Church Musical Director Bashes Mother To Death With A Hammer...And Gets Away With It

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Son Found Guilty And Cleared Of Mother's Murder

Australia - A Church musical director who bashed his allegedly obsessive and controlling mother to death with a hammer wept in the Supreme Court dock after being found guilty of manslaughter.

Simon Alan Randall, 27, gasped, looked at the courtroom ceiling, then slumped in the dock as the jurors delivered their verdict. They had deliberated for about a day.

Randall pleaded not guilty to murdering 62-year-old widowed librarian Susan Randall in the kitchen of their home at Jack Road, Cheltenham on September 27, 2005.

Today's verdict meant that it can be revealed psychiatrist Jerry Gelb, accused of taking a loaded firearm into the Melbourne Magistrates Court earlier this month, was to have been an expert witness in the trial.

Gelb, 49, was not called to give evidence, but Justice Simon Whelan made a temporary suppression order until verdict preventing reports of his potential role in the Randall proceedings.

Justice Simon Whelan remanded Randall for pre-sentence submissions.

In his opening address, prosecutor Michael Tinney said Randall hit his defenseless mother repeatedly in the head with a claw hammer, then told emergency services he "snapped" after letting her know that he had stopped going to university.

Mr Tinney said Randall told police he had been deceiving his mother about attending the Australian Catholic University and had argued with her about his weight gain.

According to Randall's account, Mrs Randall said, "That's pathetic" when he told her he was not attending his music course at the Australian Catholic University.

"She was at the sink, she was making a sandwich or some such thing when ultimately she was struck, and she was heard to be muttering, "Pathetic ... giving up on your future," Mr Tinney said.

But defense counsel Jane Dixon, SC, said the police interview showed only the "tip of the iceberg" about the relationship.

She said he was a quiet, subdued, controlled person who beat his mother with the hammer and his fists in an outpouring of rage.

She said Randall was controlled, while his mother became interfering and smothering.

"The net effect was … that her (then) 26-year-old son was forced backwards in time to childhood day by day," Ms Dixon said. "The control valve blew off."

Ms Dixon said Randall relied on the defense of provocation to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. The killing occurred before legal changes that now prevent the defense being used in Victoria.

In her opening remarks, Ms Dixon said Randall was living with his mother in barely habitable conditions while recovering from testicular cancer surgery.

She said his room was a topsy-turvey child's bedroom, with lions and clowns and "kinder" drawings on the walls. She said Mrs Randall kept him under absolute control, and forced him back to childhood, day by day.

Randall gave evidence that Mrs Randall told him when to go to bed at night, discouraged friends from coming to the house, controlled his diet, demanded telephone calls from him several times a day at university and, at one stage, edited his assignments before they were submitted.

He said she gave him specific chores at home, but did not trust him with home maintenance tasks.

Randall told the jury he had a "red haze" in front of his face when he bashed his mother. He said he rolled Mrs Randall over after she fell to the kitchen floor, then began hitting her on the back of the head.

He told Ms Dixon that he had been unable to see a way of leaving home.

He said his mother would always tell him that he had to repay all the money she had spent on him since the death of his father, a former British serviceman.