Kristen Hogan (Connecticut State Police).
A Connecticut woman in the midst of a custody dispute with her estranged husband is being accused of spiking his wine and iced tea with a substance commonly found in antifreeze.
Kristen Hogan, 33, faces charges including two counts of attempted murder and one count of hindering an officer. These charges stem from her alleged attempt to contaminate her estranged husband’s wine with ethylene glycol, an incident detailed in Connecticut State Police records. The husband, who remains unnamed in these documents, was hospitalized after feeling unwell on August 10. He had consumed wine that had been opened five days earlier and stored in the refrigerator, wine which he claimed Hogan accessed while he was away.
He informed investigators that he suspected Hogan of tampering with the wine on August 7, coinciding with a scheduled court meeting that she did not attend. While at court, he received a notification that data from Hogan’s cellphone was being uploaded via his Wi-Fi router. Despite their separation, Hogan still had “full unrestricted access to the home,” according to what the husband told police.
On August 10, he took a “small amount” of the wine, later experiencing “multiple awakenings and increased illness” as the night progressed, according to the warrant. By 6 a.m. the following morning, he was “vomiting” and contacted his mother, who found him “slurring his words, staggering, and vomiting,” as stated in the document.
His mother promptly took him to the hospital, where he was initially thought to have suffered a stroke. However, the doctors reconsidered their diagnosis, suspecting ethylene glycol poisoning, a chemical present in products such as antifreeze. Consequently, he was put on dialysis.
The husband accused Hogan, asserting that she was the last individual to have been at his residence before he consumed the previously opened wine.
When confronted by police, Hogan initially denied wrongdoing.
Investigators revealed they discovered searches for “potassium cyanide, potassium ferrycide, citrate-cyanide, potassium thiocyanate, and monoethylene glycol were conducted” on her cellphone, and that “searches for how much of these substances ‘would kill you’ are also present.”
Hogan initially claimed she was “confused about the chemicals and then stated she recognized the word cyanide from the television show ‘Psych,'” the arrest affidavit noted. The defendant did acknowledge buying a bottle of monoethylene glycol in late July, insisting “she was using that specific chemical to clean the carpet at her mother’s house.”
Hogan, however, did apparently eventually admit to mixing the poisonous liquid into her estranged husband’s wine, according to the arrest affidavit.
“Hogan stated she did not know how much ethylene glycol she put into his drink, but stated it was not much but she just poured it in,” the affidavit says. “[An investigating officer] then asked how much wine was in the bottle, to which she stated it was mostly full. Hogan described the wine as the color red and confessed to bringing the bottle of ethylene glycol and dumped an unknown amount into the wine bottle.”
That wine would ultimately test positive for ethylene glycol. So would a bottle of iced tea, which police say Hogan poisoned on a different date from when she spiked the wine. Notably, the child Hogan and the victim share was hospitalized in late September for symptoms similar to his father’s after he drank the poisoned wine. When police asked Hogan if her child “could have ingested the ethylene glycol,” Hogan “adamantly denied” that possibility.
“Hogan stated it was only the wine and the iced tea, and nobody else knew she was tampering with [the victim’s] drinks,” the arrest affidavit said.
The victim said Hogan’s motive for poisoning him was “the fact that Hogan would become the full owner of the residence and would gain full time custody of their child,” the affidavit said.
Hogan, for her part, allegedly told police she never wanted to kill her husband — but that she did want to get him sick as “payback for him being mentally abusive.”
