Tina Turner revealed in a new interview that she was shocked about her son Craig Turner’s July suicide because he had just found love with a new girlfriend and also seemed fulfilled in his professional life.
“I still don’t know what took him to the edge because at that stage he had said to me that he had never met a woman that he felt that way about,” the eight-time Grammy winner, 78, told BBC News on Friday, October 19. “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.”
Tina said she has “no idea what pulled him down,” but she suspects that he struggled with “loneliness.”
“I think it was something with being alone. But when I think that, why didn’t he call the new girlfriend that give him the lift?” 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.”
Craig was found dead at the age of 59 on July 3 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was the “Proud Mary” singer’s only child with ex-boyfriend Raymond Hill. She also shared son Ronnie, 57, with ex-husband Ike Turner, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1978. Ike died from a cocaine overdose at age 76 in 2007.
“Death is not a problem for me,” Tina, who has been married to music producer Erwin Bach since 2013, told BBC News on Friday while discussing her own mortality. “I really don’t mind leaving.”
That said, the music legend added, “I’ll be around for a while.”
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
