I wish killer husband had taken me, not our children
IT IS almost six years since June Thomson’s abusive husband took revenge after she left him – by killing two of their children and making sure she found the bodies. Now Mrs Thomson has spoken about living with the almost unbearable grief of what happened to her family, and how she wishes Rab had killed her instead of their children.
Ryan, seven, and disabled Michelle, 25, were murdered in May 2008 in Buckhaven, Fife – Ryan had been stabbed 12 times and Michelle had 14 wounds.
Mrs Thomson says she will never get over their deaths and still feels guilty that she wasn’t there to protect them.
Worse, she says, is living with the knowledge that her killer former spouse could one day be released from prison
‘He’d batter me black and blue’
after being handed a life sentence with a minimum tariff of just 17 years.
‘The sentence was disgusting,’ she says.
‘How can you put a value on a child’s life of eight-and-a-half years?’
Mrs Thomson, who has two other sons, first met Robert Thomson – known to his family as Rab – when she was 17.
Despite his previous convictions for violence and a controlling personality, she fell in love and in 1981 they were married. Thomson swiftly moved to cut off contact with June’s friends and family and less than a year later, she was pregnant with Michelle.
His violent temper resurfaced during her pregnancy and when Michelle was born with severe learning difficulties, he was furious.
Worse, as their family expanded, her husband began to use his fists on the children – eldest son Shaun in particular.
‘He’d batter me black and blue,’ remembers Shaun. ‘If I got caught smoking at school, he would take a belt and batter me with the buckle, I was just covered in bruises.
‘I think he enjoyed the power of it, being the one in control.’
Mrs Thomson had tried to leave before – but when Thomson threatened to send Michelle to a care home, she had had enough and began divorce proceedings.
A few days before a custody hearing in 2008, Thomson arrived, angry and swearing, at the family’s new home. Mrs Thomson said: ‘He came and said, “What you gonna do when you’re all alone and you’ve not got any kids?” I assumed he was talking about getting custody.’
Just a few days later, she agreed to let him have Michelle and Ryan f or the afternoon. When she dropped them off at his home on May 3, 2008, at 3.30pm, it would turn out to be the last time she would see them alive.
‘I went back a couple of hours later, expecting to pick them up. Instead I found their bodies. Ryan was lying on the bed and his mouth was open, and his lips were blue, and I knew he was dead. Michelle was dead, lying in her bed, and her eyes were open and her mouth was open and the whole room was just a bloodbath.’
And although Thomson was jailed, for his murdered children’s mother and older brother, the nightmare continues. ‘I never, ever can describe the pain at that moment when I saw Ryan’s body,’ says June. ‘I don’t think there will ever be a time when I won’t feel guilty for not being there when they really needed me. I can never forgive him for what he’s done, for taking the children’s lives,’ adds June.
‘Why didn’t he just take mine and let them live?’
June and Shaun appear on Britain’s Darkest Taboos, tomorrow (April 13) at 9pm on CI (Sky 553, Virgin 237 and BT 433)