A SON has told a murder trial how he talked to his dead mother and then tucked her body up in bed after strangling her.

Paul Stones wept in the witness box at Manchester Crown Court as he described HIS memories of the killing at the Park Terrace, house he shared with his mum, Marian Stones.

Stones told the court how, on the evening of Saturday June 9 last year he and his mother had been drinking wine and, although, he cannot remember, believes their two Bichon Frise dogs escaped and they had to go looking for them.

He added that he believes a row ensued, with his mother blaming him for the pets getting out of the Eagley house.

Stones told the court: “The memories I’ve got of what happened are almost like still photographs.”

He added that he can remember standing in his mother’s bedroom holding her by both wrists and then her upper arms.

“Then I am pushing her onto the bed and kneeling on her upper arms and sat on her chest,” he said.

“Then I have a picture of strangling, with my hands around her throat. I don’t think she was saying anything.”

He added that he knew from her face that she was dead, but he tried to revive her with mouth to mouth resuscitation.

“I sat on the bed and talked to her for a while. I said how sorry I was and I didn’t know why I did it and how much I loved her,” he said, adding that he then moved the body and tucked her up in bed.

Ms Stones, aged 58, lay there whilst her son fell asleep and then the next morning he said he spent time trying to decide whether to kill himself by hanging from a beam in the 300 year-old cottage, distracting himself from making the decision by using his computer to visit his Facebook page, sports websites and checking the National Lottery results.

He added that he eventually decided, for the sake of his young daughter, to hand himself into police instead, saying a final goodbye to his mother and feeding the dogs before driving himself to Scholey Street police station on Sunday afternoon.

Stones, aged 38, admits strangling his mother but denies murder, claiming that his aggression was due to the taking the anti-depressant Sertraline, which he had been prescribed three and a half years earlier.

He told a jury how, a few days before his mother’s death, he had also attacked a group of students in a kebab shop in Bolton after overhearing them make jokes about footballer Fabrice Muamba.

“It was out of character,” he said.

Giving evidence for the defence, clinical pharmacologist Dr Andrew Herxheimer said Sertraline is a member of a group of anti-depressants know as SSRIs and stated that he regards them as being potentially dangerous, having been implicated in other violent acts including mass shootings.

Stones had told the court that he had forgotten to take his Sertraline on two days in the week before the killing and so the day before his mother’s death he had taken a triple dose.

Dr Herxheimer said he concluded that, at the time Stones strangled his mother, he had an “abnormality of mental functioning” caused by the increased level of drug combined with alcohol and his emotional state.

The case continues.