‘I would not have helped Mum to die – I miss her’
AWOMAN accused of helping her son murder her mother said she would never have helped her die – even if the older woman had asked her to.
Penelope John, on trial alongside her son, former soldier Barry Rogers, for the murder of Betty Guy, told a jury she had had a good relationship with her mother and found life without her “very difficult”.
Giving evidence at Swansea Crown Court yesterday, John, 50, of St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire, described how she woke up in Mrs Guy’s house in the early hours of November 7, 2011, to find her mother was dead.
Asked by her barrister, Nadine Radford QC, if she would have helped Mrs Guy end her life if she had been asked, she said: “I would not have done that – why would I?”
John is accused of feeding her mother a cocktail of crushed tablets and alcohol before Rogers, of Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, allegedly killed her, probably by smothering her with an object at her home in Johnston, Pembrokeshire.
Both John and Rogers, 33, deny murder and the alternative charge of manslaughter.
Doctors initially thought Mrs Guy died of natural causes but the pair came under suspicion four years later after an ex-partner of Rogers told police he said he had killed his grandmother by putting a pillow over her face and that his mother had given her drugs and whiskey.
“I wanted my mum as long as I could keep her alive,” said John.
“I did my best to keep her going. Why would I end her life, even if she asked me to, why?”
John said her son was “very volatile” and angry but this had escalated after he returned from serving in Iraq.
“I’m quite scared of Barry,” she said.
“Barry apes his father, he has seen a lot of the way his father has treated me. Barry can be quite manipulative and I am quite scared of Barry so I don’t like to upset him.”
John said she met Rogers’ father when she was 16 and they married the following year after Rogers was born. She said the marriage had not been a happy one and she had suffered physical and mental abuse which resulted in her being diagnosed with PTSD and suffering from an eating disorder.
John said her mother helped her after she ended the relationship and they had a “good” relationship.
She said she spent every weekend with Mrs Guy and saw her two to three times in the week.
Mrs Guy believed she had cancer, John added.
She said she took Mrs Guy to a doctor’s appointment on the Friday before she died and her mother became upset and said she wanted to go home alone rather than spending the weekend together.
John said she drove straight to Johnston on the Sunday night after receiving a call from her mother’s friend.
Mrs Guy had a “very bad cough” and was very down but they spent some time giggling, chatting and drinking cups of tea, she added.
John said Mrs Guy asked for Rogers, so she rang him, but did not expect him to come and went to bed at 1am.
She said she woke to go to the toilet and discovered her mother dead just as Rogers was knocking on the door.
John said the funeral, which took place four days later, “wasn’t rushed at all” and that her mother had arranged it in advance.
Of the police investigation, she said: “I was devastated they could think I could murder my mother.”
John told jurors she had considered killing herself if anything happened to her mother.
She said she did not consider her mother a burden, there “wasn’t a fortune” in inheritance and she did not need money at the time.
The trial continues.