CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave has confirmed the death of his son Jethro Lazenby at the age of 31.
“It is with great sadness that I can confirm that my son, Jethro, has passed away,” rock band frontman Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds said in a statement Tuesday.
“We would be grateful for family privacy at this time,” Cave added.
Fashion model, rapper, actor and photographer, Lazenby was the son of Cave with model Beau Lazenby and was born in Melbourne in 1991.
He was the eldest of Cave’s four children, all boys.
One of Cave’s twin sons with his current wife, Susie Cave, died in an accidental fall from a cliff near Brighton, England, in 2015. Arthur Cave had taken the psychedelic drug LSD before falling at age 15.
Jethro Lazenby, who used the name Jethro Cave to help his modeling career, was found dead a day after being released from prison last week.
Lazenby’s body was discovered in a Melbourne motel on Friday afternoon, a police statement said.
A coroner will determine the cause of his death. There was no indication that she was the victim of a crime, police said.
He had been in custody since shortly after he assaulted his mother during an argument at their Melbourne home on March 7, leaving her bruised and bleeding, Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper reported.
He pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful assault and violating court orders. He was released from pretrial detention under strict bail conditions on Thursday, the newspaper reported.
A magistrate ordered her to undergo substance abuse treatment and avoid contact with her mother for two years. He was due back in court in June to be sentenced for the assault and for robbing a convenience store.
Lazenby had been jailed in 2018 for assaulting a girlfriend.
His lawyer told a magistrate last month that his client had a long-standing diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Lazenby told London’s Evening Standard newspaper in 2012 that he was 7 or 8 years old when he met his famous father. Cave told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2008 that she would always regret the lack of contact with her son in early childhood.
“But now I have a great relationship with him,” Cave said. “It was tough at the time, but it turned out great in the end.”
Lazenby is survived by a younger half-brother, Luke Cave, who was also born in 1991. The musician’s second child, just a few days younger than his first, was born in Brazil to his then-wife Viviane Carneiro, a Brazilian fashion designer and journalist. . Lazenby is also survived by his half-brother Earl Cave, Arthur’s twin. The twins were born in 2000.
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