Son Pleads Guilty to Killing Mother

Thomas Hayhurst was harangued incessantly by his 74-year-old mother and finally exploded in anger, killing her with crowbar blows to the head after she accused him of stealing her walking stick, his attorney said Tuesday.

“She got in his face and the next thing he knew, he was striking her with the closest thing he could grab--a crowbar,” defense attorney John Jimenez said after his client pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Vista Municipal Court.

Hayhurst, 41, will be sentenced Dec. 28 and faces a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in seven years.

The victim, 74-year-old Violet Hayhurst, was an imperious, stubborn matriarch who ruled with an iron hand and had won the scorn of even some of her closest friends, according to those who knew her and who expressed sympathy for the son after the killing.

Her husband committed suicide in 1987.

Thomas Hayhurst, a slightly built man with his hair in a pony tail, spoke softly Tuesday as he admitted his guilt in Judge Michael Burley’s courtroom.

“Did you intentionally kill Violet Hayhurst without provocation and premeditation?” Jimenez asked his client.

“Yes,” Hayhurst answered.

“How do you plead?” Burley asked.

“Guilty,” Hayhurst replied.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Walden said he accepted the plea from Hayhurst because there was no indication of premeditation on Hayhurst’s part, but said he could not accept a lesser plea, such as manslaughter, because there was no legal provocation for the brutal killing.

Even Walden acknowledged that Violet Hayhurst apparently drove her son to the killing with her “constant diatribes,” but said her temperament “didn’t warrant the death penalty.”

Thomas Hayhurst had most recently lived in Arizona but, after his mother suffered serious injuries in an auto accident last December, moved back home to Escondido so that he could help care for her and his sister, Ann, 30, who has a developmental disability, Jimenez said.

The son lived in his van in the driveway, and was allowed in the home by his mother only to use the bathroom and to have occasional access to the kitchen, Walden said.