A former model accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill the mother of her two stepdaughters has entered not guilty pleas in her retrial.
Tara Lambert was sentenced in 2016 to seven years in prison on a murder conspiracy count.
An appeals court overturned her conviction last year, ruling the case against Lambert should never have been allowed to proceed due to a prosecutor’s error in the indictment language, which he described as ‘fatally flawed.’
The 35-year-old, from Ashville, Ohio, entered the not guilty pleas Wednesday at her arraignment on new charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder.
Lambert is suing her original attorney claiming he provided ineffective counsel.
The judge in the case has allowed Lambert to remain free on a recognizance bond ahead of an April trial.
She spent a year in prison after being sentenced to one count of conspiracy to commit murder.
In the original trial, prosecutors said Lambert, from Circleville, Ohio, met with an undercover police officer posing as a hit man in February 2016 to make arrangements.
Lambert suggested the officer use a wood chipper to dispose of Mrs Cooke’s corpse.
The former model insisted in court that she had been joking, but a jury found her guilty after just 45 minutes of deliberations,
Lambert was cleared of conspiring to murder Mrs Cooke’s husband, Shawn, if he was at home when the hitman came to kill his wife.
The ex-model, who is married to Brandon Lambert, the father of Mrs Cooke’s children, was arrested after giving the undercover police officer a photograph of Kellie Cooke and a $125 payment to have her killed.
The court was told that she also gave the deputy Mrs Cooke’s address and a description of her car.
Lambert said she wanted Mrs Cooke’s body thrown into a wood chipper, but insisted in court that she had been joking.