MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) – The trial has begun for a Baldwin County man accused of killing his mother in 2017.

Clarke Raines is accused of strangling her mother, Kay Raines, and burying her body in the woods of Baldwin County. Kay Raines disappeared in early 2017. Friends organized a search after she was not seen after a trip to Biloxi.

Kay Raines’ body was discovered weeks later in a shallow grave between Spanish Fort and Stockton.

From the moment she disappeared, Kay’s loved ones believe her son had something to do with her death. They described him as a young man who could go from an irritable child to mean and violent at any moment.

During their opening statement, prosecutors claimed that Clarke Raines strangled his mother because he was angry that she spent all of her inheritance money. In 2006, Kay Raines received $500,000 through life insurance after the death of her husband. Years later, she made $2.3 million after selling their home in Destin, Florida.

The state described Clarke Raines as an entitled son whose parents paid all his bills, including several trips to rehab, insurance and other expenses. Prosecutor Ashley Rich argued that Clarke Raines felt he was entitled to Kay Raines’ inheritance.

Prosecutors argued that Kay Raines chose to take advantage of her inheritance and became a big spender at regional casinos, eventually spending all of the inheritance money. They claim this angered her son and that when she returned from work at a Home Depot in Mississippi on January 29, 2017, that was when he strangled his mother. Then, for the next few days, he allegedly tried to get money through the MoneyGram fraud, a bounced check, and using his mother’s credit cards.

A month after Kay Raines disappeared, Mobile Police placed a GPS tracker on Clarke’s car and eventually saw him take an unusual trip to a wooded area in Baldwin County where they found his body. If he didn’t make an additional trip to the body, the state says they may never have found her.

Responding to the charge, lawyers for Clarke Raines argued that the state could not prove he killed his mother, could not prove where she died, and needed his mother alive. They also asked the jury not to assume that someone is a bad person just because they are drug addicts.

Clarke Raines has an arrest record dating back more than a decade with arrests in Walton County, Florida and Okaloosa County for crimes including burglary, domestic violence and attempting to fraudulently obtain a controlled substance. Prior to his mother’s death, Raines was also arrested in Mobile for allegedly breaking the windows of a neighbor’s house.

The trial is expected to last all week or more.