Angela Shellis, 45, spent the final weeks of her life recording her growing sense of terror on her phone, after her 18-year-old son started acting increasingly disturbed
Angela Shellis spent her final days documenting her growing fears in her phone’s notes app as she watched her 18-year-old son spiral into a dark and dangerous world. The 45-year-old had become increasingly terrified by Tristan Robert’s behaviour, particularly after discovering he had purchased a knife from The Range and a hammer from Amazon – which he later used in his attack on her.
“Why?? What does he need these for? Is he planning to hurt me, himself, what?”, she wrote in one entry, adding: “Who? Why? FFS.” Her fears intensified just days before the fatal attack, when she noted how her son had kept entering her room at night: “OMG… I did not sleep well at all… and Tristan kept coming into my room too – why? Am I safe in my room tonight?”
Unbeknownst to Angela, the teen was already using the messaging app Discord to share his violent fantasies, even claiming at one point that he’d stood over his mum with a hammer while she slept.
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Obsessed with serial killers and fictional psychopaths like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and TV character Dexter, Roberts used the platform to vent about his hatred of women. His twisted musings culminated in a horrendous attack in October, where he tortured his own mother for four hours – a tragedy that was foreshadowed by the very fears Angela had recorded on her phone.
Angela’s elder son, Ethan, who was university, was likewise apprehensive about his younger brother’s activities, to the extent that he installed wireless cameras within the family residence. Roberts made no attempt to hide his murderous intentions, with his posts becoming increasingly explicit in the run-up to the killing of “respected teacher” Angela, remembered by loved ones as “a mum who never gave up” despite her son’s concerning and often disruptive behaviour.
In one chilling boast, Roberts, who has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, told other users: “I can kill her bare-handed. I only want to make it brutal and make sure I don’t mess up with an axe.”
As would later be revealed in court, Roberts’ horrifying plans for “revenge” against his mother – who had cared so deeply for her two sons – began at least three weeks before the attack. After consulting an AI chatbot for advice on what weapons a “non-experienced” killer might use, and cunningly pretending to be penning a novel when his enquiries were rebuffed.
Tragically, by this point, Roberts’ sinister scheme was already in motion, and on 23 October last year, he enacted his warped fantasies. He meticulously recorded what he perceived as his “revenge”, using a dictaphone to capture every moment from the initial attack to the lethal blows, in an audio file later deemed “too distressing to play” in court.
Angela, hampered by a leg injury and reliant on crutches, was particularly vulnerable as Roberts initiated his assault at their family home in Prestatyn. The four-hour nightmare commenced around 11pm.
Roberts attacked Angela with a hammer and strangled her, declaring in the recording: “This is the moment – we are doing it – we are going to hit her with a sledgehammer.” Angela’s pleas for Roberts to dial 999 can be heard, but he showed no compassion.
In the early hours of October 24, around 3.30 am, Roberts led Angela to the local Morfa nature reserve, guiding her through a residential area and across a railway line. Upon reaching a secluded spot, Roberts instructed Angela to sit on a bench. It was at this point that the twisted teen began adopting an American accent, thought to be part of some perverse role play.
Angela begged her son for mercy, while he heartlessly continued to record her anguish. Eventually, her pleas ceased as Roberts struck a deadly hammer blow to her head. One strike fractured the side of Angela’s skull, while others inflicted soft tissue damage. Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers would later conclude that Angela’s death resulted from severe blunt force trauma.
As the recording persisted after Angela’s demise, Roberts remarked: “Oh god, that was terrifying – that felt so crazy” before moaning about his hand hurting and suspecting it was broken. Proclaiming, “I just killed her” he added, “job’s done”. After dragging his mother 100 metres into the undergrowth, Roberts abandoned her there, making weak attempts to conceal his actions by sending messages in her name.
Upon returning home, Roberts once again logged into Discord under the username ‘tonight’s the night’, where he boasted about the murder in graphic detail: “Just had the craziest day ever – beat the s*** out of her. Took her to the forest. She kept chatting s*** so smashed her skull in so hard with sledgehammer I couldn’t see her face anymore. Took her by ankles and took her into deep forest.”
Angela’s body was found later that same day in the undergrowth next to a footpath, while Roberts was “quickly identified as a suspect”. He was subsequently arrested at his home address, where he resided with his mother, and charged with murder four days later. Last month, Roberts pleaded guilty to murder when he appeared before Mold Crown Court.
This week, His Honour Judge Rowlands sentenced Roberts at Mold Crown Court, noting that the defendant may have taken the recording as some sort of twisted trophy, and commented that it was a “truly awful way for anyone to die”.
He told Roberts: “This fortunately, is an extremely unusual case, in as much as it is clear to me that you both looked forward to inflicting pain and ultimately death upon your mother and that, in recording what you did on a dictaphone over several hours, you enjoyed what you were doing, exercising control over you mother in her last hours, no doubt revelling in what you did as you attacked her, ignoring her pleas for you to stop and to obtain assistance. She must have been truly terrified in these the last minutes of her life.”
In a note penned on his laptop just a week prior to murdering his mother, Roberts detailed his twisted longing for “vengeance”, declaring he was “not Tristan Roberts, but Alex”.
Engulfed in self-pity, he described his “entire life” as “a s***show of f****** hell, just hell, abandonment, betrayal, bullied, nearly froze to death, physical effort, suffering,” according to the Daily Mail.
“All of it and most caused by one person, and not myself. And now that one person, not out of sadistic pleasure or malice, but out of revenge, justice, vengeance and… to move forwards in life, I must take the weight off my back. Even if it hurts. There is no use living anymore if I don’t do this. I am already dead.”
Yet beyond the teenager’s disturbing fantasies, it was evident that Angela adored her sons. “Home is where my boys are,” one of her social media posts read.
“I will never understand how some parents live every day knowing they have a child out there they rarely bother about and just get on with their life without a care in the world.”
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