‘Controlling’ husband ‘who murdered wife’ who was trying to divorce him sent texts from her phone and staged her ‘suicide’, court told

A ‘controlling’ husband raped and murdered his wife, who was in the process of divorcing him, and then ‘staged a scene’ to get away with it, jurors heard on Tuesday.

Michael Thompson, 55, spied, recorded and stalked his wife Kimberley, who got a new boyfriend and ‘moved on’ with her life.

Jurors were told Thompson accessed his mobile devices and kept a phone in ‘recording mode’ in his car and other phones in the house and would record Kimberley, known as Kim, on his own phone during arguments.

The court heard the estranged couple were sleeping in separate bedrooms at the time of the alleged murder last August.

Prosecutor Miranda Moore KC said: ‘This case is about the rape and murder of Kim that occurred within a short period of time and the steps this defendant took to get away with it.’

He said Thompson called 999 just after 6am on August 9 and said he went downstairs and found her lifeless body with empty tablets and vodka strips.

By then, Ms. Moore said, Kim was dead and Thompson was “making a scene”; He was sending messages purporting to be from Kim and carrying bottles of gin and alcohol and empty codamol tablets to the downstairs bedroom where he claimed to have found her.

The court heard a photograph of the couple on their wedding day and a montage of Kim’s late sister, who committed suicide, lying in bed as paramedics and then police arrived. Both images were often stored in other rooms of the house.

Jurors were told Thompson would ‘solicit sex, including dressing up and using toys’

The court said the couple married in 2006 but the marriage was ‘unhappy’

The court heard Thompson wrote a text message on Kim’s phone (it was sent to her phone in the early hours) before calling 999, saying: ‘I’m really horny – sorry, I’m going to fuck you now.’

Thompson told police he went downstairs and found her ‘cheerful’ and had sex with her before returning to his own room at 3.10am, but Ms Moore said: ‘The prosecution said he did not send it.’

She said the message was an attempt to cover up the fact that he had raped her, and that placing the tablet packs and drink bottles was to imply suicide and ‘cover up’ the murder.

Ms Moore reassured Thompson, saying police and paramedics were ‘completely caught up in this charade’.

He said officers ‘swallowed’ the scene Thompson created and ‘took the view that this was a drink and drug incident, a suicide attempt or an unfortunate accident’.

The court heard that a glass containing yellow liquid seen next to the bed was not seized and allowed undertakers to remove the body before Thompson was allowed to ‘clean up’ the property in Northampton.

‘The police were fooled by what he did,’ Ms Moore said. ‘They allowed the scene to be disturbed and the body removed without the forensic examinations usually done in suspicious deaths.’

The court heard that messages were also posted on Kim’s Facebook and Snapchat accounts in the early hours stating that he was ‘too drunk’; but the court heard his daughter and her friends expressed concerns. They told police that he would never misspell the word “very” but Thompson did so in his messages.

Ms Moore said he was eventually arrested three days later and “perpetuated the fiction that he died from drink and drug overuse” but toxicology proved Kim had not been drinking and had not taken co-codamol.

A pathologist concluded that Ms Thompson had suffocated and died from external airway obstruction.

Previous jurors were told Their daughter Athena, now 18, was an ‘England team basketball player’ who was at university in America when Kim was killed early on August 9.

Nottingham Crown Court heard that from 2014, eight years after their marriage, Ms Thompson, known as Kim, told friends about ‘Mr Thompson’s physical, emotional abuse and controlling behaviour’ and at one point went on a date. domestic violence unit.

The court heard Thompson was questioned at one stage after he allegedly pushed his wife out of an upstairs window, but told officers it was his fault because she had bent down to reach a fallen bracelet before being thrown onto the roof during an argument.

Jurors were told Thompson would ‘solicit sex, including dressing up and using toys’.

They read a message Thompson sent him in which he said: ‘You don’t do anything for me.’

The message continued: ‘We never have sex. You don’t get dressed, you don’t get your nails done, etc. ‘I had more sex before I was with you.’

The hearing heard the couple, who have a 16-year-old son, were living ‘separate lives but under the same roof’ in the family home at the time of the alleged murder.

Miss Moore said Kim told her sister and friends that she had been raped by Thompson as ‘punishment’ for having once been in a relationship. The court heard the man referred to himself as a “cheating whore”.

He added that evidence from friends and family would show how Kim went from a ‘healthy, happy, cheerful person’ to a ‘weak and self-doubting woman’.

The court heard Kim told friends and colleagues that Thompson had ‘choked, raped and suffocated’ her, and many had warned her to leave him.

“He brutalized and assaulted her,” Ms Moore added. ‘He accessed her phone and iPad to track her and copied items and messages so he could question her.

‘He was controlling her by force. ‘He even went through the bins to check on her, what she was doing and what she was eating.’

The court heard that the murder victim had to provide a receipt for his shopping.

Nottingham Crown Court heard police recovered hundreds of hours of recordings between March 2024 and August 7 last year, just 24 hours before Kim’s death.

Jurors were told there were at least 81 days of recording.

The prosecutor added: ‘He would stop saving his messages because he knew they would track his phone and read what he said.

‘A friend of mine said: ‘It really got into her head and made her feel like less of a person. It was awful to watch.”

The court heard Thompson considered Kim a “poor wife” and “narcissist” and even started an affair with a mutual colleague, sending the woman flowers to the office and openly kissing her at work.

Jurors were told Kim resorted to keeping her diary, bank cards and other personal items at work and secretly opened a bank account to prepare for her new life away from Thompson. According to jurors, she also started using her maiden name, Bounds, during the divorce.

But Ms Moore said: ‘Up until his death and in the midst of their divorce, he spent his time… tracking down a woman who he said he wanted out of his life.’

Miss Moore told the jury: ‘There were a lot of things Kim said to people and no doubt Mr Thompson will say they were made up to make him look like a bad husband.

‘You’ll have to decide whether the things he said over a decade or more were made up to make him look bad and himself look good.’

Thompson, of Northampton, denies murder, rape and two charges of perverting the course of justice.

The case continues.