Friday brief: Murder suspect tells police they have no evidence he killed his wife
The latest from the Northampton murder trial, plus more redundancies announced at the county's university
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The Northampton man accused of killing his civil servant wife, told police in their final interview, they did not have the evidence.
Michael Thompson is accused of raping and murdering his wife Kimberley Thompson, 43, at their Northampton family home in August last year and then attempting to pervert the course of justice by staging a fake suicide.
Yesterday, in the fourth week of the ongoing murder trial being held at Nottingham Crown Court, the jury heard the final in a series of under caution police interviews that took place last August and September before the former bouncer was charged with his wife’s rape and killing.
Thompson, who had two children from a previous relationship and two teenage children with Kim, told detectives in the final interview after several hours of grilling, that they did not have the evidence and that his dead wife had ‘fooled’ them.
He said:
“All you have got is her telling the world I’m this bad, bad, husband that has hurt and raped her.’
He told them:
“There is nothing there because it never happened. I’m there on the other side. “I appreciate you have your job to do, but really. You have to follow the evidence, but there is none.”
Despite being asked a number of times whether he had raped and killed his wife he denied doing so.
He told the detectives:
“I have been compliant. With everything you have asked. I have nothing to hide. “I walked into the room and she was face down.”
The prosecution’s case is that after killing his wife - who was spending the night in their daughter’s bedroom - Thompson, 56, planted alcohol bottles and pills around her bedside to make it look like she had ended her life. A detective who attended the scene, admitted earlier in the trial that an error was made in not taking the alcohol or drinks from the bedside to get them tested.
In the final interview he said he had cleaned the bedroom the day after his wife’s death on August 9, on the suggestion of Kim’s mother, as their teenage daughter was coming home from America where she had been studying.
He said he had wiped everything down.
“The whole room was cleaned. Everything was spic and span.”
Asked why his wife would have told many of her friends, colleagues and family he had been abusive to her and had raped her in the past, he said ‘she is not well’ and said ‘no-one would stay in a relationship’ that had been that way. He denied having a violent temper and said there had been no previous reports of violence to the police by his wife about him.
He said:
“I’m not this rapist or sexual predator. That is not me, I have not been that. There is nothing to support that.”
He told the detectives he was glad he had recorded her in their home and recorded conversations because:
“It was for my protection. I’m sort of glad I did that. In all those recordings, there is never talk of rape. Never talk of domestic violence.”
He said:
“She [his wife] was not right. Will never allow people to see the real her. But I know who she is.”
He accused Kim, who worked as a manager at the courts service in Northampton, of wanting a ‘polyamorous marriage’ and said she liked the attention of being a victim.
Mimicking her, he said:
“‘Look at me. He rapes me, he beats me.’”
Towards the end of the interview he was asked how he explained a healthy woman like Kim dying?
He said:
“Do people not just die? Does this not happen?”
He told police they were just going on what people were saying about him raping her.
He said:
“As soon as you heard that from numerous people you take it as gold.”
The agreed facts of the case will be presented to the jury early next week and Thompson’s defence is also due to begin next week. The trial continues.
By Sarah Ward
Read our article from yesterday here.
In other news
The University of Northampton has announced a fresh round of redundancies as it faces a significant drop in oversees student numbers.
The university - which is heavily in debt due to the Waterside campus which opened a decade ago - told staff the news at a briefing this week.
NN Journal asked the university for details on the number of job losses there would be and how much it needed to save, but it said it was not making the details public currently.
The cuts come after two rounds of voluntary redundancies last year as the university attempted to ward off a £19m budget deficit.
The university sector is undergoing a huge crisis currently with many universities announcing major cut backs of staff and courses.
A University of Northampton spokesperson said:
“The higher education sector is currently undergoing a significant period of change and many institutions are experiencing the same financial pressures.
“Student numbers are considerably lower than they were a few years ago, mostly driven by changes in visa requirements. This is compounded by the rising cost of delivery and a rapid change in student behaviour.
“We must take difficult decisions to prioritise educational delivery and protect our long-term financial sustainability so that we can deliver both excellence for our students and social impact for the local community.”
By Sarah Ward
The average cost of a residential placement for a child being looked after by the Northants local authorities has risen to almost £400,000.
In the last financial year, both Northants unitary councils that oversee the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT) saw a £31.2m budget overspend, which led to both having to take funds from reserves to cover the costs.
NCT’s director of finance and resources, Andrew Tagg, told a West Northants scrutiny meeting on Tuesday (June 16) that nearly 90 per cent of the overspend was down to the cost of children’s placements.
The meeting heard that the organisation currently spends on average £7,600 per week for each child placed in private residential care, which amounts to almost £400k for a full year. Meanwhile, the authority’s highest cost residential placement was £1.3m a year, which would work out at around £25,000 every week.
The number of young people in such placements has grown by around a third, from 150 children in April 2025 to 198 in March 2026. At the same time, officers said the sector has also faced sustained cost pressures within the provider market due to inflation.
During the meeting, reference was made to a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government report in 2019, which branded children’s services in Northamptonshire “one of the worst-performing yet most expensive in the country”.
A government order was made to take services out of the local council’s hands, with an expectation to create the conditions for a ‘good’ children’s service and to secure an improved judgment at its Ofsted inspection before they can be brought back in-house.
