The mother of Australia's worst mass murderer says she regrets asking her son to plead guilty and that she'll always love him unconditionally.
The guilty plea by Port Arthur killer Martin Bryant meant a lot of questions went unanswered, his mother Carleen Bryant said.
"I regret asking him to plead guilty, which denied him the chance to answer a lot of questions," Ms Bryant told New Idea.
According to the magazine, Ms Bryant questions how someone of her son's intellectual limitations could have organised the massacre but claims she doesn't want to spark debate about his guilt or innocence.
"There are conspiracy theories that Martin was not, and could not, have been the gunman," Ms Bryant said.
"These would have been addressed with DNA, witness statements and fingerprints, to prove it one way or another."
On April 28, 1996, then 28-year-old Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded another 21 in a shooting spree at Tasmania's Port Arthur historic site.
Bryant was subsequently given 35 life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Ms Bryant has rarely given interviews but in 2006 told The Bulletin magazine that one of her deepest regrets was agreeing to persuade her son to plead guilty.
Her latest interview with New Idea, on sale on Monday, comes ahead of the release of her book My Story.
Ms Bryant sees her 43-year-old son once a fortnight at the psychiatric section of Hobart's Risdon Prison and talks to him regularly on the phone.
She says medication has made him dangerously obese.
"The world does not need to remember Martin but he is my son, and I will always love him unconditionally," she told the magazine, which released portions of the interview.
Bryant was born on May 7, 1967, the oldest of two children to Maurice and Carleen Bryant.
The Tasmanian Supreme Court heard in 1996 that he had the mental capacity of an 11-year-old.
Ms Bryant said her son had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.
"From a very young age, Martin had social and intellectual difficulties, a very low IQ," she told New Idea.
"He was a misfit and could not make friends or concentrate at school.
"We made sure Martin always had the best treatment and advice but no one ever really knew what was wrong with him. It was heartbreaking.
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