A Dublin man who beheaded his mother and buried her dismembered body in a shallow grave in Edinburgh in Scotland has been ordered to stay in hospital.

Psychiatrists at The State Hospital in Carstairs are still trying to assess the mental condition of James Seamus Dunleavy (40).

His trial for murder heard harrowing evidence of the final moments of his mother, Philomena Dunleavy, and he was convicted of a reduced charge of culpable homicide.

The eight day trial heard evidence suggesting she still have been alive, but unconscious, when her killer began to hack off her legs with knife and saw.

A jury at the High Court in Edinburgh convicted him by majority back in January, and also found him guilty of the attempted cover-up.

Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Dunleavy vacuumed and washed his flat to remove blood stains and torched a bed and mattress.

Mrs. Dunleavy had left her Dublin home in early April last year and arrived in Scotland on April 24th to visit her eldest son James. It was more than a month before her remains were unearthed, just a few minutes walk away from her son's address.

Today the judge continued an interim order for him to be held under medical supervision to allow doctors to continue their work.