‘RHOBH’s Erika Jayne Breaks Silence on Estranged Husband Tom Girardi’s Guilty Verdict

Erika Girardi doesn’t know if she’ll “ever get over” Tom Girardi’s conviction.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, 53, reacted to the August 2024 conviction of her estranged husband on four counts of wire fraud during the Bravo show’s Season 14 finale on Tuesday, March 25, admitting that she “never saw this coming.”

“Tom was loved, he was admired, he was accomplished,” she said after cameras picked back up following Girardi’s conviction. “And this is how his story ended. I don’t know that I’ll ever get over that.”

The “XXPEN$IVE” singer filed for divorce from the 85-year-old attorney in 2020 after 22 years of marriage. Just months later, Girardi’s legal troubles started making headlines. Jayne has maintained she had no knowledge of his crimes, despite speculation from Bravo fans about her role in the couple’s finances.

Jayne told Kyle Richards elsewhere in the episode that she was “doing so good” before the federal jury handed down their conviction, “And then the next day, I became tired. I started to want to sleep a lot. I just didn’t want to slide back into that terrible place.”

“When I found out about the verdict, the wall started to close in — it immediately took me back a couple of years when everything was just out of control,” she continued in a confessional. “My drinking, my medication, it was just all of this pressure. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God. It’s happening again. It’s happening again.’ I literally felt like I was being dragged down, like I was being dragged under the ground.”

After telling Richards that Girardi was facing up to 80 years in prison, Jayne said that her husband, who was diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s in 2021, “ain’t got 80 days in him,” adding, “It’s very difficult because you think, ‘Well, I know this person differently.’ It f—ked me up inside. This was not what I expected to happen.”

Despite Girardi’s trial having come to a conclusion, Jayne expressed that the trauma is “not over” for her. “I still have s— in front of me, and he put me through a lot,” she said. “This experience with this man, while it was great, this ending is not okay. Not okay for many reasons. And my feelings of sadness, my feelings of being overwhelmed, my feelings of loss and all of it, they’re all very real. And I also don’t have to apologize for my feelings. Because no one lived in that house but the two of us.”