Dad tells of son's horrific drug tragedy (From Bucks Free Press)

David Sibley tells of son's horrific drug tragedy

10:27am Friday 10th February 2012 in Gerrards Cross By Lawrence Dunhill

Denham Golf Course, where Chay Sibley's body was found. Image from Google Street View

A MAN who set himself alight on a Bucks golf course had never been able to forgive himself for killing his mother 14 years ago.

Chay Sibley, 40, had never been able to escape from the horrific incident in 1997 – when he was suffering from acute schizophrenia brought on by taking drugs, his dad told the Bucks Free Press.

An inquest on Wednesday found Mr Sibley, a father-of-four, had taken his own life after his burning body was found by a green keeper at Denham Golf Course on October 17 last year.

His heartbroken father David Sibley, 69, had always feared his son would commit suicide, saying he had loved and ‘idolised’ his mum before going on a stag trip to Amerstam in July 1997.

Chay, a roofer by trade, was said to be a "normal and likeable young man" before he went on the trip to Holland, where he took huge quantities of cocaine and ‘skunk’ – a strong form of cannabis.

Six days after returning home to West Drayton he attacked his mum Rita in the kitchen, saying she was the ‘devil’. After stabbing her he dragged her body into the garden and decapitated her.

Psychiatrists believed he was already seriously mentally ill when he visited Holland, and said he was suffering from acute schizophrenia at the time of the killing.

Dad David, who lives in Uxbridge, said: “You had to see it to believe how hurt he was at what he’d done. The police said it was the biggest tragedy they had ever had to deal with. He was one of the first cases to be classed as a drug induced psychosis.”

Chay was sent to a secure hospital under the Mental Health Act, having pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was released from the unit after two years and gradually started to live a normal life.

But David said: “If he’d got a permanent job that he enjoyed I think he would have gone back to work and settled. But at no time was that boy ever given a proper chance. People would always find out what happened.

“People didn’t actually hold it against him but he was that embarrassed. It came from him, he just couldn’t face people... I wanted him to change his name but he still wanted to be a Sibley.

“A doctor told me 14 years ago that he will attempt to commit suicide at some stage. I’d say to Chay ‘it wasn’t you’ and I talked the family round that it wasn’t Chay....It was heartbreaking.”

David and Rita were no longer together when she was killed.

Asked how he has coped with the tragic event, David said: “You just take it day by day I can’t describe how you get through it, it’s bloody hard work. I could quite easily be a psychiatric nurse from what I’ve been through.”

He added: “Chay had smoked some weed before [going to Amsterdam] but it hadn’t been a problem. I thought like anyone else it won’t do any harm, but it does, it leads you on to stronger stuff. Because it was so easy over there he tried everything.

“Just don’t try it because if you do it won’t happen once, it’s not all right, it’s addictive and it goes on to something stronger.”

The inquest at High Wycombe Magistrates Court heard how Chay had been living in Irvine in Scotland to “start a new life”, but had travelled down to Uxbridge to stay with his father when some of his mental health issues returned.

The inquest heard he had become distressed when he searched his name on the internet and saw the results on Google.

Late on Sunday, October 16, the night before he killed himself, Chay attended St Bernard’s Hospital in Ealing, which was involved in his care several years previously.

Staff told him he would have to go through the local A&E department and coroner Richard Hulett said: “It [St Bernard's] wasn’t the place to go but it was a unit he knew. He’d been an inpatient there himself and that was where he chose to go.”

Father David said he wished he had gone with Chay to the hospital, telling the Bucks Free Press: “I would have stood my ground and would have got him in some way or other. I wouldn’t have walked away.”