24Baby daughter saved my life...
Ex-partner of tot killer Tighe on grief and pain of murder
THE ex-partner of baby killer John Tighe has described the agony of losing him and said the birth of her daughter two years later saved her life.
In her first interview since her son Joshua was murdered in 2013, brave Natascha Suessbier said she is thankful to “caring” social workers from Tusla for making a crucial intervention.
The staff warned her while heavily pregnant in October 2015 that Tighe, who was then a prime suspect in the death, was a potential danger to their unborn child and insisted they could not raise the baby together.
Natascha said: “If it wasn’t for Tusla I would have never found out the truth or woken up and that could have cost me my second child who could have been hurt or taken into care.
“I think if I didn’t have my daughter, I would be dead as I did have those thoughts. I think it would have been too much but when she was born, I had a reason to get up every morning.”
Following Joshua’s death, Natascha, 28, did not want to believe her partner was responsible, and although there was never the same trust, she agreed to go back to him. She became pregnant for a second time in early 2015 and just hours before she was due to give birth, Tusla social workers informed her she’d have to place her newborn baby in foster care if she did not separate from him.
Tighe, of Lavallyroe, Cloonfad, Ballyhaunis, was given a life sentence at the Central
Criminal Court in 2018 after being convicted of murdering six-anda-half-month-old Joshua at his home.
He had insisted his son’s death on June 1, 2013, was an accident and he told gardai he carelessly left a wad of tissues within baby Joshua’s reach while he went to the toilet.
Expert medical witnesses all agreed in court it would have been impossible for Joshua to form or swallow the “egg-shaped wad’” independently, which was removed during a post-mortem from his throat.
Natascha said the evidence was deeply traumatic particularly the 999 call made by evil Tighe which was played and where she could
hear Joshua take his last few breaths. The German-born woman acknowledges the trial was very painful, but stated it also brought home the reality of what happened, and it stopped some of the denial and disbelief she had over the murder. She is also grateful to the jury who returned a unanimous guilty verdict, adding: “I was relieved because I knew somehow, I was free, and he was going away.
“I didn’t have to worry about him annoying me anymore, trying to get me back and I knew that my daughter was safe which was a huge relief.”
Natascha is now the adoring mother of two daughters, aged seven and 11-months, but the horror of her first-born child’s death is with her every hour of every day.
She said a wooden cross adorns Joshua’s grave in Cloonfad, but she’s launched a Gofundme page to finally raise enough money to erect a headstone for him.
Donate via gofund.me/3fd7940d.
I was relieved because I knew I was free NATASCHA SUESSBIER ON GUILTY VERDICT