A man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 33 years after being found guilty of the rape and murder of his estranged wife.

Michael Thompson, 56, from Northampton, refused to enter Nottingham Crown Court for his sentencing earlier.

On Wednesday he was found to have killed Kimberley Thompson, 43, at their home in Pinewood Road, Northampton, last August, and he later tried to make her death look like suicide.

Judge Nirmal Shant KC said Thompson showed an “ultimate act of cowardice and contempt” as he refused to attend the court to “hear from the family of the grief you have caused”.

The couple had been married for 19 years, had two children, were separated and divorce proceedings had been initiated at the time of the killing.

Thompson was also found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of two counts of perverting the course of justice.

The court heard how he subjected Kimberley to years of domestic abuse, including controlling, coercive behaviour, and physical violence and made hundreds of hours of recordings of her before he suffocated her at their home sometime between midnight and 03:30 BST on 9 August.

During the six-week trial Thompson claimed they had consensual sex before he later found his wife lifeless and surrounded by tablets and alcohol bottles.

Kimberley’s family and friends told police they did not believe she had taken her own life, and they described a history of domestic abuse, leading detectives to launch a murder investigation.

A post-mortem examination found no alcohol in her system and only low levels of caffeine, paracetamol and codeine.

At sentencing Shant 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 couple’s daughter, Athena, who appeared via video-link from the US, told the court her father was a “jealous, conniving, narcissistic villain”.

“How could you do such an evil, selfish, malicious thing?

“You couldn’t stand the fact she had so many people who cared about her.

“No amount of years rotting in prison will ever amount to what you deserve, because you deserve no life.

“You are a pathetic, unloved man.

“The day you killed my mother, you killed me too. I feel I will never be happy again.

“A dad is supposed to protect their daughter from pain, instead you caused the worst pain of my life.

“I will not let you defeat me, I will show up for her, my mum, and I will continue to make her proud.”

Jurors were told Thompson was aware his wife had started a new relationship and was planning to move out, and she had requested about £65,000 as part of a divorce settlement.

Prosecutor Miranda Moore KC told the jury posts Kimberley shared on Facebook and Snapchat in the early hours of that morning saying she had “drank too much” raised suspicion among her friends and family because it had a spelling error and was not written in they way she wrote.

Shant said Thompson had made a “concerted attempt to conceal” what he had done, and “set about creating a false scene to fool the police”.

“You were literally trying to get away with murder.

“The evidence makes it clear you pretended to do CPR and you feigned distress on the phone to the emergency services.

“You also took her from her family, friends and colleagues – a woman who was accomplished, valued and loved.

“She adored her children and she adored the fact she was about to start a new life.

“You deprived her of that. You deprived your children of a mother, you deprived others of a sister and a friend.”

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