Kerry Katona has recalled the time she heard ex George Kay planned to inject their baby daughter with heroin before killing himself.
The mum-of-five, 42, opens up about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her late ex, who is the father of her youngest daughter Dylan-Jorge, eight, and admits he still has 'such a hold on me, even in death', following the former rugby league player's passing at the age of 39 after a drug overdose in 2019.
Kerry and George tied the knot in 2014 but their romance was blighted by abuse, with Kerry claiming her late ex would spit on her, strangle her and hit her while she was pregnant with Dylan-Jorge before telling the former Atomic Kitten singer it was her own fault he was abusive towards her.
Recalling some of her traumatic experiences ahead of the release of her third memoir, Kerry admits she is aware of the fact George isn't around to challenge anything she says and share his version of events but adds how her recollections are 'all fact – and it’s my truth'.
"He was so vile to me. I’m telling you now, if George was still alive and I’d have stayed with him, I’d be dead. I would not be here today," the one-time Queen of the Jungle tells OK! magazine when looking back on her marriage with her late ex.
She goes on to explain how her mum Sue would tell Kerry she as waiting for a knock on the door from the police to say George had killed her daughter.
Kerry confessed she sent pictures of her 'bruised and battered body' to both her mum and manager so they knew if anything happened to her, it was at the hands of George.
Kerry eventually took out a restraining order on George in order to protect her family from her abusive ex and while it wasn't a decision she took lightly, she has no regrets - with her worst fears confirmed following George's death in 2019.
"He had threatened to rape my mum and slash her up in front of me. So I didn’t know what he was going to do next. I was terrified he was going to hurt her or DJ," Kerry shares when recalling a threatening FaceTime with George before his death.
In her new book, the reality TV writes how after her ex died in 2019, one of his friends paid her a visit to tell the star how she had done the right thing in keeping the former rugby player away from daughter DJ.
"Apparently, he’d planned on injecting her with heroin and then killing himself," she writes in Whole Again: Love, Life and Me.
"I still stand by my decision to stop him from seeing DJ and I know I made the right decision. I would stand on his grave and say it," she adds, before admitting she doesn't even know where her late ex is buried.
The star also explains how she doesn't want her daughter growing up thinking her father didn't love her but it's important she's aware of the facts.
Kerry and George met as teenagers when they were students at Padgate High School in Warrington and were childhood sweethearts.
They were reunited in their early 30s and married in 2014, just months after the birth of their daughter Dylan-Jorge, now seven.
She accused him of being violent and abusive during their marriage, and they split up after 12 months. There was a restraining order in place keeping George away from Kerry at the time of his death, and before he died, George had not seen his daughter DJ for over a year.
George, 39, died after crushing a ball of cocaine inside a sock and "eating" the contents, an inquest into his death heard last year.
Kerry is currently engaged to fiancé Ryan Mahoney. In addition to daughter DJ, the star is also mum to Molly, 21, and Lilly, 19, who she shares with Brian McFadden, and Heidi, 15, and Max, 14, from her marriage to Mark Croft
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