Three-and-a-half years ago, as the sun began to set on an August night at York Beach, Maine, Cynthia L. Webb and her granddaughter set out, ostensibly, for some ice cream.

The two actually slipped away to the beach, where they joined friends of Ms. Webb's son, Brad, in carving a heart in the sand and illuminating it with Tiki torches.

Before long, Brad Webb succeeded in convincing his girlfriend, Diana, to go on a sunset stroll. As the two sauntered toward the surf, Diana saw the heart and the outline of a name, and remarked at how sweet a gesture that was for somebody to make.

“Let’s go closer,” Mr. Webb suggested, prodding his girlfriend to a spot where she suddenly could see that the name in the sand was hers. Everybody popped up and began to throw marshmallows. Diana said yes to his marriage proposal.

“My mom helped me pull it off big time,” Mr. Webb recalled over the phone recently as he drove from Kentucky to Massachusetts. “It was a pretty special moment that I’m glad she got to be a part of.”

Mr. Webb lost his mother Cynthia last month. The 59-year-old’s body was found inside the burned-out trunk of her red Buick at Hope Cemetery Dec. 12, prompting widespread media coverage and calls from police for help.

A Level 3 sex offender who frequented the strip club where Ms. Webb worked, Mario's Showplace in Webster, has since been charged with setting the vehicle on fire, but the manner and cause of her death is not yet known.

As he drove north to his mother’s Sterling home one recent afternoon to begin settling her affairs, Mr. Webb said he has never heard of 56-year-old Steven M. Foley, the Level 3 sex offender, and does not have insight into the crime.

But he said he returned a reporter’s call seeking comment because he wants people to know that his mother was a loving person who had endured her share of adversity in life.

“She was a fighter,” he said, a woman who for years battled the addiction, pain and heartache that sprung from a personal tragedy that occurred when she was in her teens.

Born Cynthia Lynne Stuart in 1958, Ms. Webb was raised in Acton, where her family ran a dance studio. A natural talent in ballet, Cindy Stuart went to New York City at age 14 to study dance, Mr. Webb said, and ended up partying and drinking in her teens after falling in with the wrong crowd.

Cindy Stuart, who attended Acton-Boxboro Regional High School, was 19 when she had a baby. His father, George B. Webb, was more than 10 years her senior; he pursued her when she tended bar in Maynard, and the two married, the son said.

In 1978 came a week that would change Ms. Webb’s life forever. Her father died, and on the day of his funeral, her husband got into a motorcycle accident.

He died, too.

“She lost her dad and her husband within a week of each other,” Mr. Webb said. “And she went into full-fledged party mode to try and mask things.”

Mr. Webb – told as a child that his mother was not well – later learned she had used alcohol and drugs to numb the pain. Shortly after her husband died, she gave her child to her mother, Janet, who ended up raising him.

“I didn’t hear a lot from my mom until I was about 15,” Mr. Webb said, when she came back into his life clean and sober.

Mr. Webb said his mother’s absence changed the nature of their relationship – to him, grandma was his mother. He forgave his mother.

“We had a connection, and we continued that until she passed away,” he said, despite her being estranged from some of her other family members.

Mr. Webb said he never lived with his mother but would visit her often as a young man. In recent years, he mostly saw her on vacations, as he moved to Kentucky a dozen years ago for work and ended up starting a family there.

Mr. Webb said his mother took a step back in 1996 when, at 38, she married a 45-year-old man who proved to be a bad choice. She was served divorce papers on Sept. 11, 2001, court records show, two weeks after her husband was banned from the marital home in Clinton following an arrest for domestic violence.

Like many divorce filings, the paperwork paints neither party in a positive light. Ms. Webb’s husband, Kevin G. Connery, claimed that she refused to work during the marriage in part because of substance abuse issues.

Ms. Webb countered that he was abusive, and that he actually prevented her from working because he’d lost his driver's license because of an arrest for drunken driving and needed transportation. She said she also suffered from fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain that causes fatigue, sleep, memory and mood problems.

Mr. Webb said his mother’s condition grew worse as she got older and that he recalls her telling him that Mr. Connery required her to drive him everywhere because he did not have a license.

Mr. Connery died in 2015. His lawyer for the divorce proceedings did not return a call from a reporter seeking comment.

Mr. Webb said the divorce took a mental and fiscal toll on his mother. Without her husband’s income or home – which he had purchased – making ends meet was difficult.

Ms. Webb got a job as a dancer at a strip club, her son said, because she needed money quickly.

“It’s what she knew – she was a dancer, and she loved music,” he said. “It was the easiest option to get her through.”

Mr. Webb said he and his mother never judged each other – he experienced a rough patch himself when his grandmother died – and her job at the club didn’t change that.

“She really had to scrap. That’s probably the thing I admired most about my mom,” he said. “I don’t really care about the profession she ended up doing – it’s just her surviving.

