Ike had disputed the abuse claims in a previous statement. “Sure, I’ve slapped Tina,” he once told an interviewer. “There have been times when I punched her to the ground without thinking. But I never beat her.”
In 1968, she attempted to take her life. “I convinced myself death was my only way out.”
Tina said that she finally broke free from Ike’s control in 1978, when she divorced him and left nearly broke, going on to find happiness with second husband Erwin Bach, who later donated Tina his kidney when she was going through health struggles.
