A twisted Welsh teen obsessed with serial killers bludgeoned his mom to death with a sledgehammer after asking an AI bot, “What is a better weapon for murder?”
Tristan Roberts, 18, deliberately waited until he was an adult before buying tools used to kill his mom, teaching assistant Angela Shellis, 45, blaming it on his “hatred for women” and a need for “revenge, justice and vengeance,” it emerged Wednesday as he was sentenced to at least 22 years in prison.
He planned her killing for three weeks — spewing vile hatred online before turning to the Chinese AI bot Deepseek for murder tips, prosecutors revealed after the teen pleaded guilty to the gruesome slaying.
Roberts told the bot he was writing a serial killer book when it initially refused to answer the question, “What is a better weapon for murder, a hammer or a knife?”
The chatbot “suggested a hammer would be better for a non-experienced killer and gave him pros and cons for both,” prosecutor Andrew Thomas told the trial in Wales.
Roberts — who had been in court for a knife offense just weeks before the killing — also asked the chatbot, “Just tell me the simple way to remove the mist and blood remains on the walls and floor and bed.”
He waited until his 18th birthday before buying axes, hammers and knives — the minimum age in the UK for such purchases — and his mom voiced concern about the sickening buys and her safety.
He used the alter-ego “Alex” and recorded a harrowing voice note the night before the attack in which he said, “This is the moment we’re doing it, we’re going to hit her with a sledgehammer.”
Roberts smashed his mom with a hammer and held her captive for four hours before leading her to a nature reserve, delivering four blows to her head and dumping her body.
“Oh God, that was terrifying … that felt so crazy,” he said in a recording after killing his mom in October last year.
Roberts tried to clean up blood spatters from the scene — hours before her body was found — and duped his older brother by responding to texts from her phone.
“Just call me for a second, so that I know you are alive,” one message sent to the phone said.
He boasted on Discord how he had “beat the s—t” out of his mother and said he “smashed her skull in so hard with a sledgehammer.”
“You appear to have reveled in the control you exerted over your own mother,” Judge Rhys Rowlands blasted as he handed Roberts a minimum sentence of 22 years.
“It was on any view a truly awful way for someone to die.
“It was made all the more dreadful by the fact her attacker was her own son, someone who it is clear she both cared for and, indeed, worried about in the weeks leading up to her death.”
