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Each summer, Roxanne Wadman would leave her home in Lakeside, Mont., and circle the Mountain West to visit her family.

Each year, her last stop was to see her daughter in Murray. And each year, Alicia Sherman seemed to worsen.

"She would make excuses why I shouldn't stay with her and Dan," Wadman said. "They were all lies. And I knew it."

The mother always tried to help her daughter. Wadman put Sherman up in motel rooms, persuaded her to live with friends and even moved her back home once to Montana.

Each time, Sherman went back to Daniel Jay Folsom.

The 49-year-old Folsom on Thursday appeared briefly in 3rd District Court, charged with first-degree felony murder for his girlfriend's fatal beating. He said little as his attorney set his next court date.

Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Robert Breeze would not comment beyond chiding prosecutors for speaking publicly about the case.

"We'll try this case in court and not the media," Breeze said.

Sherman, 45, died Monday, four days after she fled to a neighbor's house and said her boyfriend was "out of control," according to the charges against Folsom.

Then Sherman lost consciousness and died days later.

In a telephone interview, Wadman said the relationship between Folsom and her daughter had drastically worsened over the last four years.

"These things don't happen overnight," she said. "It takes people like that some amount of time to get that kind of control over somebody. ... Her self-esteem was nothing. I'm surprised she could even get out of bed in the morning."

Wadman remembered her daughter as a woman with a great smile and laugh and a caring nature.

"It was her whole thought in life to make sure everybody else was happy," Wadman said. "He totally sucked that out of her."

When Wadman made it to her daughter's bedside, she was so bruised "you'd have never recognized her," the mother said.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has said Folsom and Sherman had a "tumultuous history," and court documents say each was the aggressor at times.

Folsom filed for a protective order against Sherman, claiming she had threatened him at different times with a gun and a knife. Folsom was later charged with aggravated assault, but the charge was dropped because Sherman would not cooperate with the prosecution. The protective order was also dismissed at the couple's request.

Wadman said she was certain her daughter fought back against the larger Folsom. She had to, the mother said.

The mother said she sat in the hospital for three days, speaking with doctors about Sherman's brain trauma and watching over her daughter's body until a decision was made to take her off life support.

"Then I had to sit there for three hours and wait for her to take her last breath," she said. "And you tell me what my daughter did that was so horrible that it gave Dan Folsom a reason to do that?"

Back home in Lakeside, Mont., Wadman said that for now her tears have been overtaken by anger.

"Making sure he gets life in prison," she said, "that'll be my counseling. That's what I want."

afalk@sltrib.com Twitter: @aaronfalk