An abusive husband who raped and murdered his estranged wife and staged a scene to make her death look like suicide has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 33 years, after he refused to attend court.
Prosecutors said Michael Thompson, 56, suffocated Kimberley Thompson at the home they still shared in Northampton before scattering pill packets, bottles of vodka and gin, and family photographs around her body.
He failed to attend court on Tuesday for sentencing – a decision the judge called "the ultimate act of cowardice and contempt".
A seven-week trial heard controlling and “abusive” Thompson, of Pinewood Road, Northampton, was in the process of divorcing Ms Thompson and had made hundreds of hours of recordings of her before killing her in the early hours of 9 August.
The jury of seven women and five deliberated over four days before unanimously finding Thompson guilty last week of rape, murder and two counts of perverting the course of justice.
Thomson was not present for his sentencing hearing at Nottingham Crown Court after defence barrister Jonas Hankin KC told the court he was “voluntarily absent”.
Jailing Thompson on Tuesday in front of a packed public gallery, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said: “You have shown no remorse. Throughout the course of the trial you sat in the dock shaking your head and making audible noises of dissent.
“And in the ultimate act of cowardice and contempt, you have refused to come into court to hear from the family of the grief you have caused.”
The judge said she would make sure a bundle of all the victim impact statements and her sentencing remarks would be sent to Thompson so he could “read of the devastation you have wreaked”.
Thompson had claimed during the trial that he and his estranged wife had consensual sex before he later found her lifeless and surrounded by tablets and alcohol bottles.
Ms Thompson’s post-mortem examination found no evidence of any alcohol and only low levels of caffeine, paracetamol and codeine in her body, the court was told.
Thompson and his wife, who had been married for 19 years and had two children, were separated and divorce proceedings had been initiated at the time of the killing.
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