What turned teen from loving middle class family into a drug-fuelled killer? How story of son who beat his mother to death after she text him, ‘Please don’t do drugs tonight’ – will serve as a terrifying warning to any parent about Gen Z’s love of Ketamine

Just two months before she was murdered by her son, Suzanne Henry begged him to stop using drugs.

“Please, please don’t do drugs tonight,” she said in a text message to Finn, then just 20 years old.

But her pleas were in vain and despite his assurances that he was ‘just smoking’, he snorted ketamine as he did most days.

Weeks later he went on another ‘bender’, which found him in the car park of a Morrisons supermarket at 3pm, in front of shocked customers and staff.

Paramedics were called, but he refused to go to hospital. Instead, he took more medication; he snorted it while driving, using his knees to steady the steering wheel as he did. Hours later he returned to his parents’ home, where he beat his little mother to death with his fists.

The veteran boxer’s six-minute attack was heard by neighbors across the street and left his mother with serious brain injuries from which she would never recover.

Two months earlier, Suzanne (pictured) tried unsuccessfully to stop her son from using ketamine

Finn, now 21, was sentenced to seven years in prison at Northampton Crown Court on Monday after admitting manslaughter. The court was told he was so drunk he thought his mother was the devil and was convicted because he had no intention of killing her.

He will likely be released after serving two-thirds of his prison 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 family became so addicted to drugs that he didn’t know he was brutally beating his own mother to death in her living room — a woman he loved and cherished dearly. who he loved. described as his ‘number one’.

Finn grew up in the picturesque village of Madeley, Staffs. – five miles west of the city of Newcastle Under Lyme – and the former home of England goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Finn’s lawyer said he came from a “good, decent, caring, loving, supportive family.”

He attended the local school while his parents, Charles, 57, a former prison officer, and glamorous mother Suzanne, 54, ran a small car dealership together.

It was said that Finn had a particularly close bond with this mother. The court heard they shared a ‘unique bond’ and she was the person he was ‘closest to in the world’.

Mr Henry, originally from Co. Kildare, Ireland, told the court he and his wife were “traditional” and took a “firm but fair” approach to raising their children: Finn and sister Niamh, now 23. They tried to limit screen time, said he, and both had been working since they were fourteen, but by fifteen Finn had started smoking cannabis. He admitted he first tried ketamine at the age of 16, but by 19 he was addicted and was spending £40 a day on it.

The ‘party drug’ was invented as a tranquilizer for horses, but its use among young people has increased dramatically in recent years due to its low cost and widespread availability. It is sold as a grainy white or light brown powder and resembles cocaine, but can be picked up for as little as £10 per bag. It can make people feel detached from reality, but can also cause hallucinations and make users feel agitated and panicky.

Examination of his phone revealed that Henry was also involved in ‘street deals’ via Instagram and Snapchat

In the year before he killed his mother, Finn regularly used both ketamine and cannabis.

Prosecutor Maria Karaiskos KC told the court that he felt “strongly attracted to the positive effects, as if he had a lot of energy and felt like he could do anything.” But he acknowledged he was “more likely to get wound up” and that his drug use had led to him losing his job after he threatened a colleague.

Examination of his phone revealed that he was also involved in ‘street deals’ via Instagram and Snapchat.

His father said the drug was available ‘everywhere’ in their village and ‘cheaper than a pint’.

“It would be easier to single out the young people in the village who don’t use it than the other way around,” he told the court.

Mr Henry said his son worked as a plasterer – he started the day at 6am and then went to the gym, but was a ‘weekend warrior’ like many other young men his age, who attended raves and parties at weekends attended where drug use was prevalent. His profile picture on Facebook shows him posing next to a friend holding a balloon used to inhale nitrous oxide – also known as nitrous oxide – also popular with young partygoers.

And soon he wasn’t just using drugs on weekends. Finn told doctors after his arrest that he had tried to quit but couldn’t.

Desperate text messages from his family urged him not to throw away his future and seek professional help. Another from an aunt said she was “shocked and upset” when she heard what was happening and asked when the “old Finn” had disappeared. It was March last year when Mrs Henry texted her son again asking him not to use drugs. He answered her and assured her that he would not do that.

But Miss Karaiskos told the court: ‘…despite telling his mother…the evidence shows that the defendant did take some of them and they were violent to him.’ She said he “fell 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, punched his friend’s father and pushed his mother. The next day, he sent a message to his friend’s mother apologizing and saying he “still had no idea what happened.” He wrote: ‘I completely blacked out and can’t remember anything. It does not excuse my actions and I take full responsibility.

‘I’m not a bad boy and I’ve been better bought up. It’s a big wake-up call.”

But still he didn’t stop. On the day he attacked his mother – May 1 last year – an ambulance had been called by Finn’s girlfriend after she met him at Morrisons and saw him ‘going in and out of consciousness and falling to the floor and hit his head’. Finn told paramedics that he had been taking ketamine and had not been taking prescribed medications for anxiety and depression, and that he was afraid his mother would “go crazy” if she knew what had happened.

Paramedics wanted to take him to hospital but he refused and later went for a ride with friends, during which he ‘talked to himself, shouted and made 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 “had to disappear for a while because he was completely 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 home to sleep, but he was still acting strange when he arrived. His mother started filming him “to probably show him when he sobered up,” Miss Karaiskos said. He was ‘excited and loud’, jumping around, swearing and shouting his own name before he was seen throwing two punches at the camera and the phone falling to the floor.

“Six minutes later the phone registers his face and he is covered in blood,” the prosecutor said.

Emergency services called to the Henrys’ smart semi on the main road through the village were initially unable to tell whether Mrs Henry was male or female due to the amount of swelling and blood on her face.

Finn was arrested but was not deemed medically fit for an interview 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 Finn’s failure to tackle his addiction and “gross excessive drug intake”. As Finn’s own messages showed, he knew that doing so made him act violently and completely out of character.

Addressing Finn directly, the judge said: “You are an experienced boxer, you stood your ground and it was a prolonged attack from which, I hate to say this, she would have suffered significantly.”

His sister Niamh said her mother had died because her brother had failed to take responsibility for his increasing drug use.

“All this regret because you couldn’t find the breaks,” she told him in a moving victim impact statement read out in court.

“I don’t want to perpetuate the fear I feel,” she continued. ‘I ask that Finn take full responsibility for his actions leading up to that night… to know that he is not the victim in this situation – he is lucky to be alive and have another chance to take his own life and to improve that of the people. of others like him.’

Whether he does so remains to be seen.

His father said that after “long conversations” his son expressed a desire to warn others of the dangers. He said his son had been given a life sentence knowing he had killed his beloved mother.

Finn’s lawyer perhaps summed it up best when he said the tragic case was the “clearest demonstration of the impact that repeated consumption of illegal drugs can have on an immature and developing brain.”

Finn’s father still lives in the house where his wife died, with a photo of his wife prominently displayed in the living room when she was murdered.

He told the court: ‘It was extremely difficult when you lost your wife and finding a member of your own family responsible, but as Finn’s father I am probably the only person who knows the history of the relationship between mother and son .’