Northampton mum murdered in home by husband who then tried to fake her suicide, court hears
Michael Thompson is accused of raping and killing his wife Kimberley Bounds before trying to cover up her death
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A Northampton mum was killed by the husband she was divorcing, who then tried to stage her murder as a suicide, a court heard today.
Basketball coach Kimberley Thompson, 43, was allegedly raped and then murdered by her husband of 19 years Michael Thompson, 55, at their home in Pinewood Road, Northampton in the early hours of August 9 last year.
The couple who crown prosecutors say had the ‘most unhappiest of marriages’ had separated but were living together at the shared home before Thompson sexually assaulted and killed his wife, shortly before she was due to go away to a hotel with her new partner.
In the days before her death she had also asked for an increased financial settlement related to property the pair co-owned and had told friends that things were ‘going to get messy’.
Opening the prosecution’s case at Nottingham Crown Court this morning, Miranda Moore KC told the jury that after raping and killing his wife, former doorman Thompson tried to make it look like the mother of two teens, who was using her maiden Bounds, had committed suicide. The crown’s case is that he placed pills and alcohol next to her bedside before claiming he found her face down dead on the bed.
Alongside the rape and murder charge he is accused of two counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice for trying to cover up the rape and murder.
Frightened of her husband
The court heard that Bounds, who grew up in Northampton, had been frightened of her husband, with whom she had two children.
Ms Moore said:
“Friends and family saw a change in Kim, once she started living with Thompson. She went from being a healthy, happy, bubbly person to a thin, self doubting and fearful woman.’
The prosecution said she stopped confiding in her friends because she knew Thompson was accessing her phone. A friend said Thompson had ‘got into her head’ and it was difficult for her friends to watch as she was ‘living a half life.’
The prosecution told the jury that ‘Mr Thompson was ‘coercive and controlling’. Ms Moore said he controlled what Kim did, where she went and what she ate. She said he was physically and emotionally abusive and that Kim had tried to pass off bruises as basketball injuries, but later told friends that they had been caused by Thompson.
She said he went through the bins to check on his wife, one time questioning her on some underwear found in the bin. His controlling behaviour included highlighting passages from behaviour books and leaving them around the house. The passages marked would include text about women playing the victim. He also said she was narcissistic, a poor wife and blamed her for his being on medication and for being off work.
The court also was told about a post-it note Thompson left for his wife in which he said she always had a supply ( the prosecution explained that ‘supply’ meant partners for sex) and that she was scared of being alone.
Under surveillance
The prosecution said that Bounds was under surveillance during her marriage. Thompson, who sat in the dock wearing glasses, a green t-shirt and jeans and had on a black rubber bracelet that said ‘never give up’ in capital letters, would plant phones around the house and set them to record. Kim also found a phone in her car.
Ms Moore said there were ‘literally hours of recordings’ and there was evidence that Thompson would save and edit the recordings.
She told the jury that In the course of their investigations, police retrieved 75 days of separate recordings which were over three hours long. There were 26 recordings where the recordings were between eight and ten hours and some recordings were longer than 12 hours.
The recordings dated from 27 March 2024 and 7 August last year, which the prosecutor said showed that ‘right up to her death he was recording what she was doing’.
Report to the authorities
As far back as 2013, Bounds’ friends, who she had confided in, had told her to leave her husband. The prosecution said she had made a report but retracted it after social services got involved.
Ms Moore told the jury of an occasion where Kim’s friend Elizabeth Muddiman overheard Kim’s conversation with Thompson when she had not put the phone down correctly.
She said he was calling her a ‘pathetic c**t’ and that she did not deserve to be a mother. Kim was apologising and when her friend later said she wanted to call the police, Kim said it would only make her life more difficult.
Ms Moore also told the jury of another occasion that Thompson went over to the house of a friend when Kim was visiting for a play date and searched the house as he believed that she was cheating on him.
The court heard the estranged couple, who married in 2006, worked at the same company. After their separation, Thompson had started an affair with a co-worker and the prosecution said Kim had felt embarrassed and humiliated as Thompson sent flowers to the woman at work. The affair ended because the other woman felt she was being used.
Sexual relations
The jury was told that the couple continued to have sex while separated. Kim was said to have ‘caved in’ and had sex with Thompson.
The court heard that ‘she gave in to sex because it was easier’, but that she ‘hated the anal sex, Thompson regularly requested. The court also heard he had demanded anal sex due as punishment for an earlier affair Bounds had had.
