John T McGowan had hoped sitting in a dentist’s chair in Ridgefield, Connecticut, for a three-hour root canal would be the worst part of his day.
It was November 11th, 2024, and John (66) knew he had a long afternoon ahead. His youngest son, Henry, was struggling with significant mental health issues and was travelling in Europe, far from his parents, his four siblings and his psychiatrist.
In a long phone conversation from Paris the night before, Henry had promised to cut his trip short and come back to the States in a day or two, after a quick stop in London and then Dublin. Henry’s close-knit family members were holding their collective breath awaiting his return.
After the appointment, John received a call. A close friend had just met Henry for lunch in London and was alarmed. Henry, who stood six-foot-two and usually dressed conservatively, was roaming the city in a hot pink faux fur jacket. The friend was alarmed by his paranoid ramblings and thought he might be a danger to others and to himself.
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Within hours, Henry (then 30) was sending troubling text messages to his family. He told them he was off his medication and would see them at Thanksgiving.
Henry needed help, perhaps urgently. As his siblings, mother Maryanne and doctor called the airlines, airport officials, gardaí and British police, John booked an overnight flight to Dublin.
He was certain he could find Henry and save him from himself. He had already done it once before.
In March 2022, more than two years earlier, Henry had slipped out of his apartment in New York City without alerting his family and flown to Europe.
In the months before, it had become clear to his family he was suffering from an acute mental illness, three of his siblings said.
They asked not to be named for fear of having their private trauma known to anyone who ever searches their name on the internet. The account of what happened to Henry and John is based on interviews with them and others, as well as documents reviewed by the New York Times.
After figuring out Henry was heading to France, John and one of his daughters rushed to board a plane. With the help of a New York City police officer working in Paris, they found him in a hospital.
Henry spent a month at a psychiatric hospital in Paris.
John and Maryanne had never especially worried about Henry before the Covid-19 pandemic. He had attended private school and graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He had an active social life and moved to San Francisco after college to work as a data analyst. In late 2021, he moved closer to home, to New York City.
That was when the family began to notice worrisome changes.
A math-minded thinker who was sceptical about ideas that lacked tangible proof, Henry was sending long, stream-of-conscious texts to the family about metaphysical spirituality and a certainty that mystical forces were responsible for connections that were wrongly considered coincidental.
He began spending a lot of money on art his siblings thought was of questionable value. Generally even-tempered, he was now euphoric and bursting with conviction about his new beliefs.
But after his hospitalisation in Paris, Henry seemed to return to himself as he rebuilt his life in New York. He was committed to following his treatment plan and took his medication.
He was doing well at the fintech company where he worked. He met a woman and fell in love. He set out to run the 2023 New York City Marathon, raising money for mental health awareness. He wrote on a fundraising page that he had suffered a manic episode in January 2022 and was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder, resulting in a hospitalisation.
Less than a year later, in October 2024, the anxiety returned. Henry quit his job and broke up with his girlfriend. He was making risky financial investments and was fixated on a global economic crisis he insisted was imminent. He made plans to travel, to Europe and then Bhutan in South Asia, despite his parents’ opposition.
Henry stayed in close touch while abroad, sometimes having hours-long phone conversations with his parents and siblings.
By early November, they were distressed. He had sent a manic-sounding text to a close friend, and the family could tell his mental health was deteriorating.
So when Henry’s friend in London contacted them to say he was alarmed by how Henry looked and acted on November 11th, John hardly paused before booking a flight to Dublin, where Henry was scheduled to fly that evening.
The family wanted gardaí to intercept Henry at the airport and hold him there until John arrived. But after Henry’s plane landed, gardaí were unable to find him. The family had been tracking his location from his phone, but it stopped updating after he arrived at the airport.
John landed in Dublin at about 9am. Two hours later Henry surfaced, leaving his mother a voicemail message saying he loved her and was at a hospital.
He then called one of his sisters and told her he had thrown away his medication, phone and passport at the airport and had run 6½ miles to the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. His thoughts had been racing uncontrollably, he said, and he was hoping to get admitted.
She called her father and told him where to find Henry.
While John and Henry were at the hospital, the information the family received was chaotic. Henry was being evaluated. Then he disappeared, and his father and the hospital staff could not find him. Then they did. John told his family Henry would be admitted. But later he said a bed was not available. John and Henry left the hospital.
In Co Mayo, Lisa Cunningham, an emergency room and medical helicopter doctor, connected with the McGowans to help them navigate the Irish medical system.
John explained that staff members at the Mater hospital had advised them to go to another nearby hospital the next morning. They would spend the night at the five-star hotel Henry had already booked, Ballyfin Demesne in Co Laois.
John thought it would be easier to keep an eye on Henry there. John told Cunningham he planned to stay awake all night, watching over his son to keep him safe.
But Cunningham was convinced Henry needed immediate help. She started making calls and contacted a hospital a short distance from the hotel. The doctor she reached agreed Henry should be admitted as soon as possible.
After speaking to Cunningham about the nearby hospital, the family tried to reach John to convey the new plan.
He was not answering his phone.
One of his daughters called the hotel and told the concierge she urgently needed to speak to her father. The concierge said he would walk around the property to find him and would call back.
But the call did not come.
The McGowans called the hotel over and over. They dialled and redialled John’s phone. Cunningham called the Garda in Portlaoise.
But gardaí were already there, she was told. There had been an emergency.
She texted the McGowans and told them.
The family got through to the Garda just before 9pm. An officer said there was bad news but could not share more.
At 11.30pm, one of the McGowans did an internet search and found a local news article: “A man in his 60s has died after he was assaulted in Co Laois,” it said. “A man, aged in his 30s, was arrested.”
The daughter texted Cunningham the link and wrote: “Henry killed our dad.”
In the months since his father’s death, Henry has been held at the Central Mental Hospital in Portrane, north Dublin.
He has been diagnosed by doctors in Ireland with schizoaffective disorder, a designation with some similarities to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. People with schizoaffective disorder can experience a combination of hallucinations, delusions and disordered thought processes, as well as intense episodes of mania and depression.
On Thursday McGowan was found not guilty of murdering his father by reason of insanity.
The 12 jurors accepted evidence given by two psychiatrists that McGowan was suffering from schizoaffective disorder at the time and fulfilled the criteria for the special verdict.
A judge ordered his committal to the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin, with his return to court scheduled for February 20th.
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
