 VISTA, Calif. (AP) — The lead singer of Grammy-nominated metal band As I Lay Dying pleaded guilty Tuesday to trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife. Tim Lambesis, the 32-year-old lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying, could face up to nine years in prison for asking a personal trainer at his gym last April to off Meggan Lambesis. "He wanted to know if maybe I could find someone to do it for him," the trainer, Brett Kimball, testified at a pretrial hearing, KNSB-TV reported. Kimball tipped off cops, who sent an undercover to meet with the heavily tattooed, long-haired rocker from Carlsbad, Calif. 
 
 Lambesis met the undercover, San Diego County Sheriff's Deputy Howard Bradley, and handed over $1,000 cash for expenses, as well as his wife’s address, including gate codes and pictures of her. “Just to clarify, just so you know, I do want her dead,” Lambesis told Kimball as he sent the “assassin” on his way. Lambesis said his wife, Meggan Lambesis, had restricted his visits with their three adopted children after they separated in September 2012, Bradley testified at a preliminary hearing. In the divorce records obtained by the Associated Press, Meggan Lambesis claims the rocker had become "obsessed with bodybuilding" and was distracted with the children, even falling asleep once while watching them. FILE - In this Sept. 16, 2013 file photo, Timothy Lambesis, a co-founder of the Christian heavy metal band As I Lay Dying, appears in Vista Superior Court in San Diego, Calif. Lambesis pleaded guilty... (Associated Press) 
 
 Timothy Lambesis, 32, remains free on $2 million bond until he is sentenced May 2 on one count of solicitation of murder in Vista Superior Court, north of San Diego. As I Lay Dying formed in San Diego in 2000 and has released six albums, including 2007's "An Ocean Between Us," which reached No. 8 on the Billboard charts in 2007.
– A Christian heavy metal rocker pleaded guilty yesterday to hiring a hit man to murder his estranged wife, NBC San Diego reports. Prosecutors say Tim Lambesis, lead singer of Grammy-nominated California band As I Lay Dying, asked a personal trainer at his gym in April of last year if he could find someone to kill wife Meggan Lambesis, because she had filed for divorce in 2012 and he feared she would be granted a large settlement and would keep their three children from touring with him. Lambesis then gave $1,000 cash and all of his wife's information to an undercover agent who was supposed to carry out the plot, and was subsequently arrested in May. Lambesis was recorded telling the undercover agent he wanted his wife "gone," and when asked by the agent if Lambesis wanted his wife murdered, he said, "Yes, I do," the AP reports. The New York Daily News reports that he was willing to pay the "hit man" $20,000 for the job. In her divorce filing, Meggan Lambesis claimed her husband had become "obsessed with bodybuilding" and tattoos, may have been using steroids, and was inattentive while watching their children to the point that he once fell asleep. Lambesis claimed she started restricting his visits with the children when they separated after eight years of marriage. The 32-year-old will be sentenced May 2; he faces up to nine years in prison on charges of solicitation of murder and conspiracy to commit a crime.