Andrew Cane says he adored the mother he strangled and killed. Tragically, his love for cocaine ended up being even stronger.
The 31-year-old's family had done all they could to help him beat his addiction to the drug but its grip proved too strong and led to the explosion of violence that claimed his mother Linda Sheard's life.
Cane came from a supportive, middle class family. His father Michael was a retired police officer and his 63-year-old mother worked as an administrator at a roofing firm in Exmouth where she persuaded the boss to give him a job.
His cocaine habit was no secret. He had been struggling with it for years with the help of his family and the irony of the killing is that it happened at the moment when it looked as if he was winning the battle.
He received more than moral support from his family. An uncle left him £212,000 and his mother remortgaged her home for £50,000 so she could loan him a further £60,000, some of which he needed to pay off drug debts.
Cane went back to live with his mother after splitting up with his latest partner. In the past decade he had a series of relationships and had three children by different mothers.
One of the reasons he moved into the spare room at her house in Port Mer Close, Exmouth, was so she could help him in his continuing struggle to stay away from cocaine.
He began using the drug several years earlier and it contributed to the break up of his relationship with his partner. He claimed he started taking it to suppress the effects of childhood sexual abuse and told drugs workers it helped him cope with stress, anxiety and depression.
Both his parents had a zero tolerance attitude towards drugs and his mother had told him that he had exhausted his chances. The next time he took cocaine he would be out on the street.
Drugs counsellors who acted as his mentor at the local branch of Narcotics Anonymous thought he was doing well until days before the killing.
His mother had gone on a cruise the week before she died and he moved in with his sister Sally for a brief while, but the change in his routine put pressure on him and he succumbed to his old addiction.
On the night of the killing he had been to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting at which he discussed his urge to take drugs again.
Fellow members thought they had given him the courage to carry on his battle but in reality he must have gone straight out and scored drugs.
He returned home and took them. Sometime after midnight his mother found evidence of what he had done and the furious row that followed led to her death.
Cane said he left his room armed with a canvas Quiksilver belt because he thought he heard intruders outside and that when he came back his mother had got up, looked in his room, and seen the empty wrap on his cupboard.
He insisted he could not remember the exact details of the final struggle but said his mother must have suffered two broken ribs when she fell onto a dressing table.
He said he had no intention of tightening the belt around her neck, but neighbour Darren Lock, who removed it when the body was found the next day, said it was wound tight through the buckles, and the end tucked in.
The physical struggle was always going to be one sided because she was five inches smaller than him and he was a powerfully built six foot tall manual labourer who lifted weights in the gym in his spare time.
His behaviour in the hours after the killing revealed how desperately he was in the grip of his addiction.
He left his mother dead or dying on the floor of her bedroom. He said he was sure she was still alive and coughing but a pathologist said this was highly unlikely.
He took her purse, rang for a cab, and was taken straight to a cashpoint at a Tesco Metro shop where he withdrew £200 which he spent on drugs.
After an all night cocaine spree with two friends he returned home, turned over the body of his mother, arranged her hands across her chest, took her car keys and went on the run.
He was finally caught after being traced to Gloucester by texts to his family in Exmouth in which he boasted he was too clever to be traced by the police.
His behaviour on his arrest was bizarre, laughing and joking with the woman police officer who picked him up and confessing to a custody officer 'it was just a drug fuelled rage'.
Cane's father, a former Devon and Cornwall police officer, blamed his addiction to cocaine for the tragedy.
He told the jury: "Andrew absolutely adored his mother. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind there is no way he would have done this if he had not been under the influence of drink or drugs.
"Anyone who knows him would tell you the same. When he was not on drink or drugs he was a different type of person.
"I knew she had lent him money but I did not know how much. To be honest I thought she was a fool to lend him so much. If I had known it was £60,000 I would have said something to both of them. It was absolutely ludicrous.
"I know she would never have lent him money to buy drugs. She absolutely abhorred them. She told him never to bring them into her house.
"We were both trying to find a way to help him get away from drugs but she went on a cruise and this happened when she came back.
"If she saw him with drugs in the house she would have told him to leave. She said if he ever messed with drugs in her house she would be out. She would have told him that in no uncertain terms."
