Chris Simpson told police he believed his mother had made one last "primeval grasp on life" the night she died.
"I assumed that she had taken a last grasp on life, reared up and fallen out of bed," Simpson told Detective Constable Tracey Gallagher at Howick police station.
"Mum has reared up like that before, several times during the nights previously, like a primeval response to a grasp on life."
In the High Court at Auckland Simpson is accused of murdering his 82-year-old terminally ill mother, Florence Marjorie Simpson, at her Howick home on October 3 last year. But defence counsel Paul Davison, QC, and Jacinda McClennan say he was insane.
Mrs Simpson was found hanging out of bed with the straps of a morphine bag wound tightly round her neck. Simpson told the officer that he and his brother, Mel, found their mother dead.
"The [morphine] pump tape was tight around her neck. I didn't really look to see how it had strangled her," Simpson was said to have told the detective.
Simpson told the officer that earlier he had given his mother some medication to ease the pain and then called relations to say she was at death's door.
But he emphatically denied any suggestion of euthanasia.
"I won't even entertain that," he said.
"I don't believe in it and that is certainly not what happened tonight."
He said his mother did not believe in euthanasia either and would have wanted to "hang on in there until the end".
Simpson told the officer that he had drunk half a bottle of wine and three brandies that evening.
He told Detective Constable Gallagher that they called the police because his mother had died in slightly unusual circumstances and it made sense to do things properly.
Another reason was that there were "lots of people with big mouths" in his family.
"I did not want any misplaced allegations to occur," he said.
The officer said that Simpson's strange behaviour at the police station included lying on his back on the floor with his feet on a chair, and grimacing.
Mr Davison criticised the police for not videotaping the interview which would have meant the language used would have been precise and the jury would have been able to see Simpson's demeanour at the time.
He also criticised the police for not reading Simpson his rights, but Detective Constable Gallagher said that at that stage Simpson was being treated as a witness and not a suspect.
The Crown is represented by Kieran Raftery and David McNaughton.
The trial continues today.
Mother took 'one last grasp on life'
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