Murder trial told man staged scene of wife's death

A "coercive and controlling" man raped his wife then suffocated her before "staging a scene" to make it look like she took her own life, a murder trial has heard.

Kimberley Thompson, 43, was found by police at a property in Pinewood Road in Northampton on 9 August last year.

Michael Thompson, 55, of Pinewood Road, has gone on trial charged with her rape and murder.

Nottingham Crown Court heard he claimed he had consensual sex with his wife - from whom he had separated - before finding her lifeless and surrounded by tablets and bottles of alcohol at their shared house.

The prosecution said, 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.

Ms Thompson had been 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.

The defendant denies the charges and 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 said included writing fake social media posts pretending to be Ms Thompson.

Outlining the prosecution case, Miranda Moore KC said that 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 about £65,000 in their divorce.

After calling 999 at about 05:40, 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 Ms Thompson allegedly shared on Facebook and Snapchat in the early hours of that morning that she "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 had been "cheerful", making plans, messaging family members and arranging flights so she could go and see her daughter at college in the US.

Moore said Thompson had "painted a wholly false picture" of what had happened to his wife.

She 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.

The trial continues.

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