A ‘controlling’ husband raped and murdered the wife who was in the process of divorcing him and then attempted to ‘get away with it’, jurors heard today.
Michael Thompson, 55, snooped on, recorded and tracked wife Kimberley, who had taken a new boyfriend and was ‘moving on’ with her life.
Jurors were told Thompson accessed her mobile devices and hid a phone on ‘recording mode’ in her car – as well as other handsets around the house – and would record her on his own phone during arguments.
A court heard that from 2014, eight years after their marriage, Mrs Thompson, who was known as Kim, told friends of ‘physical, emotional abuse and controlling behaviour by Mr Thompson’, and at one point went to a domestic violence unit.
The court heard Thompson was interviewed at one stage after allegedly pushing his wife out of an upstairs window, but told officers it was her own fault because she had been leaning to reach a bracelet that had fallen off during an argument before she plunged on to the roof of their extension.
Jurors were told Thompson would ‘demand sex, including her dressing up and using toys’.
They were read one message Thompson sent her in which he said, ‘You do nothing for me.’
The message continued: ‘We never have sex. You don’t get dressed up or have your nails done etc. I had more sex before I was with you.’
Kimberley Thompson was in the process of divorcing her husband Michael, the jury were told
Jurors were told Thompson would ‘demand sex, including her dressing up and using toys’
The trial heard the couple, who had a son and a daughter who were 16 and 17, were living ‘separate lives but under the same roof’ in the family home in Northampton at the time of the alleged murder last August.
Jurors were told their daughter, Athena, was an ‘England team basketball player’ who was away at college in America at the time.
Prosecutor Miranda Moore KC said Kim told her sister and friends that she was once raped by Thompson as a ‘punishment’ for having an affair. He referred to her as a ‘cheating whore’, the court heard.
‘She reported to family and friends that sex was something she “caved in” to, but latterly she had been refusing,’ Ms Moore said.
Evidence from friends and family will show how Kim went from being a ‘healthy and happy, bubbly person’ to a ‘thin and self-doubting woman’, she added.
‘This case relates to the rape and murder in short succession of Kim… and the steps this defendant took to get away with it,’ Ms Moore said.
Kim told friends and colleagues that Thompson ‘strangled, raped and choked’ her, and many warned her to leave him, the court heard.
‘He brutalised and assaulted her,’ Ms Moore added. ‘He accessed her phone and iPad to track her and copied items and messages so he could interrogate her.
The couple married in 2006 but it had been an ‘unhappy’ union, the court heard
‘He was coercively controlling her. What she did, and ate, he even went through the bins to check on her.’
The court heard the murder victim had to account for her shopping with receipts.
Nottingham Crown Court heard police have recovered hundreds of hours of recordings dating between March 2024 and August 7 last year – just 24 hours before Kim’s death.
There were at least 81 days’ worth of recordings, jurors were told.
The prosecutor added: ‘She would stop confiding in messages because she knew he would track her phone and read what she said.
‘One friend said: “He really got into her head and made her feel less of a human being. It was awful to watch.”‘
The court heard Thompson considered Kim a ‘poor wife’ and a ‘narcissist’ and even started an affair with a mutual colleague, sending the woman flowers at the office and openly kissing her at work.
Jurors were told Kim had resorted to storing her diary, bank cards and other personal effects at work and had secretly opened a bank account in readiness of her new life away from Thompson. As she was getting divorced, she had also begun using her maiden name of Bounds, jurors were told.
But Ms Moore said: ‘Right up to her death and in the middle of their divorce he spent his time… tracking a woman he said he wanted out of his life.’
Ms Moore told the jury: ‘There were a number of things Kim said to people and no doubt Mr Thompson will say they were fabricated to make him look like a bad husband.
‘You will have to decide whether what she was saying over a period of ten years or more were made up to make him look bad and her look good.’
Thompson, of Northampton, denies murder, rape and two counts of perverting the course of justice.
The case continues.
