Tearful man’s final plea for killer mum to be freed ahead of landmark case

David Challen made a final plea for his mum to be released ahead of her landmark murder conviction challenge today.

Sally bludgeoned her husband Richard to death with a hammer and was sentenced to life in prison in 2011.

However both of her sons have long campaigned for her release and the Court of Appeal is set to hear a challenge made by Sally, who says she killed her husband after decades of coercive control.

An emotional David appeared on Good Morning Britain today and said that his mum was "looking at her last chance for freedom".

"It’s very hard to describe what it’s like to live in a coercively controlled environment," David said, describing family life as a "toxic environment".

David went on to accuse his dad of being "morally corrupt", which included Richard "fat shaming" her, controlling her finances and cutting the cables of her car to prevent her from leaving.

"A lot of people don’t understand [and think] when you walk away, you walk away," he explained. "She was 15 when she met him… he bred her to be like that, to think that she had to be with him."

Her son said that Sally had "cracked" following the abuse from their father, adding: "It breaks me because we couldn’t see that she was like that."

David insisted that it wouldn’t give people a "licence to kill" if the ruling landed in her favour.

Instead, he said that if the law against psychological abuse, which came in in 2015, had been in place before the killing he said that his dad’s death could have been prevented.

"Our mother deserves a right to her freedom," he said. "She was 15 years old [when she met our dad], she’s never had that right, it was stolen from her. She deserves that right to come out and be free."

"We don’t hate our father, we still love him," he added. "But he chose to live the life that he did and we have to recognise that to understand the events that led to our father’s death."

*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV

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