Rory Jack Thompson
In September 1983, he was charged for murdering his wife, Maureen Thompson, in their Hobart, Tasmania home and after dismembering her body, he dumped the remains down a toilet.
[3] On 18 September 1999, several months after he attempted an escape, Thompson was found dead in his hospital cell after he hanged himself using a shoelace.
Alice granted full custody of the children to Richard shortly after the divorce and he became their sole provider and parent.
[1] Thompson met his second wife, Maureen Ellen (maiden name unknown), through a mutual friend and they married soon after.
[1] Prior to their divorce she had reported Thompson for domestic violence and had spent several weeks in hospital due to physical abuse.
[1] Thompson felt that he was under attack as Maureen had taken steps to prevent him spending money in their bank accounts.
Once they were in bed and locked in he set off for Maureen's house at 99 Hill Street, Hobart[1] on foot, wearing a wig and wraparound skirt to conceal his identity and carrying a bag of tools.
I now think that in the many hours of agonising, my adult mind collapsed between fear and the felt necessity to make Maureen vanish, and the toilet was a very young child’s solution for how to get rid of guilty bad doo-doo.
[1] In the early days of her disappearance, a finger was found at the sewage works sewer, which raised suspicions about Thompson's missing person report.
[2] It was concluded that Thompson had a significant personality disorder, which include lack of social understanding and excess arrogance.
[8] As they grew up, they were prohibited to contact Thompson, however, it was known that he allocated all earnings from his autobiography sales to his children's trust fund.
[1][2] In the years prior to his death, his son Rafi also initiated some contact with his father, with regular twice a week calls.
[6] In 1993, Thompson wrote an autobiography under the title Mad Scientist which was published by Southern Holdings and distributed only in Australia.
Wendy Lesser, in her review on Kate Grenville's Albion’s story, mentioned his autobiography and regarded the book as "bare and often poorly constructed", although it gave "an inside view of the pathetically deluded, distressingly self-justifying, willfully self-deceiving perpetrator".
He was able to obtain a credit card by unknown means, which allowed him to withdraw cash to buy a commercial plane ticket to Melbourne.
As a consequence, it is reported that Thompson suffered depression and was referred to Dr Alan Jager, one of the prison hospital's resident psychiatrists.
