After raping and killing his estranged wife, Michael Thompson believed he'd got away with murder.

Furious that Kim Thompson had a new boyfriend and was moving on without him, the 56-year-old former doorman meticulously staged a false 'suicide' scene – placing bottles of gin and vodka next to empty packets of painkillers and a photograph from their wedding on her bed – in an attempt to make it seem like she'd taken an overdose and ended it all.

In fact, on the night of her death, Thompson crept downstairs into Kim's bedroom – the pair were living in the same house but sleeping apart in preparation for their divorce – and forced her to have sex, before suffocating her.

Bruises in her mouth and defence injuries to her arms were evidence she had been deliberately asphyxiated, a pathologist would later conclude.

Initially, however, the police fell for his charade. Called to the couple's smart terrace in a suburb of Northampton, for the first 72 hours at least, they treated Thompson, who had pretended to perform CPR and feigned distress, like a bereaved husband. Their failure to secure the crime scene – allowing undertakers to remove Kim's body and leaving Thompson to clear up – meant her murderer was free to destroy vital evidence.

It was only after the friends of 43-year-old Kim – a civil servant and award-winning basketball coach – started raising concerns about Thompson's abusive and controlling behaviour during the couple's 20-year marriage that police finally realised something sinister could have happened and he was arrested.

Those same friends also told officers something far more alarming: they claimed that history was repeating itself.

'[Kim] told me many times that if anything ever happened to her then it was Michael Thompson,' Danielle Harrison, a friend of 30 years, told police.

Furious that Kim Thompson had a new boyfriend and was moving on without him, the 56-year-old former doorman meticulously staged a false 'suicide' scene

Thompson with Rhonda, who was found electrocuted in a bath in July 2000

'[She said] 'If I ever leave him he would kill me and get away with it, as he has done before.'

The reason? Twenty-five years earlier, in July 2000, Thompson's long-term partner Rhonda Anderson, 29, was found electrocuted in the bath – her mains-powered 'ghetto blaster' switched on in the water alongside her. Thompson was questioned at the time about the bizarre mishap but police ruled out foul play and a coroner concluded her death was simply an accident.

However, in the wake of Kim's death in August last year, Northamptonshire Police re-opened Rhonda's case and launched a separate investigation into her demise. They also arrested Thompson on suspicion of her murder.

Yet last week, after he was jailed for a minimum of 33 years for Kim's rape and murder at Nottingham Crown Court, a spokesman confirmed that the inquiry into Rhonda's death has now been officially closed due to 'insufficient evidence'.

It is understood that Rhonda's relatives also refused to countenance suggestions her death was anything but a terrible tragedy.

Despite this, questions remain over whether Thompson, a serial womaniser who repeatedly cheated on Kim during their marriage, believed he could con police by disguising her murder as suicide because he'd already successfully done so.

The Daily Mail can reveal that when Rhonda died she had in fact left Thompson after discovering he'd been having affairs with several teenage girls behind her back.

Like Kim, she'd also met someone else and was trying to move on.

One of those teenage girls, now a single mother, aged 48, told the Daily Mail last week that there were those in Northampton who suspected Rhonda's death was not an accident.

'The police were aware of the fears about what had really happened to Rhonda,' the woman said.

'There were so many concerns about domestic abuse passed to them by her friends, relatives and neighbours.

'He admitted to me he could be violent and once told me he had given Rhonda a black eye when he smashed her head into a cupboard door.

'He was unfaithful, repeatedly, and with different girls at the same time. He was never discreet about what he did.

'Rhonda found out about all of us in the end because our phone numbers were coming up on their itemised bills.

'He just took what he wanted and didn't give a s*** about anyone except himself. I knew Rhonda had found someone else.

'He could not cope with the rejection. The jealousy and inadequacy just ate him up inside.

'It was all right for him to do whatever he wanted, but when she found someone she really liked, who cared about her, he hated it.'

Both Rhonda Anderson (pictured) and Kim had two children with Thompson, the youngest of which is still only 16

Ms Anderson was found dead in the bath at her home in Hembury Place, Northampton (above)

The woman said she met Thompson, who was six years older than her, when she was 15 at a teenage disco night, known as 'the nappy party', which was held at the town's Ritzy nightclub.

Thompson used to call her on the landline at the home she shared with her parents.

If her mother or father answered he would hang up, but if she picked up he would creepily ask her if she was 'coming out to play'.

Looking back, she said she realises she was groomed by him.

'I know I shouldn't have got involved with him - he was with Rhonda and I should have known better - but I was vulnerable,' she added.

'He made me feel really special. We would cruise round in his red convertible and he love-bombed me.

'I'll never forget one day I ran into Rhonda in town. I was worried about how she would respond but she just put her arms around me and gave me a big hug and asked if I was all right.

'It should have been me asking her that. She knew what he was like though and what he would have done to trap me.

'I was a good girl and worked hard at school but that all changed when I met him. I bitterly regret that now. I lost my self-esteem and self-confidence.'

She added: 'As you get older your perspective on life changes. I have matured and I look back at what a stupid girl I was.

'Counselling has helped me take a long hard look at myself and accept responsibility for what I did and deal with my guilt and how to manage it.'

