KEY POINTS:
When Donna first heard the news about a boy killed in a prison van after a "tough love" measure by his parents, she sympathised after having once done the same for her troubled son.
Then Donna (not her real name) found out that her son was Liam's killer.
"When I saw it on TV, it just clicked with me straight away. I'd done that when [name suppressed] was younger. He'd got in trouble. I'd told the police to keep him in there. You want them to see what it's like and not do it again."
It was some time later that her son called from prison to reveal he was the killer.
"I had sympathy for the boy's mother when I heard about it, long before I knew [name suppressed] had done it. I had sympathy because I'd been there."
The killer pleaded guilty to the murder in the Auckland District Court on Thursday.
He had strangled Liam and tried to break his neck before stomping on him in a 15-minute attack in the back of a Chubb Security van.
A District Court order suppresses his name and any identifying details because he faces trial on another serious charge, while a High Court order suppresses the background details of that crime.
Donna said she was still trying to accept that her son had committed such a heinous crime.
She had summoned her nerve to attend the court appearance, and sat quietly at the back, standing at one point so the killer knew she was there.
She was reluctant to discuss the family's past, fearing that it would come across as making excuses.
But just as Liam Ashley's offending had started against his mother Lorraine, Donna said she could remember her son stealing her car. And she could remember out-of-control teenage years where she felt she could not get appropriate help, much as the Ashleys struggled to get help for their son who suffered from attention deficit disorder.
Donna said she had raised the killer mainly as a solo mother after his body-builder father left her.
She said the father of the killer now worked escorting prisoners in Australia. She had told him of the murder charge but he did not want to come back and help.
Her son's behaviour in his teenage years ranged from dropping out of school to shoplifting and a string of petty crimes.
She said: "They were just little things, but enough to make a mum go crazy."
She said she had a lot of support from her wider family and "I did everything I could as a solo mother."
When the killer was in his late teens he committed a home invasion robbery of an old woman that led to him receiving a seven-year sentence. By that stage he had almost 70 convictions.
Since then he has spent only three weeks out of prison or psychiatric care.
Donna questioned the actions of Chubb and Corrections. "I am in no way making excuses for what he did, but why did they put this boy in with him?
"It is like putting a bag of money in front of a robber and saying 'I dare you'."
