A Texas man asked a relative to keep the children away from the home after the killing, investigators say.
MOUNT ENTERPRISE, Texas — The murder case against Scott Raymond Thompson took shape around a phone call in which, investigators say, he told an uncle he had killed his wife and wanted the couple’s children picked up from school before they returned home.
That detail, pulled from a probable cause affidavit and repeated in later reporting, has become the emotional center of the case now pending in Rusk County. Prosecutors say Amanda Thompson was killed inside the family home on March 18, while the children were away at school. By nightfall, authorities say, Scott Thompson had crossed into Arkansas and was under arrest.
The affidavit says the uncle contacted dispatchers and asked for a welfare check at the house on County Road 3122. He told authorities that Scott Thompson said he had killed his wife with an axe, left her in the hall and wanted the children taken somewhere else so they would not see what was inside. That account moved the deputies’ response beyond an ordinary no-contact call. When they arrived, they reported seeing blood through a back-door window. After their announcements went unanswered, they forced entry into the house.
Deputies then found Amanda Thompson dead near the back door, according to the affidavit and sheriff’s statements. Authorities later identified her publicly as Amanda Lynn Thompson. The records described wounds consistent with sharp-force trauma to the back of her head. Early local reporting after the discovery used broader language, saying preliminary findings pointed to blunt-force trauma and that an autopsy had been ordered. What investigators have not publicly explained is whether anyone else had been in the home that day, what time they believe the killing occurred or whether the children had any contact with either parent before the uncle called authorities.
In this version of the case, the later arrest reads almost like the last step in a plan already visible in the call itself. The uncle told dispatchers not only what Scott Thompson had said, but also that he wanted the children collected from school and moved away from the home. Authorities say Thompson then left the state in a black Acura. A BOLO went out, and license plate readers later showed the car moving through Texas and into Arkansas. Troopers stopped the vehicle on Highway 7 near Moccasin Gap in Pope County at about 8 p.m. and took him into custody without incident.
The legal case is now more conventional than the facts that first drew attention to it. Thompson was extradited back to Texas and returned to Rusk County on April 1. He is being held in the county jail, and Justice of the Peace Jana Enloe set bond at $1.5 million. The public reporting available so far does not show a formal defense response, a detailed probable-cause hearing account or a public explanation from prosecutors about when the case could go to a grand jury. No motive has been described in the materials reviewed by local outlets.
The broader setting remains a rural family home in the Brachfield area, where a relative’s decision to call deputies appears to have shaped everything that followed. Officials have not released many personal details about Amanda Thompson or the children, and that silence has kept the reporting tightly focused on the affidavit, the body discovery and the interstate arrest. The result is a story defined less by long public statements than by a few plain actions recorded in sequence: a call, a warning about the children, blood seen through glass, forced entry and an arrest before the end of the day.
As of April 23, the case stands with Thompson jailed in Rusk County and the next developments expected to come through routine court filings and hearings rather than new public police updates.
Author note: Last updated April 23, 2026.