Booze woes made mum dependent on monster

POOR Patricia ‘Patti’ Henry was so vulnerable she had to use her evil neighbour to help run her life.

Years of alcohol abuse left her fragile and damaged, and she would ask “Kenny” downstairs for cash, for drink and to ferry her to the shops.

Police revealed they were not in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, but he preyed on her vulnerability, sexually abusing her and choking her to exert his compelling control.

DS Suzanne Chow, who led the investigation, said: “Metcalff gave her the alcohol and took advantage of her when she was drunk.

“But she relied on him to help her out with shopping, with money, and he took advantage of her. She was totally addicted to alcohol.”

At 46 she had never worked and lived her life on state handouts.

She was statuesque at 5ft 10ins, usually wore her trademark denim jacket and adored her pet cats.

Patti had decided to escape Paisley because of trouble with neighbours.

Metcalff helped her with the flit but within a matter of three weeks or so she was dead.

He had actually put up the £700 deposit for the red sandstone flat in Kirkwood Place, Girvan – probably to try and retain his grip on her.

A panicked text sent to her daughter Alannah around 3am on November 13, 2017 was the last anyone apart from Metcalff heard of her. It said: “Kenny tried to kill me last night because I got him to decorate he lost the plot and strangled me for ages.”

Alannah said the last time she heard from her she was “hysterical” and “crying like she hadn’t before”.

She was convinced she must have come to harm after she failed to contact her on her 18th birthday and her own mum Anne on her 70th.

It emerged that she actually had more than £9000 in her bank account when she was murdered – and Metcalff made the last withdrawal of £250 on the day he killed her.

Patti’s pal Gordon Meekie, 50, helped her move and shared a van with Metcalff to Girvan, when Patti shouted at Metcallf, calling him a “dirty old man, a beast and a rapist”.

On another occasion around that time Meekie said she told him that he had raped her before and there were a couple of sexual assaults.

Patti’s mother Anne Henry said her daughter looked “worn and broken” when she talked to her inside Metcalff’s flat in August 2017.

Sometimes Patti would spend days and weeks there, rather than her home upstairs in the four-in-a-block.

Patti’s younger brother Stephen tried to help her as much as he could.

He said: “She was a pain in the backside, but was our pain in the backside. It’s been torture really. It doesn’t get any easier with time, that’s for sure.”

He described his sister as a “lovable rogue” who would do anything for anyone.