{"id":22283,"date":"2026-06-01T04:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/22283\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T04:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:05:15","slug":"adelaide-hills-man-bo-de-simone-pleads-guilty-to-murder-of-mother-linda-simon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/22283\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelaide Hills man Bo De-Simone pleads guilty to murder of mother Linda Simon"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Adelaide Hills man has admitted to murdering his mother despite giving evidence at trial last month claiming it was unintentional and he had been hallucinating “supernatural beings”.<\/p>\n

Bo Sebastian De-Simone, 40, of Crafers West, had been standing trial in South Australia’s Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to the murder of his mother Linda Simon, 62, in March 2022.<\/p>\n

However, on Monday \u2014 just weeks after he denied committing murder<\/a> \u2014 he changed his plea to guilty.<\/p>\n

He had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the eve of the trial, but that plea was not accepted by the Director of Public Prosecutions.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Linda Simon was 62 when she was killed. (Facebook: Adelaide Freedom Rally)<\/p>\n

The court previously heard Ms Simon’s body was discovered in a woodshed behind her house<\/a> on April 1, 2022, and that it was the prosecution’s case she had been killed between March 22 and April 1, 2022.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Kos Lesses told the court at the start of the trial that the mother and son had a “volatile” relationship that resulted in De-Simone “bashing his mother to death with a wooden axe handle”.<\/p>\n

‘Attack’ by supernatural beings<\/p>\n

In his evidence, De-Simone admitted that he “attacked” his mother by hitting her “with a pick[axe] handle”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He added that he hit his mother “on the side of her head” three or four times.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The pickaxe handle that a court was told De-Simone used to kill his mother. (Supplied: Supreme Court of South Australia)<\/p>\n

However, he claimed it was not an act of murder and that he felt as if he was under attack.<\/p>\n

“I felt panic that I was under attack \u2026 [by supernatural beings],” he said in response to questions put to him by his barrister, Jane Abbey KC.<\/p>\n

“They had yellow eyes, and they could move their bodies in strange ways,” he explained.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The house De-Simone and Linda Simon shared in Crafers West. (ABC News: Meagan Dillon)<\/p>\n

De-Simone told the court he did not hallucinate that his mother was a supernatural being, rather she was telling them things about him.<\/p>\n

He told the court the hallucinations had started months before the incident and were consistent with his illicit drug use.<\/p>\n

In cross-examination, Mr Lesses said the story was untrue and he put to De-Simone instead that he murdered his mother “out of the sheer anger and hatred that [he] harboured towards her”.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t hate my mum,” De-Simone responded.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A family friend (right) of Linda Simon was shocked at the plea. (ABC News: Eva Blandis)<\/p>\n

De-Simone will return to court next month for a pre-sentence hearing.<\/p>\n

Outside court, a family friend of Ms Simon said she did not see De-Simone’s last-minute plea “coming at all”.<\/p>\n

“It’s been a long four years and we’re just relieved that it’s almost over now,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Adelaide Hills man has admitted to murdering his mother despite giving evidence at trial last month claiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[395,1693,10376,21118,10370,10372,17616,8672,21120,10371,2770,21119,19794,21122,8961,21121],"class_list":["post-22283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adelaide","tag-adelaide","tag-adelaide-hills","tag-bashing","tag-bo-de-simone","tag-bo-sebastian-de-simone","tag-crafers-west","tag-dpp","tag-drugs","tag-jane-abbey","tag-linda-simon","tag-murder","tag-pick-axe","tag-plea","tag-supernatural","tag-supreme-court","tag-weapon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}