The mother of murdered April Jones has admitted that her devastating loss almost drove her to suicide.
Coral Jones made the heart-breaking revelation during an interview on ITV’s Lorraine, this week.
A massive search was launched for five-year-old April, in 2012, when she went missing while playing with her friends.
While April’s body was never found, local man Mark Bridger was later charged with her murder and is currently serving a life sentence for abduction, murder and perverting the course of justice.
Coral appeared on the popular chat show along with her 21-year-old daughter Jazmin, and spoke bravely about life in the aftermath of April’s disappearance.
Five years after the murder of her daughter April, Coral Jones tells us how her depression got so bad she contemplated suicide #AprilsLawUK pic.twitter.com/HkLwUrbPWX
— Lorraine on ITV (@ITVLorraine) October 2, 2017
When asked if she had contemplated suicide as she dealt with her grief, an emotional Coral admitted that her thoughts had grown very dark.
“My kids and my husband…had lost a daughter and nearly lost a mum,” Coral explained.
“If it wasn’t for them and my husband, I wouldn’t be here today. It’s been five years, I still suffer from depression, but not like how I was.”
She added that, naturally, April’s death is the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up, and the last thing she thinks about before she goes to sleep.
Coral and April’s father, Paul, previously wrote a book about their ordeal, titled April: A Mother and Father’s Heartbreaking Story of the Daughter They Loved and Lost.
In it, Paul gave a harrowing account of what went through his mind when police informed the Jones’ that fragments of human bone had been found in Bridger’s home.
“Imagining the terror our little girl would have felt in her final moments – not to mention what she would have suffered – had already begun to eat us both up inside,” he wrote.
“All we could hope was that it had been quick and that she’d died before he did the worst of the damage.”
We can’t even begin to imagine what the Jones family have been through, these past five years. They have shown incredible strength, and they are in our thoughts at this time in particular.
