Ex-husband 'won't shed a tear' for mother who killed their 8-year-old daughter after death in prison

Warning: This story contains disturbing details

Gabriel Batstone says he can finally truly mourn his daughter after the woman who killed her, his ex-wife Lisa Batstone, died in prison this week.

“When we think about Teagan there wont always be the asterisk of like, when will her killer be freed, what risk will that pose to her family,” the father told CTV News in an interview Wednesday after news of the convicted murderer’s death became public.

“At the end of the day Teagan is dead, Teagan has passed, and we will never get the joy of that beautiful 8-year-old girl and those brothers will never get their sister back,” Batstone continued. “So there’s no joy to be found, but there is relief and there’s a sense of comfort.”

At the time of her death at the Fraser Valley Institution in Abbotsford, B.C. on Monday, Teagan’s mother was just over four years into an indeterminate life sentence for second-degree murder. Her cause of death has not been disclosed.

Batstone said it’s always difficult when there are new developments in the case, such as the mother’s failed attempts to appeal for a reduced sentence in 2021 and 2022, and her death now “closes a chapter.”

“It’s hard, but there is an element that the future is safer for us now,” he said.

“Going forward we can truly mourn Teagan, right, just about Teagan and the joy of Teagan, and not also well what about her killer—there is a finality to it.”

Teagan’s mother killed her by suffocating her using a plastic bag in December 2014.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge found Lisa intended to smother her daughter before killing herself, but she ultimately could not follow through with the suicide.

The judge said the woman did not want Teagan to be with her father after her suicide and therefore killing her daughter was a selfish act intended to hurt her ex-husband.

The father said he “certainly” won’t be mourning the woman who “stole 70 years of Teagan’s life.”

“Lisa Batstone deserved a death sentence for killing an eight-year-old girl and although the justice system wasn’t able to mete that out, in reality it did come to pass and I won’t shed a tear for that,” he said.

Now Batstone is calling on policymakers to have more empathy for victims of crime. “We can’t have murderers’ rights being worth more than the rights of the people they killed and the family who love those people that they’ve killed,” he said.

And other families dealing with the same tragic circumstances as him don’t have to go it alone, he added.

He and his wife Stephanie started the non-for-profit advocacy organization Teagan’s Voice to help the families of murdered children.

“As sad as that is, there are other people who are there,” Batstone said. “If you need a voice or a shoulder we exist for those people to help.”

Lastly, the father is urging anyone who thinks a child may be in danger to speak up.

“We have a responsibility too, so I ask for everyone to look out for the children that are in your community and be a caregiver and a guardian,” he said.

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Todd Coyne