took her own life, a murder trial has heard.
Michael Thompson, 55, claimed he had consensual sex with his wife Kimberley Thompson, from whom he was separated, before finding her lifeless and surrounded by tablets and bottles of alcohol at the house they shared in Northampton in the early hours of August the 9th last year.
While paramedics and police initially believed his “charade”, a post-mortem examination found no evidence of any alcohol and only low levels of caffeine, paracetamol and codeine in her body, Nottingham Crown Court heard on Tuesday.
The trial heard Ms Thompson, 43, was in the “most unhappy of marriages” to Thompson who monitored what she “did, ate, where she went and who she was with”, but had a new boyfriend and was moving on with her life, when her ex allegedly raped and murdered her.
Prosecutors say Thompson, who still lived with his wife at their home address in Pinewood Road, Northampton – but had initiated divorce proceedings, monitored everything his wife did, including making secret recordings of her and tracking her whereabouts.
The defendant, who wore a green polo shirt and blue jeans in the dock, denies murder and rape as well as two counts of perverting the course of justice in relation to actions he took to try to “get away with” the alleged crimes, which prosecutors say include writing fake social media posts pretending to be Ms Thompson.
Thompson shook his head and held his hands to his face at various points as prosecution counsel Miranda Moore KC outlined the Crown’s case against him on Tuesday.
She said on the night Ms Thompson died, the defendant had been in his room watching sexual videos of his ex, “stewing” about the fact she had a new boyfriend, was planning to move out and had asked for around £65,000 in their divorce.
After he called 999 at around 5.40am, paramedics found Ms Thompson with an injury to her mouth and surrounded by empty pill packets, bottles of vodka and gin and photographs of her and Thompson and another of her sister, who had taken her own life a decade before.
Thompson claimed his wife had sent him a sexually explicit text and was “merry” before they had sex, and he later found her unresponsive.
Prosecution counsel say posts that Ms Thompson allegedly shared on Facebook and Snapchat in the early hours of that morning that she had “drank too much” raised suspicion among her friends and family because it had a spelling error and was not written the way she would write it.
They claimed she would not have taken her own life because she was “cheerful”, making plans, messaging family members and arranging flights so she could go and see her daughter at college in the US.
Ms Moore said Thompson had “painted a wholly false picture” of what had happened to his wife.
She said: “Our case he found out about (her boyfriend), that she was going away with him, that she was taking money from him and getting on with her life and this infuriated him."
“He goes down, rapes her, kills her then sets about trying to hide what he’d done and that included making those Facebook and Snapchat entries.
“He must have also staged the scene in respect of the photographs – they lived elsewhere in the house and the alcohol had been moved to the bedroom from where they lived in the house.”
She added: “Kim died because Michael Thompson manually suffocated her. He raped her, manually suffocated her and set about perverting the course of justice."
“The cover-up may be the most powerful evidence against Michael Thompson. Those things must have been placed there for a purpose.”
After he was arrested, Thompson claimed his wife was promiscuous and a “liar” who was unstable, and denied ever assaulting or abusing her.
Ms Moore said Ms Thompson, who married the defendant in 2006 and had two children with him, had gone from “healthy, happy and bubbly to a thin, self-doubting and fearful woman” because of his alleged abuse.
She allegedly reported to friends, family and her work colleagues that she was suffering physical and emotional abuse and controlling behaviour at the hands of her husband.
Ms Moore said the jury would hear from her friends that she had told them Thompson had pushed her from an upper window at their home, and perforated her eardrum when he hit her while she was holding their daughter, who was an infant at the time.
She also described being choked, held by the throat and forced to have sex with Thompson, Ms Moore said.
“No doubt Thompson will say they were all fabricated to make him look like a bad husband,” Ms Moore told the jury.
“You will have to consider whether what Kim was saying over a period of 10 years was all lies.”
Thompson also allegedly searched the bins and questioned her after finding a pair of women’s underwear and also planted devices in her car and the house so he could listen to her and track her.
Ms Moore said police recovered “literally hundreds” of hours of recordings that were saved and edited by Thompson, the earliest being March 27 2024 and the latest August 7 2025, just days before her body was found.
“Kim would tell friends and colleagues Thompson had… strangled her, choked her, raped her, brutalised her and assaulted her,” Ms Moore said.
“Many of her friends told her to leave him or he will end up killing her.”
The trial continues.