Former fashion model Tara Lambert may not be a model citizen, but it looks like she’ll be free to conspire another day thanks to one massive mistake.
Lambert was sentenced to prison for trying to hire a hitman, who in reality was an undercover sheriff’s deputy, to kill her husband’s ex-wife. The 35-year-old gave the deputy a $125 down payment to kill Kellie Cooke, the mother of her two stepdaughters, and asked that her body be thrown into a wood chipper.
But due to a indictment with “fatally flawed” language from the prosecutor, an appeals court judge ruled the case against Lambert should never have been allowed to proceed and overturned her conviction, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
According to prosecutors, Lambert met with the undercover officer in February 2016 to work out the details of the murder-for-hire scheme. But she insists she was only joking about the ordeal, including the part about throwing Cooke’s body in a wood chipper.
Lambert has been in prison for the past year after being sentenced to 11 years when she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, but could be released in the immediate future after the judge’s ruling.