Thompson's lawyer says prosecutors cannot prove to the criminal standard his wife was killed
In his closing speech Michael Thompson’s lawyer portrayed Kim Thompson as a melodramatic, two-faced, liar who was obsessed with her husband
“Misogynist: it is not a verdict. It is an insult and an insult is not evidence. There is a danger in a case like this of you convicting a man you have come to dislike for an offence you cannot be sure he committed.” Jonas Hankin, KC
By Sarah Ward
Prosecutors have an ‘evidential void’ in their case against the Northampton man accused of killing his civil servant wife, his lawyer told the jury yesterday.
In his closing speech at the Nottingham Crown Court murder trial, Jonas Hankin KC, said the Crown Prosecution Service has not provided the evidence to prove to the ‘criminal standard’ - beyond reasonable doubt - that former bouncer Michael Thompson raped and murdered his wife of 19 years Kimberley Thompson, in August last year. Thompson, 56, denies all charges against him.
Instead Mr Hankin, said prosecutors were relying on a portrait of Thompson, that had been painted during the trial.
He told the jury:
“For six weeks the prosecution has constructed a portrait of Thompson as an unpleasant man; controlling, coercive, both physically and sexually abusive. Examine how that portrait has been constructed - it is almost entirely of things Kim is said to have told other people. Things now repeated after her death by friends, family and colleagues who believed her. Who cared about her and so naturally interpreted events through the lens of what she had told them.
“The labels that have been used to describe Mr T, controlling, coercive, abusive - they create an impression deliberately, and they provoke a reaction, but an impression is not evidence and a reaction is not a safe foundation for a verdict.”
He said:
“Misogynist - it is not a verdict. It is an insult and an insult is not evidence. There is a danger in a case like this of you convicting a man you have come to dislike for an offence you cannot be sure he committed.”
“Verdicts must be based on proof. Not labels, not impressions. Certainty, not suspicion,” he told the jury.
He said that Kim - who had two children with Thompson and helped raise his elder two children - was ‘obsessed’ with her husband and had pathological issues, such as compulsive shopping and hoarding. He said her retraction in 2013 of a statement she gave to a Northampton based domestic abuse centre, was evidence that she lied. ‘What it shows is Kim Thompson found it easy to lie.’
He told the jury:
“You must be sure that Kim is a reliable witness. This man faces accusations of rape and murder and this is the witness.”
He asserted that Kim’s seeking out domestic abuse support was ‘motivated by anger’ and she had admitted in a letter to the centre that her objective was to blame all her problems on her husband.
He said:
“Kim Thompson could not stop reporting what was happening in her life. This is not the domestic violence myth of someone who is concealing what was going on. It’s the polar opposite. That’s why you heard from a legion of witnesses, all reporting the same thing, from the same source. Friends she had known for a long time, right up to people she had barely known for months. She did not discriminate. Given an opportunity she would unburden herself.”
The Thompsons continued to live together after their separation in 2024, when Michael Thompson started divorce proceedings and Mr Hankins said Kim had opportunities to leave but stayed.
He told the jury Kim, 43, was ‘presenting one face’ to friends and ‘another face to the defendant’:
He said:
“Kim wanted to stay - whatever she told other people - she told Mr Thompson over again, right up to the last to give her a chance - I want to stay.”
Mr Hankin said:
“The answers to those questions: Why did she remain in the relationship? Why did she continue a sexual relationship? Why did she not report things to the police?; Why did she retract her complaint? Why did she stay? These are all matters for you, but whatever decision you make, it will be the right one, provided you do it on the evidence, not the nebulous concept of a myth.”
Kim Thompson died in the family home in the early hours of August 9 2025 and her husband called the emergency services to the house. By her bedside were some alcohol bottles and pills, which the prosecution allege Thompson placed there to cover up his crimes.
Giving evidence, the police detective who attended the scene admitted making an error by not seizing a glass which contained a green liquid with sediment at the bottom. The contents of the glass are unknown and have played a key part of the trial.
Mr Hankins asked the jury:
“Are you sure that Kim was killed, at all? Can you exclude suicide? Can you exclude misadventure? Can you exclude allergic or illness resulting in collapse and suffocation and death?
“If you’re not sure of that, everything else falls.”
He told the jury that Thompson, who did not give the prosecution the chance to cross examine him on the witness stand, was a ‘quiet, hardworking, family man, who kept himself to himself.’ Rather than ‘stewing’ on the night of his wife’s death, he said he was ‘scrolling’ on his phone and said Thompson, who was working shifts in a warehouse, was not under financial pressure and could have paid the increased financial demand his wife had asked for as part of their final settlement.
Closing his four hour speech, Mr Hankin urged the jury to examine the evidence closely and said if they did, it would not be to his client’s detriment but to his advantage.
He ended his speech using Kim’s own words from a message to Thompson in which she said: “My words are damaging.”
This morning Judge Shant has been summing up the case. She has so far reminded the jury of evidence related to the death scene; a scream on the evening of Kim’s death that was heard by two separate neighbours and the toxicological and medical evidence given by expert witnesses. The trial continues.
This is an active trial so comments are turned off
Previous coverage of the trial
Northampton murder trial” ‘I can’t wake my wife up’
Northampton mum murdered in home by husband who then tried to fake her suicide, court hears
‘If anything happens to me, please know it was him’
Northampton murder trial: Kim Thompson’s colleague tells jury accused husband strangled her
Murder accused threatened to tamper with estranged wife’s car brakes, court hears
Pathologist tells jury he believes Kimberley Thompson died by suffocation
Unhappy domestic life of Thompsons revealed in texts and messages