STONES went home to live with his mother following a series of failed relationships and after he lost his job as a hotel manager when he was convicted of drink driving.

He said Ms Stones was his “best friend” but the pair often argued.

During Stones’ murder trial the jury heard how his mother did not like people “drinking excessively” because of experiences she had in previous relationships.

Ms Stones called police were called in June 2007 when she claimed her son had punched her.

But she did not want to press charges and Stones insisted the assault did not happen, saying it was merely an argument.

The jury heard Ms Stones “knew which buttons to press” with her son and would call him a bad father and a failure.

Stones’ father had separated from his mother when he was a baby.

But the murderer continued to see his father until he was about five years old.

He told the court he remembers watching Bullseye with his father on Sunday afternoons.

Stones has a half sister and a half brother to his father, who he only got to know recently.

In school he worked hard, achieving A to C grades in his GCSEs and took A Levels in English and business studies.

But did not achieve the grades he had hoped and got a job.

He had had paper rounds from a young age and later worked at The Last Drop in Hospital Road, Bromley Cross, where he decided he wanted a career in the hotel business after undergoing a management scheme.

Aged 23 he travelled to Spain with a friend, who had bought a bar, but returned when it did not succeed.

Stones worked in pubs and hotels before settling at a Holmes Chapel hotel, where he earned a good wage.

Ms Stones enjoyed property developing and her son helped with the hobby.

The mother and son would buy run down homes and give them a revamp, occasionally increasing the number of bedrooms or sprucing up the gardens.

Stones enjoyed DIY and after losing his job in 2008 because of a drink driving conviction he set up the business, Eye for Detail.

He carried out work for family friends and more recently for his daughter’s childminder, where he decorated a boy’s bedroom.

Stones met Claire Nicholls, a conveyancing clerk, online in 2006 but they separated in November 2007, months after his daughter was born.

The breakdown in the relationship followed an incident at the family home in Turton where Ms Nicholls claimed he grabbed her by the throat.

He left the house and phoned police when he thought officers were on their way to his mother’s home to arrest him.

Stones received a police caution for the assault.

He had joint custody of his daughter with his former partner and his mother helped him to care for her when she came to visit and would take the girl back to her mother’s home.

The girl, now aged five, had spent the day with her father and grandmother on the day of the murder.

Before to the relationship with Ms Nicholls, Stones had been married for just a few months months to Emma Hindsley, a woman he worked with at a hotel in Nottingham. They got engaged after a whirlwind romance then tied the knot two years later in September 2004.

He said he felt “nagged” in the relationship but told the jury of eight men and four women that he continued to get on well with his estranged wife following their separation and they went on holiday to Mexico with her parents as “friends”.

They separated following a drink fuelled incident on New Year’s Eve 2004.

When Ms Hindsley had gone to bed Stones was told that her ex boyfriend had been on her hen party.

He was angry and kicked and punched his wife in their bedroom. She fell between the bed and the wall.

Whilst giving evidence Stones said what his then wife had said was true as she would not lie.

The court heard she had tried to make contact with him whilst he was in custody on suspicion of his mother’s murder to say she was “there for him if he needed”.

Stones had two convictions for drink driving, one in 2001 and one in 2007.

He had a history of depression and had made numerous suicide attempts.

Stones told the court how he had taken around eight overdoses, one after the alleged attack on his mother in 2003. And he told the jury he considered hanging himself after killing his mother.

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