As we previously reported, Naomi Judd, the Grammy-winning country music legend, died April 30 at the age of 76. At the time, her daughters, Ashley and Wynonna, released a joint statement saying they lost their mother to “the disease of mental illness. It was later confirmed the cause of death was suicide.
Actress Ashley Judd invited Diane Sawyer and Good Morning America into her home to share some more heartbreaking and unsettling news about her mother Naomi Judd’s death. In a clip posted by this Thursday by ABC, Judd said her specific cause of death was a “firearm” wound. Ashley explained that she’s speaking out because the family didn’t want details to become part of the “gossip economy,” whether through “the autopsy or the exact manner of her death.”
“She used a weapon,” Ashley Judd said. “A firearm. So that’s the piece of information we are very uncomfortable sharing. That’s the piece of information that we are very uncomfortable sharing, but understand that we’re in a position that if we don’t say it someone else is going to,” she continued.
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Ashley Judd said she and her family wanted to shed light on mental illness. She said it is “important to make the distinction between the loved one and the disease.”
“My mother knew that she was seen and she was heard in her anguish and that she was walked home,” Ashley said tearfully. “When we’re talking about mental illness it’s very important to be clear and to make the distinction between our loved one and the disease. It’s very real and it is enough to… it lies, it’s savage and my mother, our mother couldn’t hang on until she was inducted into the Hall of Fame by her peers. That is the level of catastrophe that was going on inside of her. The barrier between the regard in which they held her couldn’t penetrate into her heart and the lie the disease told her was so convincing.”
Naomi Judd was part of the famed duo The Judds, with her daughter Wynonna. They dominated the country charts in the 1980s until Naomi Judd was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1991.
The Kentucky-born singer of the Grammy-winning duo The Judds was set to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But her daughter Naomi said she “couldn’t hang on until she was inducted into the Hall of Fame by her peers. That is the level of catastrophe of what was going on inside of her, because the barrier between the regard in which they held her couldn’t penetrate into her heart, and the lie the disease told her was so convincing.”
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