Adelaide Hills man pleads guilty to murdering mother

Bo Sebastian De-Simone was charged with murdering his mother Linda Simon at their Crafers West home after her body was found in a shed on the property in 2022. He has changed his plea from not guilty to guilty while his trial was already underway. What's next? De-Simone will return to the Supreme Court next month for a pre-sentence hearing. An Adelaide Hills man has admitted to murdering his mother despite giving evidence at trial last month claiming it was unintentional and he had been hallucinating "supernatural beings". Bo Sebastian De-Simone, 40, of Crafers West, had been standing trial in South Australia's Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to the murder of his mother Linda Simon, 62, in March 2022. He had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the eve of the trial, but that plea was not accepted by the Director of Public Prosecutions. The court previously heard Ms Simon's body was discovered in a woodshed behind her house on April 1, 2022, and that it was the prosecution's case she had been killed between March 22 and April 1, 2022. Prosecutor Kos Lesses told the court at the start of the trial that the mother and son had a "volatile" relationship that resulted in De-Simone "bashing his mother to death with a wooden axe handle". He added that he hit his mother "on the side of her head" three or four times. However, he claimed it was not an act of murder and that he felt as if he was under attack. "I felt panic that I was under attack … [by supernatural beings]," he said in response to questions put to him by his barrister, Jane Abbey KC. "They had yellow eyes, and they could move their bodies in strange ways," he explained. De-Simone told the court he did not hallucinate that his mother was a supernatural being, rather she was telling them things about him. He told the court the hallucinations had started months before the incident and were consistent with his illicit drug use. In cross-examination, Mr Lesses said the story was untrue and he put to De-Simone instead that he murdered his mother "out of the sheer anger and hatred that [he] harboured towards her". "I didn't hate my mum," De-Simone responded. De-Simone will return to court next month for a pre-sentence hearing. Outside court, a family friend of Ms Simon said she did not see De-Simone's last-minute plea "coming at all". "It's been a long four years and we're just relieved that it's almost over now," she said.