“I wish a lot of people would fight as hard as my mom did.”

Mr. Webb said his mother found a “wonderful” boyfriend the past 13 years of her life, and the couple lived in Sterling.

The couple’s home, an apartment in a large white house on Redstone Hill Road, is across from Davis Farmland, a farm featuring animals and amusements for kids.

Fields peppered with crops and cows surround the home, a bucolic setting that provided Ms. Webb joy for years. She tended a garden out front, Mr. Webb said; she loved to be out in the sun.

“Something she really enjoyed was sitting out and having her coffee in the morning and watching the sun rise,” Mr. Webb said, remembering fondly occasions on which they’d do so together.

Mr. Webb said his mother loved spending time with her grandchildren on vacations. When Mr. Webb brought his family north, they would all go out for dinner at Patriot Place, as the family members are fans of the Patriots.

Mr. Webb recalled how the last time they went to Foxboro, a handsome but expensive reversible Patriots jacket caught his eye.

He decided begrudgingly that the $200 would be better spent elsewhere. His mother didn’t blink.

“I got to the car, and my mom had bought it for me,” he said. “She was such a good woman.”

Details of the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death have been difficult to hear, Mr. Webb said, but he praised Worcester police for keeping him informed and for making an arrest.

In an application filed in Central District Court for a warrant to search Ms. Webb’s cellphone voicemails, Worcester police wrote that the woman’s badly burned body was identified through dental records.

Her body was taken to the medical examiner’s office for examination Dec. 13. Police have not announced a cause of death, and a death certificate was not available Friday afternoon.

“What they’ve told me is they’re still uncovering things and there’s more to the story,” Mr. Webb said. “I’m anxious to get answers. I want him to be punished for what happened, but part of that is proving it.”

Mr. Foley, who was incarcerated nearly 20 years for raping a college student, has been charged with setting the vehicle on fire, but not with Ms. Webb's death. Her colleagues have said Mr. Foley frequented strip clubs in the area, including Mario's Showplace in Webster, where Ms. Webb worked.

Police wrote in the affidavit that other dancers at Mario’s told them that she would sometimes meet customers from the club outside work.

“While checking her phone records we have identified some phone numbers as being those of clients she has met at the club,” police wrote, adding they believe voicemails could aid their probe.

Owners of Mario’s Showplace have not returned requests for comment.

Mr. Webb said his mother’s boyfriend, who did not return a message left at the home, told him she always returned home from work until the night of Dec. 11.

Police have said that surveillance video shows Ms. Webb’s Buick pulling up to the Lamplighter II in Worcester shortly after Mr. Foley left Mario’s that evening after a conversation with her inside.

The video shows Mr. Foley getting into the driver’s seat of her car and Ms. Webb getting into the passenger’s seat, police said. The two then drove off; the next morning, the Buick was found burning in Hope Cemetery.

Police have evidence linking Mr. Foley to the cemetery, noting in court filings that a man identified as Steven who called from Mr. Foley’s cellphone got a ride from a cab nearby around the time the Buick was found.

Mr. Webb said he does not know why his mother met with Mr. Foley. He said she enjoyed smoking marijuana so that perhaps she met him to smoke a joint or buy pot.

“My mom was very, very trusting with people,” he said, particularly if she felt they had a connection.

Mr. Webb said he does not think his mother would have met the man for sex, but that people were known to pay for her company.

“She had a rapport with the managers and the customers,” Mr. Webb said, echoing comments made by dancers there that she was like a mother to the group.

Shelby Lane, a dancer at the club who lunched with Ms. Webb the day before her body was found, said she does not know why the two met, but believes that should be irrelevant.

“She was preyed upon by a Level 3 sex offender who should not have been on the streets to begin with,” Ms. Lane wrote in a text message. In the end, she said, the focus should be on securing justice.

Mr. Foley, who has three rape convictions, served nearly 20 years in prison following a 1985 conviction on charges he raped a Salem State College student.

The Salem News reported in 2010 that prosecutors tried to prevent Mr. Foley’s release from prison, arguing he was sexually dangerous, but that the courts ordered him freed. He was charged with rape and indecent assault and battery in Peabody following his release; the rape charge was dropped after a victim declined to testify, and he pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault and battery in 2013.

Mr. Foley was released following his guilty plea because his sentence was shorter than the amount of time he’d been in jail awaiting trial.

Mr. Webb said he wants justice for his mother but understands that police need to build their case. In the meantime, the father of two will be providing for his family – he serves as general manager for a Cracker Barrel in Lexington, Kentucky – and working on settling his mother’s affairs.

“I still haven’t really dealt with it,” Mr. Webb said as he drove, noting that he’s done his best to give his children – ages 1 and 9 - cheery holidays despite the tragedy.

Mr. Webb said he plans to have his mother buried at a cemetery in Maynard next to his father.

“To the day she died,” he said, “that’s always been the love of her life.”

G.