Speaking at the meeting, chief executive of the NCT, Colin Foster, reflected the challenges that face the county:
“Having been here now for just under six years, I get worried in Northamptonshire when we’re not aligned with the rest of the country where the pressures we feel are different. That was certainly the case when I arrived.
“I can say the numbers that are being quoted now are in line with the rest of the sector. This is not a Northamptonshire issue, this is a national issue.
“I can say confidently we’re not the worst in the country and we’re not the most expensive and that’s significant progress in Northamptonshire.”
He also said it was important to recognise “where we could’ve been in Northamptonshire”, highlighting previous forecasts which suggested that the Trust could’ve had another 220 children in care by 2026, which would’ve ramped up costs by an extra £22m.
Chair of the committee, Cllr Ian McCord added:
“The single biggest lesson that anyone should take from the failure of NCC (Northamptonshire County Council) was cut the early years, cut the prevention stuff at your peril because when these people are presenting later on, they’re in a much worse situation, their needs are much more complex and therefore the cost of sorting it out is much, much higher.
“It’s the pace of all this. We know it all needs to be done, so what’s our accelerated plan to start rolling this out?”
Members heard that mitigations set out include attracting a permanent workforce – with work over the last year cutting down on agency posts and reducing staff turnover to nine per cent – as well as delivering in-year savings, and supporting step-down from residential to family-based care.
Attempts to shift children placed in residential care into fostering through the recruitment of more carers is also key, according to the NCT.
By Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter
Plans to build a large new housing development of up to 850 homes on the outskirts of Northampton have been rejected in response to strong public opposition.
The site, led by Manor Oak Homes, was proposed to be built on three agricultural fields in the open countryside between Grange Park and Quinton. The homes would be bounded by Foxfield Country Park and Wootton Road at the north of the site and stretch across to the M1 at the bottom.
The residential development was discussed at the outline stage by West Northamptonshire Council’s (WNC) strategic planning committee on Tuesday (June 16).
As well as the homes, the site would provide a new local centre, land for a new primary school, open space, including an extension to the adjacent country park, community allotments, pedestrian and cycle links, and 45 per cent of properties offered at affordable rent.
During the three-hour council meeting, multiple WNC ward and parish councillors and residents spoke against the proposals, as well as a statement read on behalf of South Northamptonshire MP Sarah Bool.
Quinton resident Peter Shellard raised concerns that the protective buffer between the two communities would be destroyed if the homes are built.
“Your officers want to merge Quinton with Grange Park and they imply wrongly that planting new trees along the edges would disguise a major urban extension overwhelming a small village.
“Quinton isn’t an empty space on a map – it’s a village with a thousand years of identity and history and our residents care deeply about their community. Please don’t destroy it,” he said.
Andy Millerchip, a local resident and member of Grange Park Parish Council, added: “Bolting 850 houses on the edge of Grange Park with some really superficial box ticking in terms of community amenities will not work. Why risk doing all of this harm?”
Concerns were also raised about local amenities, including access to GPs and school places, and the dependence residents would have on car journeys to access various different services.
Nene Valley councillor Trefor Hughes (Reform UK) told the committee:
“I want members to be in no doubt about where the community stands. The proposed coalescence with Grange Park is rejected by residents. They’ve engaged seriously, submitted detailed evidence and legitimate concerns throughout this process.”
On top of the 534 public objections, six of the neighbouring parish councils and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England had also informed WNC of their opposition to the plans.
Geoff Armstrong, who spoke on behalf of the developers, said the plans had been with the council for three years – which he added was one of the longest applications he had ever dealt with – and highlighted that there were no statutory objections from consultees.
He said:
“We’ve discussed all of the comments which came in and no comments were left unresolved. There is still the evidence and support from your officers for this scheme to come through today.
“In the situation we find ourselves in, with the tilted balance and such a huge housing need, those three sites coming forward for development fit with the planning policies and fit with the advice from your officers.”
Officers had recommended the committee approve the site, partially influenced by the council’s inability to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply, meaning any identified harms would have to “significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits” of the scheme.
Cllr Sally Keeble (Labour, Dallington Spencer) put forward a motion to approve the development as it would “meet one of the biggest challenges we face in West Northants” and deliver much-needed housing.
“If we can’t grasp the nettle of making a difficult decision like this, we are not going to meet the serious challenges we face around housing and sustainable development,” she explained.
By Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter
Residents are being invited to join a new neighbourhood board in Wellingborough to help map out plans for the next decade.
Last year the government pledged £20m to three left behind neighbourhoods in Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough and in recent months chairs have been appointed to three new neighbourhood boards.
Nicky Kingsnorth, chair of the Queensway Neighbourhood Board, wants people who live, work or are connected to the estate to get involved. Board members must be over 18 and two sessions are being held next week -Tuesday, June 23 between 5pm and 7pm and Friday, June 26 between 8am and 10am - if people want to find out more about the role.
Nicky Kingsnorth, Chair of the Queensway Neighbourhood Board, said:
“This is a fantastic opportunity for local people to have a real say in how Queensway develops over the next decade.
“We’re looking for people who care about the area and want to make a positive difference. You don’t need previous experience – just a willingness to get involved, listen and work together to create a better future for the community.”
People can apply by completing an online application form or submitting a short video (under five minutes) to prideinplace@northnorthants.gov.uk
The application deadline is Friday, July 3 at midday.