Henry McGowan, the New York man accused of murder at a luxury hotel in Ireland, told authorities he was in the throes of an acute psychotic episode when he beat and strangled his father, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Mr. McGowan, 31, told the police at the time that he was acting on a mission from God and working as a force for good in a video-game style alternative reality.
“I will always love you, no matter what,” Mr. McGowan told his father, John McGowan, as he lay dying, according to the Irish police.
Henry McGowan, who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, has been held in a psychiatric hospital for more than a year. On trial this week in a Dublin courtroom, he has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Insanity pleas are rare in Ireland, but a jury can return a so-called special verdict that finds that defendants were unaware of the crime they were committing, unaware that the act was wrong or unable to stop themselves.
At the heart of the case is a gut-wrenching, trans-Atlantic tale of a troubled son and a dedicated father who died after traveling to Dublin on a doomed quest to save him.
On Tuesday, Mr. McGowan — clean-shaven and dressed in a dark suit — sat stoically in the courtroom, looking down as police officers described his chaotic arrival in Dublin and the harrowing, violent death of his father at Ballyfin Demesne, a luxury hotel located near Portlaoise, about 60 miles southwest of Dublin.
There, prosecutors say, Henry McGowan choked, beat and strangled his father, who he was convinced was an impostor at the center of an evil global conspiracy.
Prosecutors said the younger Mr. McGowan landed in Ireland on a late-night flight from London on Nov. 11, 2024. He was wearing a bright pink faux fur coat, easily spotted in security camera footage. In interviews with detectives, he described the coat as a sort of disguise. He said he believed he was being followed, and that otherworldly forces were telling him what to do.
“It was like a video game, like being in a different realm,” Mr. McGowan told detectives, according to prosecutors.
The police in London had advised their counterparts in Ireland that Mr. McGowan was on his way to Dublin and required a welfare check. But the Irish police said they couldn’t locate him in the airport, and he slipped away.
In video footage of Mr. McGowan’s arrival that was played for the court, he could be seen pacing in different areas of the airport complex, making at least two trips to off-site parking lots. He eventually discarded all his personal belongings and ran to a train station on the opposite side of the city, the police said.
The footage showed Mr. McGowan — wearing a T-shirt, athletic pants and gloves — hopping over barriers, walking onto empty trains and getting into unlocked cars before he eventually headed to the emergency room at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.
It was there that he was reunited with his father, who had taken a frantic redeye flight from New York to Dublin in an effort to intercept his son after his family had become increasingly concerned for Henry McGowan’s well-being. The elder Mr. McGowan, 66, had undertaken a similar mission once before, caring for his son during a manic episode in Paris in 2022.
But that day in Dublin, doctors at the hospital determined that the younger Mr. McGowan was not in acute mental distress, discharging him with a prescription, prosecutors said.
Less than five hours later, in the basement of the Ballyfin estate, he was back in the throes of crisis, according to testimony. His father — who had briefly mentioned the matter to hotel staff members upon arrival — discovered his son naked near the hotel swimming pool, lying on a lounge chair.
Moments later, the two men walked into an annex of the pool complex. There, prosectors said, Mr. McGowan slammed his father’s head against a wall in a small changing area, squeezed his neck as he counted more than 60 seconds and shoved his fist into his father’s mouth until John McGowan stopped breathing.
In interviews with detectives following the incident, Mr. McGowan said that he had killed his father because he believed that he was an impostor, and that he envisioned himself as a sort of “superhero,” part of a secret mission to overthrow an evil conspiracy.
Not long after Mr. McGowan killed his father, hotel staff members — who had noticed him naked in the pool area — escorted him back to his room, prosecutors said.
When the hotel manager referenced his father, Mr. McGowan replied, “He is not my father.”
Not long after, the staff discovered the body and notified the police. The officers arrived to find the younger Mr. McGowan sitting in the library, staring at a dimming fire.
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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