Tina Turner opens up about her son's tragic death: "I have no idea what pulled him down"

19 October 2018, 15:24

The soul icon has spoken in depth for the first time about her son's suicide earlier this year.

Tina Turner's 59-year-old son Craig was found dead in July at his Los Angeles home, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

She said he seemed happy in both his professional and personal life, after recently finding a new girlfriend.

"I still don't know what took him to the edge," Tina told BBC News, "because at that stage he had said to me that he had never met a woman that he felt that way about."

"He was bringing her to meet me [for] his birthday in August. He had decorated his apartment, that I bought him years ago. He had gotten a new job with a prominent real estate company in California, [which] he was very happy with.

"I have no idea what pulled him down, except something that followed him with loneliness. I think it was something with being alone.

"But when I think that, why didn't he call the new girlfriend that gave him the lift?

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My saddest moment as a mother. On Thursday, July 19, 2018, I said my final goodbye to my son, Craig Raymond Turner, when I gathered with family and friends to scatter his ashes off the coast of California. He was fifty-nine when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby.

A post shared by Tina Turner (@tinaturner) on Jul 27, 2018 at 1:00am PDT

She added: "He was an introverted person, he was very shy, so I didn't know either, except now when I listen back to our last conversations, I notice a change.

"The last few times we talked, the conversations were different, and I didn't know that until after the suicide."

Tina has written about her life in her new autobiography My Love Story.

"I'm happier than I've ever been in my life," she continued. "I'm happier than I ever thought that life would become for me.

"So that means that most of my hardships came while I was young and growing up. And in the last days when normally people suffer from old age and sickness my happiness came.

"I'm really thoroughly happy. I did fall a couple of days ago and broke something so I was in a wheelchair and on crutches so maybe now I'm going through my sick period and I think that will take me through to my 90s.

"I'll be around for a while."