Photo: Connecticut State Police
A Connecticut mother is accused of poisoning her estranged husband amid an ongoing custody battle for their son, according to documents released by the Connecticut State Police Department.
Kristen Hogan, 33, was charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of interfering with an officer after she allegedly poisoned wine and ice tea at her estranged husband's home with ethylene glycol, the main ingredient used in antifreeze. Hogan's husband, who wasn't named in the court documents, reportedly drank a "small amount" of wine on August 10, but quickly realized there was an issue after he kept waking up sick thoughout the night.
The husband continued vomiting and felt ill the following day and called his father, who told him to have his mother check on him. The husband's mother found him “slurring his words, staggering, and vomiting" and rushed him to the hospital where doctors initially suspected he suffered a stroke but eventually identified signs of ethylene glycol poisoning.
The man was transferred to the intensive care unit and placed on dialysis for renal failure, at which point he told doctors that he drank wine the night before. The man said the wine had been opened five days prior after he hosted guests for a dinner party and was corked and stored in his refrigerator.
The man later met with Ridgefield Police detectives and said he suspected Hogan had poisoned the wine on August 7, which was the same day they were supposed to meet at a court hearing but she never showed up. The husband, who was present at the court hearing, received an alert showing Hogan's cellphone had connected to his Wi-Fi and uploaded data at the time.
The father told investigators that Hogan had full, unrestricted access to his home as they share a child and she was “the last person other than himself to be in the residence prior to him drinking the already opened wine.” Hogan initially denied poisoning her estranged husband when confronted by police, however, investigators found her cellphone contained searches for several toxic substances including “potassium cyanide” and “monoethylene glycol,” as well as questions such as "how much of these substances would kill you."
Hogan claimed she "was confused about the chemicals and then stated she recognized the word cyanide from the television show Psych,” while also acknowledging that she purchased a bottle of monoethlyene glycol in late July, but said she used it "to clean the carpet at her mother's house." Hogan was told that the wine tested positive for ethylene glycol and continued denying she poisoned it but eventually confessed to mixing the toxic liquid, claiming she “never wanted to kill him but just wanted to make him sick as payback for being mentally abusive.”
“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 states. “[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.”
Detectives also told Hogan that her son may have potentially consumed some of the poison, which she "adamantly denied" being possible, though the child was hospitalized in late September after suffering symptoms similar to his father.
“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 states.
The husband told police that he believes his estranged wife poisoned him in order to "become the full owner of the residence and would gain full-time custody of their child.” Hogan was arrested last Friday (October 3) and is currently being held in jail on a $1 million bond, according to the court documents.