Coroner hears how aristocrat's paranoid, drug addict son committed suicide

File picture: Pexels

File picture: Pexels

Published Dec 6, 2018

Share

An aristocrat’s son who was hooked on potent skunk cannabis killed himself after believing his university flatmates were spying on him, an inquest heard.

Rupert Green, 21, the son of Lord Monson, thought the female undergraduates in his digs had ‘turned against him’ and were hacking his computer.

The biology student told his mother he was the son of God and said strangers gave him the sign of the Cross.

Rupert said his mother Karen Green would have ‘his blood on her hands’ if she refused to believe him. He was diagnosed with a ‘drug-induced psychosis’ and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

After his release, he asked to be readmitted to a mental health hospital because he felt his health deteriorate. But he was told he did not ‘fit the criteria’ and his condition was ‘not a crisis’.

Weeks later he hanged himself in the garden of his mother’s home in Farnham, Surrey. Mrs Green found him and he died in hospital five days later.

At the inquest into Rupert’s death on Wednesday, Mrs Green said: ‘I went around and saw Rupert hanging. The loss of Rupert is a life sentence of devastating proportions.’

His death in January last year is the second tragedy to hit Lord Monson. His elder son Alexander Monson, 28, died after being beaten up in police custody in Kenya in 2012.

Kenyan police claimed he had died of a drug overdose. But a toxicology report found no trace of drugs and an inquest into his death earlier this year ruled he had been assaulted.

In July, three Kenyan policemen were charged with his murder.

Lord Monson told the inquest Rupert’s behaviour became odd after the end of his summer term at Essex University. ‘He told me that at his digs in Essex, which he shared with some undergraduates, they had turned on him, they were cold and spying on him,’ he said.

‘I said, “Rupert, I just don’t think this is likely to be true. I think there is something more here”. He turned around and said: “If you ever say anything like that again I’m going to punch you”.’

Describing his son’s mental deterioration, Lord Monson added: ‘He was a very good artist. He had been painting and it was as if he had reverted to being a four-year-old child and I thought – this poor young man.’

In previous interviews, the writer and hotelier said his son took ‘industrial quantities’ of skunk, locking himself in his room for days as he ‘got blasted’.

Karen Green, whose relationship with Lord Monson ended years ago, spotted signs of psychosis in Easter 2016. ‘He told me girls in his shared house were hacking his computer and seemed to be spying on him,’ she told the court.

‘He said he was the son of God. He said people made the sign of the Cross when he walked by and called him “shepherd”. He said if you don’t believe me there will be blood on my hands. There was more delusional stuff.’

In the months before his death, he tried to kill himself by running in and out of traffic on a busy road. He told his father he would ‘make a proper job of it’ by jumping in front of a train. The inquest continues.

Daily Mail

Related Topics: