Mother murdered over Avril tickets

24 January 2012

by Shannon Andreucci

Robert Lyons has been handed a prison sentence of 40 years yesterday for the murder of his own mother, who refused to score him skybox tickets to the pop star’s concert.

You could somewhat empathise with Lyons’ determination to see Lavigne, if he was a self-centered tweenage girl. But when clearly Losing Grip in March 2008 and flying into a fit of rage against his 61-year-old mother, Linda Bolek, he was very much a 36-year-old man.

The altercation occurred in the pair’s suburban Chicago home, where Lyons stabbed his mother nine times in the back. If that wasn’t enough retribution, he then beat her in the head with a champagne bottle and soaked her with insecticide and drain cleaner, before casually heading to a Hooters restaurant.

Lyons denied to the police that his bipolar disorder played a part in his homicidal act. But after a six-day trial and a two-hour deliberation by the jury in September 2011, the verdict of a first-degree murder was delivered, using neighbours’ reports of regular quarrels between the two and the brutality of Bolek’s murder as evidence.

"Linda Bolek did not deserve to die that day by the hands of her own son," DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

"She did not deserve to be beaten, stabbed and have chemicals poured over her as she lay helpless on the floor... Mr. Lyons however, deserves this punishment."