Craig Tattum: the story behind the baby killer (From Thisisdorset)

Craig Tattum: the story behind the baby killer

9:30am Thursday 17th December 2009 in

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WAS it the moment frustration at a crying baby boiled over into brutal violence?

Was it the reckless handling of a tiny 10-week-old by a dangerously heavy drinker?

Only Craig Tattum knows what truly happened to son Ethan on that tragic night in July 2008.

But it was the disturbing severity of the little boy’s injuries which led to the Wimborne man’s conviction for manslaughter this week by a jury sitting at Winchester Crown Court.

Tattum is no stranger to bringing up children. He has a daughter from a previous relationship and when he got together with wife, Louise, he became father to her son.

The couple had their first child together less than a year after they married. Their second child, Ethan, was born by emergency Caesarean seven weeks early after a difficult pregnancy.

He suffered health problems in his early weeks and was suffering from illness in the lead up to his death.

Tattum has always maintained Ethan’s health problems somehow contributed to his death. But sickening photos show severe bruising across Ethan’s face on the night he died.

His left eye buckled like a ping-pong ball, a medical expert told the jury, the result of a serious blow to his face or his head being banged against a hard surface. Severe haemorrhages around Ethan’s eyes and in the lining of his skull were said to be at the extreme end of the spectrum.

Tattum admitted in court to being borderline alcoholic at the time of his son’s death. Having battled back from the brink of alcoholism once, he had slipped into heavy drinking again after being forced off work with a bad back.

He would sneak out to the Co-op in Colehill most nights for a bottle of vodka. At home he would swig the booze in the bathroom or outside, away from Louise, who disapproved.

The night Ethan died was no different. Tattum bought a 70cl bottle of vodka and knocked back most of it in the garden.

At 29 stone at the time, Tattum insisted the amount of alcohol had not really affected him. But experts say he would have been around three times the drink-drive limit when paramedics arrived at the Gordon Road flat.

His behaviour on the night of Ethan’s death was certainly enough to raise immediate suspicion.

Tattum was aggressive to paramedics and hospital staff, intimidating medics and threatening to “kick off” as they tried to save his son.

And almost everyone he came into contact with that night noted one particularly strange trait – his irrational obsessing over Ethan’s bruising.

What caused it, only Tattum knows.

But he will have to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life.