UPPER YODER, Pa. -- Frederick Phillips' mother visited him regularly when he was in prison. Eighty-five-year-old Anna Phillips kept in contact and sent him money. When he was paroled last June, she provided a place for him in her cozy home on a wooded lot in the Menoher Heights section of this Cambria County township.

Police said he repaid her doting by killing her and dumping her body on state gamelands atop Laurel Mountain before fleeing the state with more than $15,000.

The money may have been stolen from a hiding place at his mother's home. Police found empty money bags in a cubbyhole in her bedroom and a toppled safe.

Police in Buckhannon, W.Va., arrested Mr. Phillips, 51, after he crashed his pickup truck, seriously injuring himself.

Upper Yoder police Chief Walter Howell interviewed the suspect Sunday in an intensive care hospital room in Morgantown, W.Va., where Mr. Phillips was taken by helicopter after his crash.

It was there that Mr. Phillips confessed, according to a police affidavit.

Mr. Phillips said he strangled his mother at the bottom of the steps in her home. He wrapped her in a towel, put her body in his truck and drove to the gamelands just across the county line in Westmoreland County.

Police declined to pinpoint the date and time of death. From statements of family and friends, Ms. Phillips had been missing for more than two weeks.

While talking with investigators at the hospital, Mr. Phillips used hand gestures to demonstrate how he killed his mother, police said.

As he choked her, he said, "I want you to be with dad," referring to his late father, Fred Sr.

The affidavit said he gave police specific directions where to find the body. "... about a thousand yards from the road. She is buried underneath leaves and branches," the affidavit said.

Later Sunday night, police found Ms. Phillips' body where Mr. Phillips said he left her.

The Westmoreland County coroner's office ruled the cause of death was asphyxiation by manual strangulation.

Police also recovered the money and a loaded .22-caliber pistol.

Mr. Phillips, as a convict on parole, is not permitted to possess a firearm.

Chief Howell said he will be charged with a parole violation before he is extradited to Pennsylvania to face charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault. He and other officers returned yesterday to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, where Mr. Phillips is under guard.

Mr. Phillips was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison for a 1998 assault of an elderly Upper Yoder woman who survived being choked and stabbed.

He was returned to prison shortly after his release because of a parole violation.

On June 25, he was released again on parole and returned to his mother's house.

A neighbor, who had become good friends with Anna Phillips, said Mr. Phillips had resumed a relationship with a former girlfriend, Joanne Long. The neighbor, Gary Radnoti, said Ms. Phillips did not approve of the relationship because her son was involved with drugs, heavy drinking and trouble when he was dating her.

He said Mr. Phillips hardly had a relationship with his son, Corey, 27.

Mr. Radnoti and Corey Phillips, who frequently visited his grandmother, were first to discover Ms. Phillips was missing.

Last Saturday the two began piecing together suspicious facts.

Mr. Radnoti had not seen Ms. Phillips since the first week of October. Her newspapers and mail had begun to pile up. He said Fred Phillips told him his mother was away visiting a friend.

Corey Phillips telephoned the friend, who reported that Fred Phillips had told them his mother was in the hospital.

The two contacted Ms. Long, who said Fred Phillips told her yet another story about his mother's disappearance.

At the house, the two men found Ms. Phillips' blind Pomeranian lapdog, Tessa, feeding itself from a spilled bag of dog food in rooms littered with feces.

"She would never leave that dog alone," Corey Phillips said yesterday.

The two men and police on Saturday found a note, believed to have been written by Fred Phillips.

"She wasn't there, and she hadn't been there," Mr. Radnoti said.

With bad punctuation and improper English, the note said: "All I ever wanted to do was love Joann Long, she my soul mate, and now I blew it all, I love her so much I think I lose my mind. All I wanted to do was love Joann and have a normal life that will never be, I love Joann."