Sharon Thompson

Sharon Thompson was found dead in her home in Chatsworth Crescent, Scawthorpe with a belt around her neck on 6 January 2004.

She was found in her lounge on the floor with the belt around her neck and it was first thought that she had been strangled.

However, three years later the police said that she took her own life by hanging herself from a door and said that she had fallen from the door in the period between hanging herself and when she was found by her mother.

It was first thought that she might have been murdered and the main suspect was her boyfriend who it was said had been violent towards her in the past.

Sharon Thompson had been an alcoholic and a prostitute. On one occasion, she had told her mother that her boyfriend had kicked and punched her after she had told him that she didn't like the breast enlargement surgery that he had paid for her to have.

Her parents said that at Christmas 2003 Sharon Thompson had come to their house drunk and wouldn't leave and that they had had to call the police. Later, when her mother couldn't contact Sharon Thompson over the weekend of 3 January to 5 January 2004 she went around to see her and found her cat desperately clawing at a window and that when she went in she found Sharon Thompson fully clothed, dead on the floor.

However, at the inquest, it was heard that she might have fallen to the floor when the door was opened by human activity after she had killed herself. Her boyfriend said that he had left her flat before she hanged herself and had not returned after at any time, however, a neighbour said that she thought that she had seen his car parked outside. When the Coroner asked her boyfriend whether he had played any part in Sharon Thompson's death he said, 'None whatsoever'. The Coroner then asked, 'Did you go back after Ms Thompson had died, open the door to the lounge, and let her body fall?' to which he responded 'No, I did not at all'.

The Coroner returned a verdict that Sharon Thompson had killed herself and said 'Her life had sunk to a new low at Christmas 2003. There is plainly a history of Sharon contemplating ending her own life and doing so in more than one way. It seems to me that she was at home alone, drunk, depressed, alcoholic and thoroughly unhappy. There is no evidence that anyone else played a direct part in the events that led to her death'.