A father accused of murdering his dying son today relived the harrowing moment he smothered the boy with a pillow.

Former SAS soldier Andrew Wragg called his wife to say he was going to "end the boy’s suffering", before placing a pillow over his face, a court heard.

Fighting back tears, Wragg, 38, told how he looked into his son Jacob’s eyes and asked: "Have you had enough son?"

Believing 10-year-old Jacob could not longer recognise him, Wragg killed the youngster and then sat cuddling his lifeless body, Lewes Crown Court heard.

"I looked into his eyes and he just stared at me," Wragg told the jury. "I did not think he was happy. There was nothing left. He was gone."

Wragg denies murdering Jacob, who was suffering with the rare degenerative disease Hunter Syndrome and was not expected to live past his mid teens, on July 24 last year at the family home in Worthing, West Sussex.

But the defendant admits manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, claiming he was suffering an abnormality of mind when he killed Jacob in what he later claimed was a "mercy killing".

Giving evidence of the first time at a retrial in the case, Wragg said he telephoned his wife Mary on the day of Jacob’s death to reveal his intentions to kill the boy.

He said: "I tried to explain what I had seen in his eyes, and that I felt he had come to the end of the road.

"I did not want him to suffer any more. I said that he could not tell us what pain he was in. I said I thought I would go away on holiday and when I came back, take him away with me and stop it. I said I was going to take him away and end his life, not for me or for you but for Jacob."

Mrs Wragg replied: "Why wait", the defendant claimed.

Later that day, Wragg called Mary again, he claimed, to say: "It’s tonight", and to order her to take the couple’s six-year-old son George to her mother’s home in Worthing, which she did.

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