Rowan Thompson inquest: Hampshire teen stabbed mother 118 times only to kill self days before trial began. Gender identity issues may have stoked murder.
An inquest has heard how a 17 year old teenage boy stabbed his mother 118 times after first strangling her in their UK home — before ‘calmly’ dialing 999 and telling police to ‘bring a body bag.’
Rowan Thompson, 17, was on a break from his $21,000-a-year private school when he strangled mom Joanna Thompson, 50, after they returned from a morning jog in their quaint Hampshire village, The Times of London said, citing a hearing into the death Monday.
After taking a 15-minute break from the attack, the son went back — stabbing her 38 times in the forehead, 64 times in the neck and 16 times in an arm, Winchester coroner’s court was told.
‘I’ve just killed my mum . . . I strangled her and I’ve been stabbing her with various knives and whatnot,’ Rowan told a dispatcher for the UK’s equivalent of 911, relaying it in a ‘calm, unemotional and quite ordinary manner’ after the killing in July last year, the hearing was told.
‘I need someone to arrest me, as that’s what you do, and an ambulance would be nice,’ Thompson told the operator in the call played in court, the UK Times reported.
‘Bring a body bag…’
‘Bring a body bag or whatever you do,’ Thompson added.
Thompson also filled in the operator about details from his weekend, saying he’d ‘had a meal and went to the cinema with my best friends, which was really nice.’
Thompson was due to stand trial in October for the murder — but was found dead four days before the start of the trial while in custody at a secure mental health facility.
Prior to trial commencing, Thompson had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his mother at their home in Hambledon, Hampshire, but denied murder.
The teen — who struggled with ‘gender identity issues,’ according to his father — had a history of mental health problems as well as an earlier suicide attempt.
However, psychiatrist John Sandford told the court that apart from minor autism, ‘there was nothing to suggest [Thompson] was suffering from abnormal mental functioning’ when he killed his mother.
Coroner Jason Pegg recorded a verdict of unlawful killing for the mom’s death, saying that “no one will ever know why” Thompson killed her.
‘The only person who knows is Rowan, and he’s going to be unable to tell us,’ Pegg said.
