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A 45-year-old man who strangled his frail mother to death in her East London bedroom before dialling an adult chat service eight times and draining her bank account has received a life sentence at the Old Bailey. Richard Clayton was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Monday, 28 September 2026, to serve a minimum term of 22 years for the murder of 74-year-old Angela Clayton. Daily Dazzling Dawn understands that presiding Old Bailey judge Mr Justice Nigel Lickley KC condemned the killing as a despicable and callous act against a defenceless pensioner inside her home in St George’s Square, Newham, carried out in the early hours of 17 February to maintain unimpeded access to her finances.
Old Bailey proceedings detailed a prolonged pattern of domestic exploitation after Clayton moved into the family property in May 2025 under the guise of assisting with the care of his mother, an esteemed former childminder of 30 years who required formal domiciliary visits twice each day. The Old Bailey heard Clayton was unemployed, reliant on state welfare, and dependent on his mother for financial subsistence. Mrs Clayton’s physical frailty worsened substantially following a severe heart attack in December 2025, which led to the surgical implantation of an internal pacemaker. Legal power of attorney over her personal finances was held exclusively by her daughter, Louise.
Daily Dazzling Dawn learned that during Mrs Clayton’s hospitalisation in January 2026, Clayton secretly pawned several of her possessions to raise cash. The fatal dispute originated on the evening of 16 February, when Louise reviewed her mother’s bank records and discovered suspicious cash withdrawals ranging between £40 and £100. At 8:16 pm, Louise contacted both her mother and Clayton by telephone to question the transactions, and because neither could explain the discrepancies, she arranged an in-person meeting for the following morning.
Crown prosecutor Danny Robinson KC presented security footage to the Old Bailey demonstrating that an unidentified individual visited the front garden of the residence at 8:52 pm on 16 February for a suspected illicit narcotics transaction. Clayton departed the address to conduct another suspected drug purchase in the early hours of 17 February, returning to the house at 2:37 am. Diagnostic data later retrieved from Mrs Clayton’s pacemaker revealed that she died at approximately 2:43 am. A post-mortem examination concluded that the cause of death was manual compression of the neck, and police recovered a phone charger cable lying adjacent to the victim. The prosecution confirmed to the Old Bailey that there was no sexual element to the homicide.
At 2:43 am, the precise minute of his mother’s death, Clayton dialled a premium-rate adult entertainment telephone line that specialised in services involving elderly women and grandmothers. Over the course of the morning, Clayton phoned the adult service seven additional times. Immediately following the assault, he took his mother’s debit card and withdrew £200 from a local automated cash machine, subsequently visiting a commercial petrol station garage to purchase rolling papers, a lighter, and a beverage. Clayton then rendezvoused with an unidentified male on a neighbouring street to secure narcotics before returning to the St George’s Square property at 4:22 am. He engaged in a fourth narcotics transaction at approximately 11:00 am, made his eighth and final call to the adult phone line at 11:19 am, and eventually contacted emergency operators via 999 at 12:36 pm, claiming he had suffered a breakdown and strangled his mother.
Addressing the Old Bailey in a victim impact statement, Louise Clayton described her mother as a fiercely devoted parent whose profound capacity for love had led her to grant Clayton repeated chances he never deserved. She told the court that Clayton had consistently subjected his mother to relentless hardship, manipulation, and theft driven entirely by his own selfishness, adding that even after being remanded in custody, he sent a letter from prison demanding that the family send him £50 because he was desperate.
Mr Justice Lickley rejected defence arguments presented by David Etherington at the Old Bailey that Clayton had complete amnesia regarding the fatal assault. The judge emphasised that Mrs Clayton stood five feet four inches tall and weighed only eight stone, leaving her utterly incapable of defending herself. The Old Bailey heard that Clayton had used cannabis continuously since the age of 14, using funds stolen from his mother to support his dependency. Official records disclosed that Clayton had three previous convictions for cannabis possession between 2003 and 2015, alongside a conviction in 2023 for assaulting an emergency worker. Passing the mandatory life sentence with a 22-year tariff at the Old Bailey, the judge observed that Mrs Clayton would have realised in her final moments that she was dying and that her own son was taking her life.
