Bozena Knapinksi: Husband suspicious wife was poisoning him ‘swapped dinners with son to watch her reaction’

A man who believed his wife was poisoning him was so suspicious of her that he would swap dinners with their son and watch his wife’s reaction. Bozena Knapinski, 63, is on trial in the Supreme Court of WA, accused of likely endangering the life, health or safety of her now ex-partner Robert Knapinski by sneaking large amounts of the trace mineral selenium into his water. Mr Knapinski said he had long suffered symptoms of a mystery illness including abdominal pain and began detecting a chemical smell in his water from about 2020. He said he became suspicious in 2022 when he felt better on a four-month trip to Poland but started to feel unwell again upon his return to Australia. On Tuesday, Mr Knapinski testified that he swapped meals with their son “in front of my wife . . . just testing her reaction”. “I would think if she poisoned something, she would react,” he said. He said his wife became upset after he told her about an affair that he had during a seven-month “separation” in 2021 when she moved out of the marital bed and into a bedroom upstairs at their Embleton home. “She said she would forgive but not forget,” Mr Knapinski said. He saved some of his water bottles for testing and secretly videoed his wife squeezing a substance into them. Defence lawyer Michael Tudori said Mrs Knapinski did indeed administer it but only wanted to help her husband feel better. After Mr Tudori accused Mr Knapinski of controlling behaviour — including being very particular about products used in the home — he said their marriage had been mutually abusive. Her shouting “aggravated” him, the alleged victim said “She never used a normal voice,” he said. Their decades-long marriage ended in divorce after Mrs Knapinski was charged. She originally faced an attempted murder charge but it was downgraded — just days before a planned trial in June last year — after an expert clarified to prosecutors that organic selenium was not lethal. Mr Tudori’s questioning of Mr Knapinski included whether he ate Brazil nuts, prawns and ham, all of which contained selenium. He also read out a long list of doctors the man had seen, more than 20 over 15 years including one practitioner he saw 46 times — and suggested he was a hypochondriac. “No . . . I am just trying to find the problem,” Mr Knapinski said. The trial continues.