Kieren Smith To Be Sentenced For Mother Leah Whittle Murder

Teen To Be Sentenced For Killing Mother
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Teen Kieren Smith is set to be sentenced on Tuesday for murdering his mother.

Smith, 17, killed Leah Whittle, 42, at her home in Benville Road, Weymouth, Dorset, on July 21.

A jury found him guilty of murder at Winchester Crown Court on Monday following an eight-day trial and he will be sentenced at the same court later.

The trial heard that Smith repeatedly attacked his mother in the flat they shared.

Richard Smith QC, prosecuting, told the jury that the defendant, who was 16 at the time, had an interest in knives and had a temper but said the reason for the murder would never be known.

The youth had denied the killing and said that men came down from Doncaster, Yorkshire to execute his mother because his brother had got into trouble over a drug debt.

He told friends and the police that he had seen the man or men attack his mother through a bathroom door and when they had left he had bolted the door, taken some money from his mother's purse and escaped through a window and down a drainpipe.

Ms Whittle had moved back to Dorset after living in Yorkshire until her marriage had broken down.

The court heard that her relationship with her son was often less than harmonious but the teenager told police the pair were close.