Son murdered his mum on Mother's Day before chopping her up and setting her corpse on fire
A mother, who was said to have loved her son "unconditionally", was murderedby him in a gruesome Mother's Day killing.
Her remains were then dismembered by her own son and then set on fire as he desperately tried to cover his tracks.
Police in Hartford, Alabama, received a call reporting a burnt-out vehicle was sitting along the river, just two days after Mother's Day in 2019. When the sheriff's deputy got there, the carwas almost destroyed, and yet they uncovered human remains inside of it.
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Those remains belonged to Penny Wilson Newton, who was just 56 and the mother of 36-year-old Chad Brogdon. Friends of Penny told the jury during the trial that followed that she was a "well-loved" woman who "had fun with her life", and yet all of that was taken from her.
On the same day the call was made, Brogdon was seen coming out of the woodland area close to an elderly couple's home. This was the spot in which he had claimed to have been assaulted and left without his truck.
The following day, police identified her son as a person of interest relating to the crime when a deputy spotted burns on his body. This, paired with the smell of smoke on him and boots with prints that matched those on the crime scene, made him a prime suspect.
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When officers searched his home, they found a carpet taken up from one of the rooms and rope that matched the same type found at the scene. But the real cherry on top of the horrors was the traces of blood found in his freezers.
He was later charged with murder and abuse of a corpse. It's believed that Bridgon killed his mother on Mother's Day before driving up to 20 miles away and dumping the vehicle, with her remains inside.
Then, they think he set the car on fire in an attempt to destroy the evidence - and yet he seemed to forget about the small details which led the police right to him.
It wasn't until 2022 Brodgon was finally convicted of his mother’s murder and sentenced to life behind bars. Meanwhile, he claimed he was innocent from the very start of the trial, and his motive behind the brutal murder of his own mother remains unclear.
The prosecution's argument ended by saying: "We know whose hands she was killed by, and those hands are Chad Brogdon’s." It took just one hour of deliberation by the jury before they decided that he was guilty of the murder - the decision was unanimous.
An obituary website states: "Penny Newton was born in Pelham, Alabama, and lived on Panama City Beach before moving to Level Plains. She was preceded in death by her father, Allen Wilson; her mother, Betty Jean Blankenship Halstead, and a son, Adam Brogdon."