Ashley Judd felt ‘cornered’ by police as mother, Naomi Judd, lay dying

Ashley Judd opened up in a powerful New York Times essay about the trauma of discovering her mother, Naomi Judd, as she was dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but being separated from her in her final moments so that she could be grilled by police about what led to her suicide.

“I felt cornered and powerless as law enforcement officers began questioning me while the last of my mother’s life was fading,” Ashley Judd wrote in the essay published Wednesday. The 76-year-old country music legend, who died April 30 in her home southwest of Nashville, Tennessee, had long been public about her struggles with mental illness.

“I wanted to be comforting her, telling her how she was about to see her daddy and younger brother as she ‘went away home,’ as we say in Appalachia,” Ashley Judd said. Instead, the actor said she felt compelled to participate in a series of interviews “that drew me away from the precious end of my mother’s life.” Socially conditioned to cooperate with law enforcement, Judd said she “gushed” answers to many “probing” and personal questions.

The answers provided by her and other family members have ended up in a death investigation report that is likely to be made public under Tennessee law, Ashley Judd said.

The release of these documents is likely to add to the pain that Ashley Judd and her family have been living in since April 30. That’s why the family has filed a petition with the courts to prevent the public disclosure of the file, “including interviews the police conducted with us at a time when we were at our most vulnerable and least able to grasp that what we shared so freely that day could enter the public domain.”

“This profoundly intimate personal and medical information does not belong in the press, on the internet or anywhere except in our memories,” Judd added.

Earlier in the essay, Judd said she is still haunted by the memory of holding her mother’s “laboring body.” Naomi Judd died the day before she and her older daughter, Wynonna, were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. With Wynonna, Naomi Judd scored 14 No. 1 songs in a career that spanned nearly three decades.

“As my family and I continue to mourn our loss, the rampant and cruel misinformation that has spread about her death, and about our relationships with her, stalks my days,” Ashley Judd said, explaining that the horror “will only worsen” if new details surrounding her death are made public. She insisted that the family doesn’t have any dark secrets, given that they have always been “uncannily open,” and her mother was beloved by fans for opening up about her mistakes and struggles.

While Ashley Judd expressed anger and dismay about the way she was subjected to multiple interviews that day, she also said she understands that officers were following methods and interview procedures they had been taught.

However, Ashley Judd said she takes issue with those procedures, calling them “terrible” and “outdated” and saying that the authorities “left us feeling stripped of any sensitive boundary, interrogated and, in my case, as if I was a possible suspect in my mother’s suicide.”