Christopher, left, and Jessica Thompson.Photo: Weakley County Sheriff’s Office

Christopher Thompson and Jessica Thompson

When Jessica Thompson walked into the Weakly County, Tennessee, Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday to report a missing person, Cpt. Marty Plunk pretty sized up that something didn’t seem right.

The missing person was Thompson’s 38-year-old niece, Mandy Noe. Thompson said she’d last seen Noe 11 days earlier, on Jan. 22, when Thompson left to visit relatives in Georgia.

“She made some statements to me while reporting her missing that made me think there’s something else to this story,” Plunk told PEOPLE.

Among those statements, he said, was one that implicated Jessica Thompson’s husband, Christopher Thompson, who had been arrested and jailed the previous night on a domestic violence charge after an alleged altercation between the couple.

When Jessica Thompson left the sheriff’s office, Plunk pulled Christopher Thompson out of his jail cell to ask about the missing woman.

“An hour or so later, he confessed to killing her and said the wife was involved,” Plunk said.

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Both entered pleas of not guilty during their arraignment, Plunk said. Attorneys who might speak for the couple were not immediately identified.

“They didn’t give me a motive other than … I guess she just got on their nerves a lot,” he said. “His story was, he shoved her and she fell on her head, which is like 90 percent lie and 10 percent truth.”

From “the way it looked,” Plunk added, the victim’s body was then left in the residence for about three days before the couple allegedly buried it on Jan. 24.

“There’s a lot of moving parts going on right now with this,” he said.

Christopher Thompson is being held on a $250,00 bond. Jessica’s bond was set at $75,000.

source: people.com