Jack Chambers, 33, from the Sydney suburb of Meadowbank, pleaded guilty in the Shepparton Supreme Court on Friday, February 7, to attempted murder, stalking and five counts of conduct endangering life.
The court heard Chambers and the woman had been in a relationship for four years before she ended it on October 31, 2022.
Just nine days later he called the woman to organise exchanging their personal items.
While the woman suggested they meet in public, he told her to come to his hotel room in Seymour.
Prosecutor Neill Hutton said Chambers locked the door behind her, pushed her on to the bed and choked her.
She said she could not breathe, and believed she passed out, Mr Hutton said.
He then squeezed her neck her a second time, while saying “die, I hope you die”, Mr Hutton said.
On January 11, Chambers drove past her car in a Seymour car park, where she would leave it for work, several times.
The next day, he hired a Toyota Kluger and sat in the same car park for four hours waiting for her to return to her car about 8.15pm.
He followed the woman after she returned to the car, before swerving into the side of her vehicle while travelling at 100km/h, causing her car to spin three times before crashing into a tree on Toolamba Rd at Murchison North.
When she got out, he held her against the bonnet and punched her four times.
She managed to get away and ran to a Kia Sportage, calling “help, he’s trying to kill me”, Mr Hutton said.
The woman got into the car with a couple and a teenager before Chambers drove the Kluger head-on into the Kia at 52km/h.
He then approached the Kia saying “I’ve got a gun, I’ll get it out”, before the man in the Kia punched Chambers in the head and Chambers was detained by the group until police arrived about 9.40pm.
Inside the Kluger were a large kitchen knife, notes to his parents, and a letter to the woman’s family.
In a note to the woman’s family, Chambers said “I didn’t do this out of hate and anger. I did this out of love”.
In a note to his family he spoke of leaving money and assets to certain people and asked to be cremated.
He told them the woman was “the one”.
The woman read aloud her victim impact statement to the court, telling of how she thought she was not going to leave the room in Seymour alive and that she “clearly believed he wanted me dead”.
And then how if it wasn’t for the strangers who stopped to help her after her car was rammed off the road that she believed her “life would have been cut short”.
She also spoke of anxiety she now felt and recurring nightmares she still had.
The woman in the car that stopped to help — who herself received broken ribs in the car-ramming — told the court she “never would have dreamt something like this would have happened so close to home”.
“We were treated as collateral damage,” she said.
She spoke of still experiencing flashbacks to that night, and told how she no longer felt safe on her own.
Chambers’ barrister Glenn Casement told the court there was “no planning or pre-meditation” of the assaults on November 9, 2022 and that Chambers had “not lured her to the hotel room for the purposes of violence” — something the prosecution did not agree with.
Mr Casement said Chambers had autism spectrum disorder and prominent traits of borderline personality disorder.
He also said Chambers did not have any prior criminal history and had “fair prospects of rehabilitation” and asked for a “longer than usual parole period” for rehabilitation purposes.
Chambers will be sentenced at a later date.