The founder of a restaurant empire that began in Brighton is on trial accused of murdering his own mother.
Jeremy Mogford, 79, and his sister Sarah Pickering, 72, are accused of giving 100-year-old Pamela Mogford liquid morphine to speed up her death in February 2022, Oxford Crown Court heard.
The siblings deny murder and say they gave their mother the medication because she was in pain, not because they wanted to hasten her death.
They also face an alternative charge of attempted murder.
Mogford opened the first Browns Brasserie in Brighton in 1973 with his then-business partner John Mayhew. He later sold the chain to Bass Brewery for £35 million.
Mrs Mogford died at her home in Bledlow Ridge, Buckinghamshire, shortly after midnight on February 15, 2022.
Her GP had visited her three times the previous day, giving her morphine injections during the second and third visits because he thought she might be dying, jurors heard.
He initially recorded her cause of death as old age.
Opening the prosecution case, Julian Christopher KC said the siblings gave their mother more morphine after the GP left, using a liquid medicine called Oramorph that had been prescribed to her.
Mr Christopher said: "Using an oral syringe they gave her the equivalent of at least four times as much morphine the GP had given that evening by injection."
Prosecutors allege their intention was to speed up her death, which the siblings deny.
Jurors heard Mrs Mogford had refused to go to hospital after an ambulance was called on February 14 because it was thought she might have had a stroke.
Prosecutors said she had not been trying to kill herself and had not asked anyone else to help her do so.
The court heard messages were discovered when police examined the phone of Pickering's husband, Paul Pidgeon, for unconnected reasons.
In one message to a friend on February 14, Pickering wrote: "Think we might give her some morphine tonight, but don’t tell anyone."
Shortly before 10pm, Pickering asked her brother if she could give their mother more, adding that it was awful listening to her, the court heard.
Mogford replied: "Yes, go ahead."
Pickering replied that she would wait a little while because her mother was fast asleep, which prosecutors allege meant Mrs Mogford was not in pain at that point.
In messages to her husband, Pickering said she had asked her brother about giving more morphine and wrote: "I am actually killing her."
Mrs Mogford's body was later exhumed for a post-mortem examination on June 1, 2023.
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The examination found morphine in her body, but jurors were told the passage of time made it impossible to calculate how much she had been given before she died.
Mr Christopher said scientific evidence alone could not establish definitively whether she had been given more morphine than was contained in the GP's injections.
A pathologist subsequently recorded her cause of death as unascertained.
Both defendants are on bail and the trial continues.
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