The Daily News-Telegram
(Sulphur Springs, Texas)

Tuesday, March 6, 1962
pg.1

DENISON WOMAN FOUND SLAIN
Denison, March 6  - An unidentified slayer clubbed and slashed 45-year-old Mrs. Blanche Thompson and left the body lying in a pool of blood at her home in Denison yesterday.  Her husband, 50-year-old M.H. Thompson, told police he returned about 11 p.m. and found his wife dead on a bedroom floor.  The body, clad in pajamas and house coat, bore 4 stab wounds in the chest and stomach.  The killer also slashed her throat.  Her right index finger was almost severed.  Justice of the Peace Homer Gaddy said this presumably indicated Mrs. Thompson battled her assailant in vain.
Thompson works for a cotton mill at Denison. He told officers he knew no motive for the slaying.

1962
DENISON WOMAN MURDERED AT STAR STREET RESIDENCE
Search for the unknown slayer of Mrs. Blanche Ardell Thompson, 45, at her home, 830 West Star, last night continues, but Denison police found leads in the case slim today.
Mrs. Thompson's throat was slashed from ear to ear, and 3 stab wounds were found in her chest and abdomen.  She was killed while her husband, Melvin H. Thompson, 50, was at work.
Judge Homer Gaddy, coroner in the case, reported that her left collarbone was broken and the left rib cage shattered, indicating that she was either stomped or kicked.  Internal bleeding from the stab wounds and chest injured would have caused death quickly without the throat being cut, Judge Gaddy noted.  In summing up her injuries, authorities surmised Mrs. Thompson put up a terrific fight against her murderer.

FOUND BY HUSBAND
Homicide was the inquest verdict.
Thompson returned home from working the 3-11 p.m. shift at Denison Cotton Mill and discovered his wife's body sprawled in a pool of blood in the bedroom of their small home.  Her head was laying near the bedroom door with her body extended toward the bathroom.  She was clad in light flannel pajamas and a housecoat.
Usually Mrs. Thompson lay on the couch and watched television at night.  Thompson said that he noticed the television on as he approached the front door.  He used his key and walked in.   Mrs. Thompson was not in her usual spot; and he turned on the overhead light which shined through the bedroom door and revealed the body.
He called police at 11:10 p.m., and Sgt. A.F. Melson and Patrolmen J.A. Miller and Morris Williams started an immediate investigation. This morning Chief Paul Borum and Capt. Lewis Winchester talked with Williams and others with information in the case, reconstructing the fragments known about the crime.

ALONE AT HOME
Mrs. Thompson's sister-in-law, Mrs. Ed Thompson was with her when her husband went to work.  She left at 4:30 p. m., she said later.  A neighbor, Mrs. Annie Haskins reported that Mrs. Thompson had phoned her just before 7 p.m., apparently the last known contact with the dead woman.
No evidence of forcible entry was found, and Thompson noted that his wife kept  the doors locked and would not have been likely to have let anyone into the house other than himself or their close relatives.  Thompson had bought his  wife a fifth of wine earlier in the day and left it beside the couch when he left for work.  Fragments of a shattered wine bottle were found in the bedroom, and what appeared to be wine was sprayed heavily on the walls of the bedroom and a small...past the bathroom.



The Whitewright Sun
Thursday, May 24, 1962
pg 1

Three Indicted By Grayson Grand Jury
A Grayson County grand jury indicted Denison's teen-age impulse killer, Michael Thompson, 17; the suspect in the bait shop bombing in Denison, John Sidney Garr; and Billy Bob Smith, 27, of Sherman, who has been held since the fatal shooting last Thursday of his wife, Pauline, 35, at Pilot Grove.
Thompson has been held since his arrest following the March 5 slaying of his aunt, Mrs. Blanche Ardell Thompson, 45, in South Denison. He admitted hitting her over the head with a wine bottle and then stabbing her with a butcher knife.
Garr has been named as the "hired bomber" in the March 11 explosion that wrecked Homer Smith's bait shop north of Denison. The man whom Garr said paid him $50 to blow up the shop was passed over by the grand jury.  Both Thompson and Smith were charged with murder with malice, while Garr was billed for arson by explosion.