Horace Lorenzo Jones guilty of his mother’s murder after years of abuse

“TO ALL you people out there,” ­Roxane Jones wrote. “Take time to spend with your family - even though they drive us crazy at times - it’s all worth it in the end.” Two years later she was dead.

Why a son killed his mum with a samurai sword

“TO ALL you people out there,” ­Roxane Jones wrote in 2010.

“Take time to spend with your family … even though they drive us crazy at times … it’s all worth it in the end.”

Two years later she was dead.

In a fit of rage, her son had stabbed and slashed at her with a samurai sword and a kitchen knife, slitting her throat and puncturing her heart as she pleaded with him to stop. When she was finally dead, he zip-tied her arms and legs, wrapped her body in plastic and carried her out to the car.

This week, a Supreme Court jury in Rockhampton took just over six hours to find 21-year-old Horace Lorenzo Jones guilty of his mother’s murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison and will spend 15 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole.

It’s a punishment, according to his sister, that does not fit the crime.

“Everything could have been avoided if we weren’t left so helpless,” Matilda Gilbert, 19, told The Sunday Mail.

Horace Jones and Matilda Gilbert.

“I’m not saying what Horace did was right. But we needed help and we didn’t get it.”

Horace, Matilda and their three-year-old brother Angus grew up in Gladstone in a household plagued by domestic violence. Matilda said their mother had often hit them, attacked them with weapons and threatened their little brother.

She said their cries for help were often ignored and many people had turned a blind eye to the violence.

“When I was young, only about four or five, she cooked a pumpkin soup,” Matilda said. “I was sick and I’d vomited into the soup. She was very insistent that I finish it and made me sit there until I had – even though it had vomit in it.

“Horace and I had been in and out of foster care but they kept giving us back to her, saying there’s nothing wrong with her.

“When they did ask us questions, she would be in the room.

Murder victim Roxane Gilbert with daughter Matilda.

“They’d ask ‘does she hit you?’ and we’d look at her terrified, knowing we’d get flogged if we said anything.

“Nobody ever check­ed up on us.

“We always felt so let down. We’d take such a big risk to tell ­anybody and then they wouldn’t do anything to help us.

“People knew. Sometimes people would even see it happening to us.”

Matilda said her mother was an alcoholic with depression and had been diagnosed as bipolar. Her mother didn’t get the help she needed and as a consequence, she and her brothers were left in a violent household.

In June 2012, Roxane came to visit her son in Gladstone.

The torrid visit – which included her calling the police on her son and hanging up on his friends – was to end in her death.

It was her hitting his three-year-old brother that made Horace snap, he told police. Horace claimed in court that his mother had come at him with a knife.

He said he’d taken an ornamental sword from the wall and swung it at her. “Why are you doing this? I’m your mum,” she kept asking him.

Horace had used a steak knife and a samurai sword to stab his mother 25 times. In his police interview, ­Horace told how he had stabbed his mother again when she had moved as he was cleaning up her blood.

He said he had used the sword to pierce her heart. “It’s the sorriest thing I had to do,” he said.