Petersfield killer blames 'demons' for mother's death, court told
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Last updated 26th Nov 2024
A 25-year-old "savagely" slit his mother's throat with a pruning knife before he called 999 and admitted killing her, a court has heard.
Anarlyn Jones, now 26, was described as looking like "something out of a horror film" by neighbours who saw him clambering to their upstairs flat in trousers drenched in blood holding a bottle of brandy after the killing.
Jones, known as Bronwyn Jones at the time of the incident on May 9 2023, has admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility of his mother Anna Jones, 44, at her home in Petersfield, Hampshire, but is accused of murder.
Opening the case at Portsmouth Crown Court on Monday, prosecutor Sarah Jones KC: "This case is about how this defendant brutally and savagely killed his mother.
"How he became overwhelmed perhaps by rage, resentment, distress, but also alcohol, and took a small pruning knife to the throat of the woman who was defenceless in the face of such an overwhelming attack from her own child."
Ms Jones said that after the attack the defendant called 999 and said demons told him to do it, and then that his mother had begged him to kill her.
A post-mortem examination found multiple defensive-type wounds on Ms Jones's hands and arm, and concluded she "put up a vigorous struggle for life", the prosecutor added.
Days before her death, jurors were told, Jones appeared to have been interested in gardening, having bought a £6 red-handled pruning knife from Wilko as well as flower bulbs after moving into a new one-bedroom flat in Bordon, Hampshire.
The court heard that on the day of the killing, he persistently asked his neighbour for a lift to his mother's flat because of a family emergency, before he is believed to have hitchhiked to her home, arriving at around 4pm.
Sarah Jones said the defendant told police he had drunk a bottle of port before going to his mother's home and "acknowledged that alcohol made him violent and aggressive".
The prosecutor added: "Less than four hours later he had slashed open his mother's throat and inflicted multiple wounds on her.
"Shortly before 8pm he rang 999 and told them repeatedly, 'I've killed my mum, I've killed my mum, I've killed my mum, I killed her'."
The court heard that the defendant had a chaotic family life, had spent time in care and was receiving support from community mental health services.
The prosecutor added while the defendant may suffer from mental health problems, they are "not the cause or a significant contributing factor to his decision to kill".
"Hard though it may be, understandably, for the defendant to now accept, difficult for him though it may be to come to terms with what he did, we say it is regrettably but clearly the case that he murdered his mother."
The trial continues.