The 85-year-old former Cobram man pleaded guilty in Shepparton County Court to making a threat to kill, aggravated burglary and contravention of an intervention order intending to cause fear to safety.
Prosecutor David O’Doherty told the court the couple’s marriage had broken down in 2025 after the man, who was suspected by his family to have dementia, had started talking to scammers on the internet.
He became aggressive at his son and wife after they tried to talk to him about it in April last year, and his wife took an interim intervention order out against him.
At the time the order was taken out, police found a loaded firearm under his bed in the couple’s Cobram house.
Mr O’Doherty said the man moved to another part of the state, but when the final intervention order was served on July 10, 2025, and he discovered he was still not allowed to go to the Cobram house, he became enraged, wrote a suicide note that he left for a son and drove to the woman’s house.
He slipped into the woman’s house when she went outside to put the cat to bed.
When she came inside, he pointed a large knife at the woman’s chest and said “I’m going to kill you and I’m going to take my own life”, Mr O’Doherty said.
“She feared for her life and pleaded with him that ‘you don’t want blood on your hands’,” Mr O’Doherty said.
At one point, he also pulled zip-ties and rope from his pocket and told the woman he was going to tie her up.
The prosecutor said the woman tried to placate the man, by agreeing to everything he asked, in the ordeal, which lasted at least two and a half hours.
It ended soon after 11pm when police came to the house to do a welfare check on the woman, after their son had found his father’s note and the man was missing.
The man managed to get away in his car, but was picked up by police driving in Echuca two hours later.
Mr O’Doherty said the man told police he had the knife and cable ties and had threatened his wife, but that he was “never going to kill her”.
In her victim impact statement read to the court, the man’s wife said “I thought I was going to die … I was terrified.”
“I still have flashbacks to the incident of him standing there with the knife telling me he is going to kill me,” she said.
She was also concerned about what might happen if he was released from jail.
“I feel in my heart of hearts he will never let me go,” she said.
Mr O’Doherty also told the court that the man’s family had told police at the time that he may have dementia, with the man’s defence counsel Amanda Hurst telling the court a neuropsychologist had confirmed a diagnosis of developing vascular dementia that he would have had at the time of the incident.
Ms Hurst said it was not unusual for a person to become aggressive when they were developing dementia.
“This offending, it’s absolutely tragic for the family, the victim — his wife of 64 years — and my client,” Ms Hurst said.
She told the court her client had no prior involvement with the police, and it was only as his cognitive ability declined that he was becoming involved with them.
She said her client had already spent 240 days in pre-sentence detention and asked for a sentence of jail time already served, to be followed by a community corrections order, or jail with a non-parole period that saw him released soon.
She said her main concerns were the effects custody was having on her client, who had developing dementia, diabetes, chronic kidney disease and some heart concerns, where he was “genuinely concerned” he was going to die in custody.
The man will be sentenced on Thursday, June 11.
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 for free and confidential support.
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