She wants police to prosecute Thompson, whom she describes as a 'pathological liar', for having sex with under-age girls and has given a statement to officers.

Last week, however, a spokesman for Northamptonshire Police told the Daily Mail there were no ongoing investigations into Thompson's conduct.

Both Rhonda and Kim had two children with Thompson, the youngest of which is still only 16.

But the Daily Mail can reveal that Thompson also fathered a fifth child with a third woman, whom he seduced behind Kim's back just a couple of years into their relationship.

She too is angry about the way Rhonda's death was investigated.

Police concluded there was 'insufficient evidence' to proceed with a murder probe into Rhonda's death

Michael Thompson was convicted of the rape and murder of Kimberley Thompson and two counts of perverting the course of justice

'Northamptonshire Police let Rhonda down and they potentially let Kim down,' the woman told the Daily Mail.

She claimed 'Thompson's been able to deal with two crime scenes,' and pointed out that she is the only mother of his children who is still alive.

'I'm a survivor of Michael Thompson,' she added. 'I'm the only one still standing and the only one [to bear him a child] whose child has still got a mother. That is so sad, it's awful, isn't it?'

Other friends of Kim's have also questioned the adequacy of the investigation into Rhonda's death in 2000 and point out that if police had acted differently back then, it's likely Kim would never have met Thompson and would be alive today.

'It beggars belief that the police couldn't have built a case against him at the time,' one told the Daily Mail. 'I've been party to conversations where people have been categoric that Michael killed Rhonda. This was well before Kim died.

'It was the worst kept secret in Northampton.

'He was an arrogant man, he always thought he was cleverer than everyone else.'

The male friend, who knew both Kim and Thompson, and has been interviewed by detectives, claimed he'd been told the murder investigation into Rhonda's death got nowhere because vital evidence and paperwork from the original inquiry had gone missing.

By the time Kim died, Thompson had been physically, sexually and verbally abusing her behind closed doors for more than a decade.

The handful of friends she confided in claimed Thompson used Rhonda's death to force her to stay, threatening her: 'You know what happened to the last person who tried to do this to me.'

Still, Kim saved up money for years and bought a property, which she initially rented out to help pay for their 18-year-old daughter Athena's college fees. With divorce proceedings underway, she was just days away from moving into it when she was killed.

Best friend Annette Collins gave a statement to police saying Kim 'thought Michael had killed his first wife' and was worried he would do the same to her if she left him.

'She told me that Michael had told her that he did it and he would know how to get away with it,' the statement, which was referred to in legal argument prior to the trial, stated.

'She questioned whether Michael was trying to scare her or whether he did do it.'

Long-time friend Hyacinth Francis also told officers that Kim had spoken about Rhonda 'being electrocuted and found dead in the bath'.

'She told me this because of an incident of note between her and Michael when she had been talking about leaving [him] and he told her he would 'do time' and kill her,' Ms Francis told officers.

A coroner ruled that mother-of-two died accidentally - the result of a 'foolish' mistake

Another associate told the Daily Mail he thought Thompson eventually decided to kill Kim because he had 'lost control [of her]' and was furious that he was going to lose out financially in their divorce.

A couple of days before she died Kim had demanded £65,000 as part of the divorce settlement – £20,000 more than Thompson had offered.

On the night of her death Kim had been texting her new boyfriend, Nathan Syrett, 47, whom she met through basketball, telling Mr Syrett she 'missed him' in her last message, which was sent shortly after midnight.

Thompson is likely to have read that text because, by then, he had been snooping on his wife, accessing her phone, listening to her calls and tracking her movements for years.

Police found 550 hours of recordings – some several hours long – on his mobile phone.

He'd also previously raped her as punishment when he found out she'd had an affair.

Sometime in the early hours of August 9th, Thompson came downstairs and raped and killed Kim by suffocation. He then set about giving himself an alibi – using Kim's phone to send himself a Facebook friend request and changing her status to 'married'.

Crucially, he also wrote a post, saying 'drinking to much !' which Athena immediately thought was suspicious because her mother would never have spelt 'too' incorrectly or left a space before an exclamation mark.

The teenager read a powerful victim impact statement to the court via video-link from the US, where she is a college basketball player.

Describing her father as a 'jealous, conniving, narcissistic villain,' she said she remembered sitting at the top of the stairs and crying herself to sleep after listening to him 'degrade her mother in the most awful way' during her childhood.

She said she'd often had to protect her 'innocent' younger brother, 16, from the domestic abuse regularly meted out to their mother in their family home.

Athena, who has also played basketball for Great Britain, said she was 'entirely indifferent' to whether her father lived or died.

'The day you killed my mother, you killed me too,' she said.

'I've now had 13 scholarship offers that I have not been able to share with her, played 48 games of basketball that I could not tell her about, had 150 counselling sessions and 124 absences from school because I cannot think of my mum without bursting into tears. You have no idea of the mental toll you have placed upon everyone.'

A poem was also read to the court on behalf of her brother, which ended: 'I hope you have a long time to think about your regrets.'

Thankfully, Thompson will have more than three decades to mull over his crimes and will be a very old man before – if ever – he is considered for release.