Vile couple relaxing in garden hot tub weeks before boy’s awful death
POSING in a hot tub without a care in the world – evil Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes relax in the garden just weeks before killing Arthur.
The couple bought the tub to enjoy the spring 2020 heatwave – while the six-year-old boy was forced to stand for hours in their sweltering hallway wearing a heavy, fluffy onesie.
The picture was posted on Instagram by Tustin six weeks before she murdered Arthur in the culmination of what a judge described as the lovers’ campaign of ‘cruel and inhuman’ abuse.
Her social media showed their self-indulgent garden lifestyle during the first Covid lockdown while Arthur was confined to the ‘thinking step’ in the hall. The couple erected a netted gazebo around the tub to shield them from the bazing sun and installed a £350 double hanging chair to snuggle up on.
Less than a month before killing Arthur, Tustin boasted online about buying herself Nike Air trainers and a games console as an early birthday ‘treat’.
Fresh details of Tustin and Hughes’ lifestyle as they abused Arthur, pictured, emerged yesterday after Tustin’s former cellmate told how she never said a word about the dead boy while she awaited trial. Elaine Pritchard, who spent six weeks locked up with Tustin at Eastwood Park Prison in Gloucestershire, said the only time she shed a tear while on remand was for herself – after Hughes ignored her at a court hearing. Miss Pritchard told the Sunday Mirror: ‘Emma hadn’t said anything about Arthur dying. She never mentioned him.’ Instead, Tustin told inmates she was being held in prison because Hughes had ‘neglected’ his son.