Woman on trial describes moment she shot her mother

A woman has described the moment she shot her mother. She says it happened after she was told she had been an unwanted child.

Susan Edwards - along with her husband Christopher - is accused of killing her parents and burying their bodies in the back garden of their house in Mansfield. They deny murder.

She told Nottingham Crown Court that she went into a bedroom at her parents' house after hearing a loud noise when she was staying there one bank holiday in 1998. She said her father was lying on the floor and her mother was standing with a gun in her hand.

Her mother - Patricia Wycherley - threw the gun on the bed and Susan Edwards picked it up, the court heard. Susan Edwards then described how her mother told her she she was an unwanted child and and that she and her husband has both wanted her to have an abortion.

Susan Edwards told the court:

"She said I was an unwanted child, she wanted an abortion, they both wanted an abortion.

She told me she knew that my father abused me. At some point she threw the gun on the bed.

I picked it up.

She kept going on an on and I asked her to stop saying these things.

I asked her, please stop saying these things, will you go away. She didn't. She kept on and on."

Her mother also told her that she had slept with her husband, Christopher.

Susan Edwards said she pulled the trigger more than once.

She said she dragged the bodies under the bed and covered them with a duvet.

Later she wrapped the gun and bullet casings in a towel, put it in two plastic bags and then put it in the emptiest bin she could find, she said.

She also went to her mother's bank and withdrew about £40,000 pounds in cash and cheques. She said she also did a money transfer by using a signed letter of authorisation she had received from her mother who had told she she wanted her to have her money.

Later that day she says she caught a coach back home to London.