Just two months before her son killed her, Suzanne Henry begged him to stop using drugs.
“Please don’t do any drugs tonight,” she said in a text message to Finn, who was just 20 at the time.
But her pleas were in vain and, despite his assurances that he was “just smoking”, she snorted ketamine as she did most days.
Weeks later, he embarked on another ‘spree’ that left him in the car park of a Morrisons supermarket at 3pm in front of shocked shoppers and staff.
Paramedics were called, but he refused to go to hospital and instead took more medication – inhaling it while driving his car and using his knees to stabilize the steering wheel as he did so. Hours later he returned to his family’s home where he beat her little mother to death with his fists.
The six-minute assault by the experienced boxer was heard by neighbors across the street and left his mother with a serious brain injury from which she would never recover.
Finn Henry (pictured) beat his mother Suzanne to death while taking ketamine, believing she was the devil
Two months earlier, Suzanne (pictured) tried in vain to stop her son from taking ketamine.
Finn, now 21, was jailed for seven years at Northampton Crown Court on Monday after admitting manslaughter. The court was told that he was so drunk that he believed her mother was the devil and he was sentenced because he had no intention of killing her.
He is likely to be released after serving two-thirds of his sentence and has pledged to work to warn others about the dangers of ketamine once he is released.
But the case has left many wondering how a young man from a seemingly loving and supportive home became so addicted to drugs that he didn’t know he was brutally beating his own mother to death in his living room, a woman he loved. he loved deeply and described him as his “number one”.
Finn grew up in the picturesque village of Madeley, Staffs. – five miles west of the town of Newcastle Under Lyme – and the former home of English goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Finn’s lawyer said he came from a “good, decent, caring, loving and supportive family.”
He attended the local school while his parents Charles, 57, a former prison officer, and his glamorous mother Suzanne, 54, ran a small car dealership together.
Finn was said to be particularly close to this mother. The court heard they shared a “unique bond” and that she was the closest person to him in the world.
Henry, originally from Co. Kildare, Ireland, told the court he and his wife were “traditional” and chose to take a “firm but fair” approach to raising their children – Finn and his sister Niamh, now 23. to limit screen time, he said, and they both worked from the age of 14, but at 15 Finn had started smoking cannabis. He admitted that he first tried ketamine at age 16, but at 19 he became addicted and was spending £40 a day on it.
The “party drug” was invented as a horse tranquilizer, but its use has skyrocketed among young people in recent years due to its low cost and wide availability. It is sold as a white or light brown granular powder and looks like cocaine, but can be had for as little as £10 a bag. It can make people feel detached from reality, but it can also cause hallucinations and make users feel agitated and panicked.
Examination of his phone showed Henry was also involved in ‘street dealings’ via Instagram and Snapchat.
The year before killing his mother, Finn regularly used ketamine and cannabis.
Prosecutor Maria Karaiskos KC told the court he felt “strongly attracted to the positive effects, as if he had a lot of energy and felt he could do anything.” She but she acknowledged that he “would get nervous more easily” and that his drug use had led to him losing his job after threatening a co-worker.
Examination of his phone showed that he was also involved in “street dealings” through Instagram and Snapchat.
His father said the drugs were “everywhere” in their town and were “cheaper than a pint.”
“It would be easier to identify the young people of the town who do not use it than the other way around,” he told the court.
Henry said his son worked as a plasterer, starting the day at 6am and then going to the gym, but he was a “weekend warrior” like many other young people his age, attending raves and parties on the weekends. week where drug use was widespread. In fact, his Facebook profile photo shows him posing next to a friend holding a balloon used to inhale nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, also popular among young partygoers.
And soon he was not only using drugs on weekends. Finn told doctors after his arrest that he had tried to stop but couldn’t.
Desperate text messages from his family urged him not to “throw away his future” and to seek professional help. Another, from an aunt, said she had been “shocked and upset” to find out what had been happening and asked when the “old Finn” had left. It was March last year when Mrs Henry sent another text message to her son asking him not to take drugs and he responded assuring her that she wouldn’t do it.
But Miss Karaiskos told the court: “…despite saying that to his mother… it appears from the evidence that the accused took some and violated him.” She said he was “out of control” after taking chocolate-covered magic mushrooms and ketamine when he went to a friend’s house where he spit on the floor, slapped his friend’s father and pushed his friend’s mother. he. The next day she sent a message to her friend’s mother apologizing to her saying that she “still had no idea what had happened.” She wrote: “I completely passed out and can’t remember anything. It is no excuse for my actions and I take full responsibility.
‘I’m not a bad boy and they’ve bought me better. “It’s a big wake-up call.”
But still he didn’t stop. On the day she attacked his mother, May 1 last year, Finn’s girlfriend called an ambulance after meeting him in Morrisons and seeing him “fading in and out of consciousness and falling to the ground hitting his head”. Finn told paramedics that he had taken ketamine and that he had not been taking prescribed medications for anxiety and depression and that he was worried his mother would “go crazy” if she knew what had happened.
Paramedics wanted to take him to hospital, but he refused and then went for a drive with friends during which he was seen “talking to himself, shouting and making strange noises”.
Around 7:30 p.m., Finn told his friends to get out of his car. They said he was acting strangely, referring to the “apocalypse” and that he “needed to disappear for a moment because he was dancing with the devil and didn’t want to do something he would regret.”
Henry was jailed for seven years after admitting manslaughter at Northampton Crown Court (pictured)
He told his friends he was going to go home and get some sleep, but he was still acting strange when he arrived. Her mother began filming him “probably to show him when he recovered,” Miss Karaiskos said. He was “excitable and loud”, jumping, cursing and shouting his own name before she is seen throwing two punches at the camera and the phone falls to the floor.
“Six minutes later the phone picks up his face and it’s covered in blood,” the prosecutor said.
Emergency services who were called to the Henrys’ smart semi on the main road through the village were initially unable to say whether Mrs Henry was a man or a woman due to the amount of swelling and blood on her face.
Finn was arrested but was deemed medically unfit to be interviewed until the next day.
He was initially charged with murder, but later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Jailing him on Monday, Judge Rupert Mayo said he had to take into account that Finn had failed to address his addiction and “serious drug over-intake”. As Finn’s own messages showed, he knew it made him act violently and significantly out of character.
Addressing Finn directly, the judge said: “You are an experienced boxer, you squared up and it was a prolonged round in which she, I hate to say, would have suffered considerably.”
His sister Niamh said their mother had died because her brother did not take responsibility for his increasing drug use.
“All this regret because you couldn’t find the breaks,” he told her in a moving victim impact statement read aloud in court.
“I do not wish to perpetuate the anguish I feel,” he continued. “I ask Finn to take full responsibility for his actions leading up to that night… to know that he is not the victim in this situation; he is fortunate enough to be alive and have another chance to improve his own life and the of the lives of others. of others like him.’
It remains to be seen if it will.
His father said that after “long conversations” his son expressed his desire to warn others about the dangers. He said his son had been sentenced to life in prison knowing that he had killed his beloved mother.
Finn’s defense attorney perhaps summed it up best when he said the tragic case was the “clearest demonstration of the impact that repeated illegal drug use can have on an immature, developing brain.”
Finn’s father still lives in the house where his wife died, with a photograph of his wife displayed prominently in the living room when she was murdered.
He told the court: “It was extremely difficult to lose your wife and find that a member of your own family was responsible, but as Finn’s father I am probably the only person who knows the history of the relationship between mother and son.”