A YOUTH who stabbed and battered his alcoholic lesbian mother to death and hid her body in a bedroom cupboard was yesterday sentenced to be detained without limit of time.

Francis Harrison, 16, who was said to have lived like ``a wild animal'', wept silently in the dock and bowed his head as a jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder. The verdict came at the end of a six-day trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Harrison was convicted of punching, kicking, and stamping on his mother and stabbing her repeatedly. At the time he was on bail, appealing against a sentence for a separate offence.

A pathologist had told the court that Eleanor Harrison, 35, was stabbed 24 times and suffered up to 20 severe blows to her body and head which caused severe brain damage.

Her decomposing body was found, three weeks after she was reported missing, in a cupboard at the home in Alexander Avenue, Falkirk, she was sharing with her son at the time. It was under bags of refuse.

Harrison continued to live at home on his own and claimed that his mother had left home with a man named Harry.

Lord Marnoch yesterday told Harrison: ``In light of the jury's verdict, there is only one sentence I can impose. That is that you be detained without limit of time in such a place as the Secretary of State might direct.''

The youth's uncle, Mr Charles Harrison, 35, a postman from Westfield Street, Falkirk, who had given evidence at the trial, said: ``It is a tragic thing to happen to the family. She didn't deserve this terrible death at the hands of her own son. Time is a healer. Maybe in the future I may be able to forgive Francis. But I know I will never be able to forget.''

Mr Harrison had tried to save his nephew from a life of crime by giving him a stable home away from his mother's drunken and tempestuous relationship with a lesbian lover.

Mr Harrison said: ``Francis was no more unruly than other kids his age. He wasn't so disadvantaged. But he did get into bother. Social workers readily agreed to let us foster Francis. And Eleanor was delighted that her son was being cared for by us.''

The youngster stayed out of trouble for 18 months until early this year, when he became involved in car crime.

In February, Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that the owner of a car Harrison had taken clung to the windscreen wipers as he sped off. The youth braked sharply to throw the owner off the bonnet.

He was given three months detention at Polmont Young Offenders' Institution, but appealed against the sentence. He was freed until the High Court rejected his appeal. It was during this period that he committed the murder.

Mr Harrison said: ``I went to visit him in jail. Francis seemed his normal self. He gave no indication at all of the secret he was keeping.

``I just can't understand how anyone could keep a secret like that - especially a boy so young.''

Mr Harrison added that he did not blame council workmen, who boarded up the property, for not noticing the body.

The convicted teenager admitted in the witness-box that he must have killed his alcoholic mother in a drunken brawl at their home. He said his mother had come at him with a knife. But he claimed to have no other memory of the horrific attack and denied murder.

He said that, earlier that day, he and his mother and teenage girls had shared two stolen bottles of vodka. One girl told how Harrison had once lost his temper with his mother and poured a pail of vomit over her head.

Harrison said he could not remember wrapping the body in a duvet and hiding it in a cupboard under black bags of refuse.

He had told the court: ``All I remember is scuffling with my mum on the floor and mum's head took quite a heavy blow on the floor. That is the last I remember.''

He added: ``I still don't think it has sunk into me, the full gravity of the offence and what it will be like in later years.''

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr John Baird had told the court that Harrison had been taken from pillar to post throughout his life.

He was born out of wedlock and later lived in Stranraer with his mother and her husband, who was not his father, and two sons from the marriage.

When the marriage broke up, Harrison went to live with his mother and her lesbian lover in the Falkirk area. He was later taken into care because of violence between his mother and her lover, who were also violent towards him.

During the last three months he lived with his mother in Alexander Avenue. Her lesbian relationship had broken up and she had a severe alcohol problem.

Dr Baird had told the court that Harrison's uncontrolled lifestyle since childhood left him ``feral'' and uncivilised. Harrison had never enjoyed the ``rights of childhood'' during his development, and had an alcohol problem.

He received little or no guidance and had no stable adult in his life. He had a ``love-hate'' relationship with his mother.

Dr Baird said: ``I use the word feral meaning someone without any domestication or civilisation, someone without nurturing.''