Ozzy Osbourne Reflects on Drug-Induced Attempted Murder of Wife Sharon Osbourne: ‘Not One of My Greatest Achievements’

Ozzy Osbourne is reflecting on the night he attempted to kill wife Sharon Osbourne 30 years after the terrifying night. The Black Sabbath singer, 71, and his wife opened up about the incident, which led to his imprisonment for six months, in Biography: Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne documentary, which premiered Monday on A&E.

“[It was] not exactly one of my greatest achievements,” Ozzy said of the attack on his wife. “I felt the calmest I had ever felt in my life. I was just peaceful. … All I remember is waking up in Amersham jail and I asked the cop, ‘Why am I here?’ And he says, ‘You want me to read your charge?’ So he read, ‘John Michael Osbourne, you have been arrested for attempted murder.’” While Ozzy maintained he has no detailed memory of the night, Sharon explained she “didn’t recognize him” that night due to his drug use.

“I had no idea who was sat across from me on the sofa but it wasn’t my husband. He goes to a stage where he gets that look in his eyes, the shutters were down and I just couldn’t get through to him,” she recalled. “And he just said, ‘We’ve come to a decision that you’ve got to die.’ He was calm — very calm — then suddenly he lunged across at me and just dived on me and started to choke me. He got me down on the ground on top of me.”

The Talk co-host reached around on the table near her and luckily was able to locate the panic button, “and the next thing I know, the cops were there.” Ozzy would then spend six months in medical detention as part of a court order, and Sharon ultimately decided to remain married to him. “Thank God the judge put him in treatment for six months. I had time to really think about what he should do,” she said. “I told him, ‘I don’t want the money… but if you do this again, either I am going to kill you or you are going to kill me. And do you want that for the kids?’”

This was not Ozzy’s first experience with the law, as noted in the documentary that his stint in jail as a younger man after breaking into a local shop were not easy. “When you’re in a place full of bad people, it’s a bit of an education,” he said. “They don’t want to kill you, they want to have sex with a young boy with long auburn hair. One month in jail was long enough.”