Thomas Cohen speaks about Peaches Geldof's death: 'The children were not enough, she had to do it'

Thomas Cohen, father of Peaches Geldof's two children who discovered her body after she died of a heroin overdose, has spoken about raising his two sons alone.

Musician Cohen, who is still only 25, has given a candid interview to German newspaper Bild, in which he admitted that he "was not surprised" at Geldof's death. "I thought to myself at the moment: 'Yes of course - you had to do that.'"

Geldof, who was 25, and Cohen had an 11-month-old baby Phaedra and two-year-old Astala when she died. Phaedra was left alone for eight hours until Cohen found the body. 

The musician insists that Geldof was "an incredibly great mother", and tried to battle her demons with the life the young couple had created for themselves: "the big house in the country, the dogs, the cat. All this was an attempt to fill the hole. In the end it was not enough."

He added: "In retrospect, I think she thought the children would close the gap. But that just does not work. Heroin is a drug where you're trying to enforce something upon you that is greater than life. It's horrible, you're filling your body with something that killing you."

Cohen shared his memories of finding Geldof's body, saying that he continued with normal life and put parenting first: " What I can remember, it must have been an hour after I've found it, that it's time for the kids' lunch.  They needed their lunch. So I took the children's chairs to the table, took the yoghurts out of the fridge, the bananas... After that we drove [to the London house]. Escorted by the police. The routine I had to keep up with the children helped me a lot."

Cohen said he shows his sons, who are now four and five, photographs of Peaches often, explaining, "this is Peaches, your mother, and that she is no longer with us", because he wants them to remember who she was. 

His greatest wish is to give the children stability and happiness. "I want them to be happy," he said in the video interview. "I don't care what they end up doing. They are miraculously having happy childhoods which hopefully leads to happy fruitful lives."

During the inquest in Geldof's death in 2014, Cohen confirmed that she had been attending treatment for addiction for two years and was undergoing weekly drug tests, which she maintained were coming back clean. He said that, at the time, he believed her. 

Police found a bag containing 6.9g of high grade heroin, along with drug paraphernalia hidden in a box of sweets near her body. Codine, methadone and morphine were found in her blood stream.

Her death tragically recalls that of her mother, Paula Yates, who died in 2000 of an accidental overdose while at home with her then-four-year-old daughter Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. Her death left the child orphaned, as her father, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, died of a drug-induced suicide three years earlier. Bob Geldof, Yates's ex-husband and the father of Peaches and her sisters Pixie and Fifi, adopted Tiger Lily.