Chris Cornell Wife Vicky Karayiannis Opens Up On Singer’s Final Hours, ‘He Didn't Want To Die’

It’s been over a month since Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell was found dead in his Detroit hotel room hours after performing at a show. Now, in a new interview, his wife, Vicky Karayiannis, has opened up about his final night, revealing new details about the phone call she had with him just minutes before he took his own life.

In a new interview with People Magazine, Karayiannis opened up about the night of May 18, when she was woken up at her home by Cornell remotely turning on the lights in their house through an app on his cell phone, and when she called him, it was clear he had taken some drugs, and she knew something was wrong.

Read: Vicky Karayiannis Says She's “Sorry She Wasn't There” For Chris Cornell

“He was on a rant. I said,‘You need to tell me what you took,’ and he just got mean. That wasn’t my Chris,” she recalls.

She then reiterated how she called bodyguard Martin Kirsten, who told her Cornell was taking double the dosage from his Ativan prescription, and after her husband failed to answer a call back, she has Kirsten break down the doors in his room, where he found him dead in the bathroom of his hotel room.

She also admitted that she partially blames herself for believing her husband hadn’t once again become addicted to drugs, saying that his looking forward to plans with his family, like a trip to Disney World, and the fact that he hadn’t relapsed in several years made her start to feel comfortable, something she now thinks was a mistake.

“Chris was humble, sweet, kind and good, with the patience of a saint,” she said. “...I relaxed, I guess.”

Read: Touching Tributes To Chris Cornell From His Wife And Fellow Musicians And Friends

She also maintained that despite the official toxicology reports and coroner’s ruling that her husband died because of suicide, she still believes that the drugs found in his system, which included Naloxone (Narcan), Butalbital (a sedative), Lorazepam (Ativan), Pseudophedrine (decongestant), and barbiturates, are to blame for his death, and Cornell wouldn’t have taken the action he took that night if his mind hadn’t been affected by the drugs.

“He didn’t want to die,” she said. “If he was of sound mind, I know he wouldn’t have done this.”

Now, though she couldn’t save her husband and prevent his addiction and demons from taking over his life and causing him to leave her and their two children, Toni, 12, and Christopher, 11, she will make sure that the tears they’ve all cried are put to good use. She hopes that sharing just how much pain they've gone through will eventually help others and prevent that same situation from happening to them.

“Addiction is a disease. That disease can take over you and has full power,” she said. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure other children don’t have to cry like mine have cried.”