But the prosecution told the court:
“Lately she was refusing and she said she did not want to do anal sex because it hurt her and caused her problems.”
Financial settlement
Ms Moore said Kim had been saving to move on for a couple of years.
“It was in about 2023 that Kim realised there was no saving her marriage and she started her escape plan. She had begun secreting money. She worked very hard to get a home for herself and the children away from him.”
The couple were in the final stages of their divorce when Kim died.
She had previously agreed to a £40,000 financial settlement, but the court was played a voice note she had sent to a friend in which she said she had changed her mind and in late July she told Thompson she instead wanted £65,000, due to the amount of equity in the property. The couple owned their home in Pinewood Road plus a shared rental property. Kim also had her own home, she planned to move into and she told a friend she wanted £20,000 to spend on the home.
She told her friend that ‘things at home’ were ‘messy’ and ‘becoming more difficult - if they can become any more difficult.” She said she was moving out and she had decided ‘I can’t let him bully me.’
Ms Moore told the court that ‘Kim knew things would get bad’ when she fought Thompson for more money and ‘it is exactly what she was doing at the time of her death.’
Thompson sat in the dock at times shaking his head when the prosecutor was making her case.
Night of her death
The prosecution’s case is that Kim died sometime between midnight and 3.30am on August 9.
The court heard from Ms Moore that on the night of her death Kimberley had been at home and video called her teenage daughter who was in America playing basketball, as well as text her new partner. She had also been looking at food reviews of Northampton restaurants and had been speaking to a travel agent friend about booking a flight to see her daughter.
Thompson was also in the house and the prosecution said during the evening he had been looking at ‘sexualised images’ of Kim on his phone. Ms Moore said he was ‘in his room, stewing about money, sex and watching videos.’ He knew she had a new partner due to checking her phone and seeing messages between the pair.
Ms Moore told the jury that Thompson called 999 at 5.39am that morning saying that he had found his wife lifeless and with tablets and vodka next to her.
Ten minutes later the first responders turned up and found Bounds in bed with the cover pulled up. Her body was cold. Thompson was behaving in a ‘very emotional fashion’.
Ms Moore said:
“It is fair to say the emergency crew were entirely taken in by this charade.”
Bounds was declared dead at 5.50am.
The prosecutor said ‘police were fooled’ and ‘Mr Thompson was left to clean up the scene’. Later that day he was seen driving around ‘looking quite happy.’ At 11am he spoke to her sister and did not tell her that Kim was dead - instead telling her to ‘have a nice day’.
Cover up
“In this case the cover up may be the most powerful evidence against Thompson” Ms Moore told the jury.
The court heard that after he killed Kim - the prosecution say she died by suffocation - in the early hours of the morning, he sent some text messages from Kim’s phone and made social media posts from her account.
Ms Moore said:
“We suggest that that was not Kim sending that message. By this point we suggest Kim had been killed. And the tidy up, the fakery and the scenesetting had begun.”
The prosecution’s case is that he staged the death scene, planting family photographs, including a montage of a sister who had died by suicide, around her as well as the alcohol bottles and empty pill packets.
But Ms Moore said that while the police and emergency services had ‘swallowed’ Thompson’s version, her friends and family ‘were smelling a rat’’. The messages on social media were not spelt correctly and they thought that as she was doing lots of overtime and due in work the next morning she would not have been drinking that evening.
Ms Moore said:
“She was finally getting free of Michael Thompson. She had a new partner. She had a home to move into. She was about to go to the states to see Athena. The suicide of her sister had a big effect on her. She was of the view that one should never take one’s life.”
Arrest three days after her death
Tests were carried out on Bounds’s body and only traces of painkillers were found. Ms Moore told the jury:
“If ladies and gentlemen you are going to set a scene, beware the toxicology.”
She said:
“When police realised that Kim had no alcohol in her body they seized the bottles and they were sent for further examination.
“The bottles did not have Kim’s fingerprints on them. But they did have Mr Thompson’s finger prints on them.”
Thompson, who was unemployed, was arrested on August 12, three days after Kim’s death and interviewed five times. He told police that his estranged wife was a liar and he had never attacked assaulted or raped her.
He said a scream heard by neighbours on the night of her death was probably from a fox.
The prosecution will bring forward a number of people to give evidence in the coming days with the defence expected to begin next month.
Thompson denies all the charges against him. The trial continues.