Mother in a fix as son grows up to be a gunman

London: Josephine Healey has fond recollections of a quiet, polite and kind child who loved nature. Which is why she can hardly recognise the fugitive gunman threatening to kill any policeman who crosses his path.

Healey says her gentle son, Raoul Moat, disappeared when he was 19. He was replaced by a snarling individual who hated everything and everyone.

Three years ago he returned to her home after a lengthy absence and, standing on the doorstep, made a gun gesture with his fingers before threatening to kill her.

"He now has a totally different character, attitude and manner," she said. "Every last detail."

Healey has scores of photographs of her son, lovingly kept in an album. They give the impression of a happy childhood a million miles away from the vengeful figure roaming the Northumberland countryside bent on killing police officers.

As a boy Moat, now 37, struggled greatly with asthma and had few friends.

Nature-loving boy

"He loved nature," said his 63-year-old French-born mother, who is married to Moat's stepfather, Brian.

"We used to find him with pockets full of spiders."

At the age of 17 he started going to karate lessons and it was about this time that Healey remembers her son losing weight. He was always tired, she said. His appearance changed too.

"He had long hair back then and he wore beads in his hair not like it is now in the pictures," she said.

At the age of 19 he started work at a factory.

"All of a sudden he got a job at an engineering company and that's when the silliness started," she added. He began arguing relentlessly with his stepfather. From that point on their relationship deteriorated.

"From then it was not very good," she said.

"They just did not get on at all. Now when I see him I don't recognise him at all."

Moat was 24 when he left the family home in Newcastle. He moved into a flat nearby and simply lost touch.

Healey, who enjoyed a 27-year career as a draughtswoman, tried to contact him through the Salvation Army but he did not want to see her or have any further contact. He reappeared in 2000, however, and appeared to be the boy she remembered.

"He was quiet, non-violent. I had no problems with him at all."

Moat would return again but not as the same quiet boy she remembered from all those years ago. In 2007 he appeared on her doorstep and pretended to fire a gun with his fingers.

"Why would he do that?" she asked. "It was like he was not my real son."