As I Lay Dying singer Tim Lambesis has opened up about the “dark time” in his life when he ordered a hitman to murder his ex-wife.
In a new interview with Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza’s ‘The Garza Podcast,’ Lambesis discussed what happened in his mind that led to the 2013 incident.
“My thinking was so isolated in my own mind and disconnected from my support system that I didn’t really even fathom or realize how much I had lost myself and the core of who I really was,” reflected Lambesis during the interview (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “It’s, like, I was this one person for most of my life, and then for this period of time, I had this very isolated, different type of mindset, and then have since returned to being much of who I was in the earlier part of my life plus, of course, the added perspective of everything I went through.”
He continued,
“I don’t really know how to describe it. I lost myself, I lost my way, and I sat there in a cell being, like, ‘How did I become this person?’ It kind of blew my own mind. And as the mental cloud, the fog went away and I could see clearly, there are so obviously a thousand better ways that I could have gone through a divorce or a thousand better ways that if I wanted to be close with my family or if I felt that burning of a father who felt…
“I can talk about, vaguely speaking, any father who loses his children, there’s a burning feeling of just, like, ‘I’ll do anything to fix this or to make this right or to maintain this relationship.’ But just ‘cause you feel like you would be willing to do anything to maintain what matters to you the most in the world doesn’t mean you show that those are your best options. And I saw clearly sitting there thinking in a cell, ‘Wow, I could have handled this a thousand different ways,’ and the fact that in my mindset I thought at the time this was the best way to handle the situation, it blew my own mind. It’s, like, how did I even think that? It just was shocking. And there’s really no defense or no way to take away what I did other than that, thankfully, there was actually no true physical harm of any kind.”
At the time of the incident, Lambesis was getting into the “gym culture” and bodybuilding, which, according to his lawyer at the time of his sentencing, caused a physical and mental change in the singer. Lambesis had gone from taking supplements to using steroids, causing him to be “irritable” and “lose God.”
Lambesis’ then-wife Meggan had filed for divorce from the singer in 2012, months after receiving a concerning email from him saying he no longer loved her and lost his faith in God. The email also included a reference to the film ‘Total Recall’ where Arnold Schwartzenegger’s character shoots his wife before saying “consider that a divorce.”
More concern was expressed when Lambesis told someone at his gym in April 2013 that he wanted to kill his wife. That prompted an undercover cop operation, where he told the cop that he was upset that his wife wouldn’t let him see or interact with their three adopted children and that she would be getting up to 60% of his earnings in the divorce.
Lambesis pleaded guilty to the allegations in February 2014 and ended up serving two years of a six-year sentence. He was paroled in 2016 and has completed his parole requirements.
Continued Lambesis in the new interview, talking about how he will need to prove himself to the public that he is no longer in the mindset he was in 2013,
“Knowing that I’m relatively young and I have the rest of my life to demonstrate to myself, beyond other people, that that is a very isolated, dark thought process in my life. And if that is an isolated, dark thought process, over the course of 30. 40, 50 years, you’ll see that. But I can’t prove that to anybody, coming out of prison, like, ‘Hey, guys. I’m changed. I’m good.’ They have to say, ‘Here’s who you were for 32 years. Here’s this dark period of your life. And here’s who you are for the next 20…’ I have at least 20 years till most people in this world are willing to be, like, ‘You know what? Maybe he really did change. Maybe incarceration really did…’ In one of those rare instances where incarceration actually helped an individual; maybe I’m one of those rare cases. But I have 20 years to prove that. So I’m not in a rush other than to be myself and let people see that slowly over time.
“I hate talking about it in any kind of contextual way because I feel like it might come across like I’m giving excuses. I’m not. I’m just telling people the context under which these things happened. That’s it.”
Lambesis rejoined As I Lay Dying in 2018 and released their latest album, ‘Shaped By Fire,’ in 2019. The band recently completed the US and European legs of a 2022 tour, their first with their new line-up.
