A former Perth nurse has been found guilty of trying to kill her husband with a lethal dose of insulin after becoming his full-time carer following a dementia diagnosis.
There was an audible reaction from the gallery and tears from jurors when Wendy Ruth Sym, 63, was found guilty in the WA Supreme Court on Monday.
Wendy Ruth Sym was found guilty of attempting to murder her husband, whom she cared for.
During a two-week trial, the court was told Sym sent a late-night text message admitting she could “kill him” – referring to her husband, Kenneth – during a dementia-related episode just days earlier of the incident in 2021.
Kenneth, a type 2 diabetic, was taken to Joondalup Health Campus emergency department by ambulance after suffering a fall and becoming increasingly confused.
There, prosecutors say, he experienced a prolonged period of hypoglycemia after receiving a dose of insulin that caused his blood pressure to plummet, which could have killed him, the court heard, if he hadn't been due to the efforts of the hospital staff.
State Attorney Adam Ebell told the court that the evidence indicated that the person who administered the dose on January 15, 2021 was Wendy, a claim he denied.
Ebell said the evidence painted a picture of a person under an extraordinary amount of stress who was at the end of her tether, prompting her to hasten the end of her husband's life.
He told the court the pressure had only increased in the six weeks leading up to the incident, with Kenneth suffering two strokes which worsened his condition.
The court was shown a text message Wendy sent shortly before midnight on January 12, 2021, in which she described being woken up by Kenneth “talking nonsense”, refusing to get into bed and having emptied the contents of the fridge.
