18-Year-Old Arrested at Home After Allegedly Killing His Mother

This was the moment 18-year-old Tristan Roberts remained eerily calm while being arrested for murdering his mother, just hours after dog walkers discovered her body hidden in undergrowth.

Roberts, from Prestatyn in North Wales, was handcuffed outside his home after Angela Shellis, 45, was found dead at Morfa Nature Park.

The teenager, who was described as hating women and being obsessed with violence, beat his teaching assistant mother to death in a planned hammer attack in October last year.

He held Ms Shellis captive in her bedroom and recorded her four-hour ordeal before luring her into isolated woodland, claiming he was giving her the opportunity to seek help.

Instead, Roberts inflicted the fatal injuries and abandoned her body in the nature reserve. He then returned home at around 6.30am, where North Wales Police later arrested him.

Footage of the arrest, which took place at 1.20pm, features in a new episode of the Channel 4 documentary 999: What Happened Next, broadcast on Mondays at 9pm.

The programme examines the evidence that led to Roberts’ arrest and his eventual sentence of at least 22 and a half years at Mold Crown Court in March.

A clip shared with the Daily Mail shows officers ordering Roberts to “turn around and face the wall” before telling him to put down the water bottle he was carrying.

An officer tells Roberts, “Just going to put you in handcuffs for now, okay? Have you got anything on you?” Roberts replies, “No. Am I detained or arrested?”

Another officer then says: “All in order at the moment, Tristan came to the door and he came out, so we’ll wait for other officers to get here before we go into the address.”

Detective Constable Claire Owen, who worked on the case, recalled the arrest in the documentary. She said: “He came out of the house calmly.

“He allowed himself to be handcuffed. Potentially we thought he may have been in shock or very young and didn’t understand what was going on.”

DC Owen said Roberts then asked officers: “Is the body that’s been found my mum?”

She added: “His reaction just seemed very at odds with what you would expect with an 18-year-old who had just been arrested for murder.”

The investigation began at around 8.30am, when a dog walker called 999 to report finding a woman’s body in undergrowth, along with a substantial trail of blood on a gravel path.

Detectives secured the area and deployed drones. They also recovered a crutch, a balaclava and a pair of black gloves, although officers did not yet know the victim’s identity.

Shortly after 1pm, police received another call from a relative of Ms Shellis, who had become concerned about both her and Roberts after he barricaded himself inside the house.

Police were told Ms Shellis had been using a crutch because of a knee injury – and headed to the home, by which time family members had managed to get inside.

During that period officers also obtained CCTV of Roberts and Ms Shellis leaving the home at 3.20am, with Roberts carrying a rucksack and Ms Shellis with a crutch.

Police thought this was significant enough to arrest Roberts, which they did – and detectives then worked to establish his exact movements.

DC Owen said: ‘We had to keep an open mind as to who committed this offence. We strongly suspected Tristan at that point, but equally it’s possible that he’d left Angela in the nature reserve and someone else had done this.’

Detective Superintendent Andy Gibson, the senior investigating officer, added: ‘So at this point in time we’ve got CCTV evidence of Tristan’s movements.

‘But we still need to fill evidential gaps. Was he responsible for the murder of his mother? What was the motivation in terms of that murder?’

Investigators then found footage of the mother and son going over the local railway crossing, heading towards the Morfa site – before Roberts returned to the home.

Soon after that Roberts left the home alone again, following the same direction but this time carrying a bag – believed to have bleach and other fluids to forensically clean the scene.

In the months before the murder, Roberts – who was diagnosed with autism and ADHD – had boasted online about his intention to kill.

He also discussed being motivated by a ‘hatred of women’, writing: ‘I do hate girls, are you OK with that?’ 

An AI tool advised him that a hammer would be the best murder weapon for ‘a non-experienced killer’, and also provided help on how to clean up after the killing.

Roberts’s older brother Ethan had even texted his mother when she failed to answer the phone on the day of her murder, asking: ‘Just call me for a second – so that I know you are alive.’

Roberts posed as her, replying: ‘I think I am alive [laughing emoji]’.

After killing Ms Shellis, Roberts posted online: ‘I’ve just had the craziest day’, adding that he had ‘beat the s*** out of her’ and ‘smashed her skull in so hard with a sledgehammer’.

On the day of the arrest, a family liaison officer – who cannot be named for police operational reasons – was assigned to support relatives of Ms Shellis.

This officer told the documentary: ‘Angela was a mother, a daughter herself, she was one of three siblings and she was part of what was a really close family who chose to spend a lot of time together.

‘She absolutely worshipped both of her sons and did above and beyond what anyone would do for them. She was known as kind and sweet and a lovely person and they all knew each other very well and they all knew Tristan very well.

‘They all knew the battle Angela was manning to try and make sure that he got the right support and that he took that support – but there was a deterioration in his behaviour.’

Ms Shellis’s sister Sarah Gunther said in court that she wanted her to be remembered as ‘a mum who never gave up, no matter what life threw at her’, adding that the family had ‘fought so hard’ in an attempt to get Roberts ‘the help you needed’.

‘999: What Happened Next’ airs on Channel 4 on Mondays at 9pm