The son of a Camden Council accountant has been convicted of killing her at their home while suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Nigerian-born Emmanuel Kalejaiye, 21, denied murder but was found guilty by a jury of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after five and a half hours’ deliberation last Wednesday.

Christian single mother Tolu Kalejaiye, 44, who worked as an agency employee at the council, suffered 40 wounds and died from blood loss when two arteries in her neck were severed as she was about to go to work on September 26 last year.

Kalejaiye, who had been studying molecular medicine and biochemistry at the University of Essex, claimed five masked men broke into their home in Wethersfield Way, Wickford, Essex, and killed his mother as they forced him to stab her.

He also ran a separate, partial, defence of diminished responsibility because he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and had a depressive disorder at the time.

The prosecution alleged that Kalejaiye disliked his mother, who was described during his trial at Chelmsford Crown Court as strict, stubborn and with an explosive temper, and that he “meticulously” planned to kill her.

The jury heard in the weeks before her death he bought several pairs of rubber gloves, knives, a pink woman’s tracksuit, a beanie hat and a snood.

He laid cardboard and plastic down on the floors of their modern detached house and wore the pink outfit to move his mother’s silver Mercedes car to deceive neighbours that she had left for work, the jury was told.

Notes were found in a locked suitcase in the defendant’s bedroom in his handwriting detailing a “murder plan”, which included learning to walk in high heels.

But Kalejaiye was unaware that his mother had rung her boyfriend, married man Leo Shogunle, and the chilling last four minutes of her life were captured on a voicemail.

She was recorded as she screamed: “Help me, oh don’t kill me. I’m not worth killing. Talk to me. Go now. I beg you in the name of Jesus. Help. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus.”

Kalejaiye called police after the killing and told them: “I admit killing mum by stabbing her because she subjected me to a lifetime of mental and physical abuse.

“I couldn’t stand it any longer. I believe she manipulated and brainwashed me and she used the Bible to rationalise what she did to me.”

Defence expert, psychiatrist Dr Gary Jackson, told the court Kalejaiye’s paranoid schizophrenia led to irrational thoughts, action and judgement.

Judge Christopher Ball QC adjourned sentencing until June, saying he wanted a psychiatric assessment on whether Kalejaiye represented a danger to the public because of his mental condition.