Kristen Hogan (Connecticut State Police).
A woman in Connecticut locked in a custody battle with her estranged husband is accused of poisoning his wine and iced tea with a chemical used in antifreeze.
Kristen Hogan, 33, is charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of interfering with an officer in connection with her alleged attempt to mix ethylene glycol with wine belonging to her estranged husband, whose name was redacted from Connecticut State Police documents. The victim was initially hospitalized after falling ill on Aug. 10, after drinking from a bottle of wine he had opened five days prior and had kept in the refrigerator — wine he says Hogan accessed while he was not at home.
The husband told investigators he believed Hogan poisoned the wine on Aug. 7, the day he was supposed to meet Hogan at a court hearing — but she never appeared. The victim told police that while he was at court, he received an alert on his phone that Hogan”s cellphone was uploading data to his Wi-Fi router. Hogan, with whom the victim shares a child, has “full unrestricted access to the home,” the man told police.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
On Aug. 10, the victim drank “a small amount” of the wine — and by the middle of the night, he had woken up “multiple times and became increasingly ill,” the warrant says. By 6 a.m. the next day, the victim “woke up vomiting” and called his mother, who “arrived and found her son slurring his words, staggering, and vomiting,” according to the document.
The man’s mother rushed him to the hospital, where doctors initially believed he was having a stroke. That initial diagnosis was tossed after doctors reportedly “believed he was exhibiting signs of an ethylene glycol poisoning, which is the ingredient in liquids such as antifreeze.” He was then placed on dialysis.
The victim immediately pointed the finger at Hogan, who he said was “the last person other than himself to be in the residence prior to him drinking the already 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.”
