Sentenced: the university manager who strangled her own mother to death

A member of Liverpool University staff has been sentenced after killing her own mother by strangling.

Emma Parr, who worked as a data manager in the Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine department at the uni, has been sentenced to 10 months in jail for throttling her 62 year old mother.

Emma Parr worked at the university

Suffering from severe depression, the 38-year-old daughter had been detained in a psychiatric clinic for nearly six months under the Mental Health Act before being charged with the murder in November.

Police were first alerted when colleagues noticed her mother, Carol Parr, was absent from work.

The victim’s body was found by a relative at her home on Ardrossan Road, Anfield, on June 10 2013. The post-mortem then found she died of neck injuries.

After being tracked down by police on June 10th, she told them she remembered little of what had happened, except ‘disappointment’ that her mother had decided she didn’t want to live with her.

Emma has been sentenced to 10 months in prison

Following an emotional break-up in January 2013, the university manager is also said to have become introspective – and Emma had attempted suicide just weeks earlier.

The Crown Prosecution Service said their relationship had become strained as Parr struggled to cope with her own mental health issues. It’s thought her mother no longer wanted to live with her due to her daughter’s violent outbursts.

Parr’s brother Jason however told the police that his sister and her mother previously had a good relationship. And senior crown prosecutor, Rachel Barber said: “This is a very sad case. They were said to be more like friends than mother and daughter.”

Two days ago she was sentenced to ten months with the judge ruling that she was ‘caring and loving person’ whose actions were “wholly out of character”.

A High Court judge claimed that “mercy rather than retribution was needed”.

Her plea of not guilty was accepted by prosecutors, being sentenced by reason of diminished responsibility at Liverpool Crown Court.