Topeka ? A man who killed a northeast Kansas farmer who had offered him a place to stay will be sentenced for second-degree murder, with his mother pleading for mercy and the victim’s wife demanding prison time.

Adam Hooper, 36, of Tahlequah, Okla., will be sentenced Tuesday in Jefferson County Court in the beating death of Dale Kingsbury, 50, whose body was found in a cistern on his rural Oskaloosa farm in August 2009.

Kingsbury and his wife, Genie, had offered Hooper work as a farmhand and he was living in a tent on their property when the murder occurred.

His other, Janet Harvey, told The Topeka Capital-Journal that she tried several times during Hooper’s life to get help for his schizo-affective disorder and manic depression. She said Hooper was delusional and uncontrollable when he stopped taking his medications.

“I hope he will go to a hospital facility rather than be incarcerated with full-blown criminals who will take advantage (of him) and where he might end up dead himself,” she said.

But Kingsbury’s widow wants prison time for the man who killed her husband after the couple had taken him in when it seemed he had nowhere else to go.

“I do believe things happen for a reason, but I don’t know why it would be important for my husband to be taken from me,” she said. “I haven’t quite figured that one out yet.”

Harvey said her son had a fairly normal life until he turned 20, when she said he became delusional, paranoid and increasingly difficult to handle. She said she tried early last year to convince an Oklahoma associate district judge to commit her son to a hospital where he could get the medications and psychiatric help, but that didn’t happen.

Hooper eventually moved to Kansas with some friends of his mother’s, Janice Watkins and Joyce Clark. He alternated living with them before moving to the Kingsburys’ farm.

In spring 2009, Watkins said she called police when Hooper began cutting himself with scissors and a knife and threatening suicide. And on July 28, 2009, less than two weeks before Kingsbury was killed, police were called when Hooper allegedly assaulted Watkins and Hooper, but he was not arrested, the Capital-Journal reported.

A few days later, he moved to the Kingsburys’ farm.

Genie Kingsbury said she met Hooper months earlier through her work with Clark at Cognitive Care Connection, which provided cognitive therapy to people with traumatic brain injuries. Clark, Watkins and Dale Kingsbury all received services from the agency.

It is still unclear what led Hooper to kill Dale Kingsbury on Aug. 8, 2009.

When Genie Kingsbury and Watkins returned from shopping in Oskaloosa, Dale Kingsbury was nowhere to be seen. She said Hooper told her that he had left in a car driven by another man.

But she eventually called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department to report her husband was missing from the 15-acre farm.

“I figured Adam had done something with Dale,” Kingsbury said.

Her fears were confirmed later that night when his body was found.

During his first court appearance, a rambling Hooper admitted to the killing.

“I did it,” he said. “I’m not going to argue with it. I’m going to plead guilty.”

After an evaluation at Larned State Hospital, Hooper was ruled competent to stand trial. He was convicted in April of second-degree murder.