Colorado Springs – Serving time in a maximum-security prison forever changed Jereme Lamberth.
“You could see it in his eyes,” his mother, Dagmar Lamberth, told The Denver Post on Thursday. “He was a changed man, … angry. He wasn’t going to go back to prison. He was going to do everything in his power not to go back.”
Dagmar Lamberth is convinced her son is guilty of fatally shooting Colorado Springs police officer Jared Jensen and that he’ll pay the price by facing a death sentence.
“I’m going to have to bury my son here,” said the 50-year-old Lamberth. “I know that is coming.”
Jereme Lamberth was wanted by police in the stabbing of his sister, Melanie Schweinhardt, at their mother’s apartment on Feb. 2.
Police records and Dagmar Lamberth revealed the following:
Melanie was arguing with her brother when she began swinging a green Crockpot by the cord. Jereme then threatened to kill her with a hammer, until his younger brother, James, took it away.
As James left the room to hide the hammer, Jereme took a steak knife from his pocket, put it between his fingers and stabbed Melanie several times.
She ran from the apartment and collapsed down the hall.
“It was a nightmare night,” her mother recalled. “I knew she was bleeding everywhere.”
Jereme drove away before officers arrived.
“I called after him, but he wouldn’t stop,” Dagmar Lamberth said.
As a boy, she said, Jereme Lamberth was a happy child but had learning problems. He never got past a second-grade reading level, and his self-esteem suffered.
“‘Mom, I’m stupid,”‘ Jereme would tell her, she said.
Records show that Lamberth, sent to prison in 1995 for theft and trespassing, was convicted 27 times in prison for offenses, including fighting.
Lamberth said she she’s sorry that both families are losing a son.
“It is a horrible thing,” she said. “There is nothing I can say to make them feel better.”
Correspondent Steven Saint and Post researcher Barbara Hudson contributed to this report.
