The ex-wife of a Tennessee man who was sentenced to prison for trying to kill her three times is doing whatever she can to prevent his potential early release.

Fred Wortman was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2015 for the attempted murder of Staci Jones.

The former attorney admitted to poisoning his ex-wife’s toothpaste, trying to hire a hitman and paying a fellow prison inmate to try and kill the mother of his three children as they were going through a divorce.

Wortman is now due to appear before a parole board on September 9, the second time he has made a bid for early freedom in the last 11 years.

But Jones is campaigning to ensure he remains behind bars and has created an online petition which has so far collected 8,400 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon.

‘His crimes were deliberate, calculated, and repeated. More than a decade later, the trauma inflicted on our family remains,’ the petition reads.

Jones is worried that Wortman has not changed and that if he is released he would try to kill her again.

‘We don’t know if he’ll try again. He was pretty persistent before and, you know, not wanting me to be here and, I don’t know that he’s changed. I don’t know,’ Jones told WREG.

During Wortman’s trial, the court heard how he first used a syringe to inject a plant-based chemical called aconitum into his wife’s toothpaste.

In large doses, the substance can cause death from paralysis of the heart, while smaller amounts can cause a burning sensation, dizziness, headaches and difficulty breathing.

Jones ingested a small amount after brushing her teeth and described feeling a burning feeling in her mouth before developing a migraine.

‘They believe because they found syringes with his things that he had put it in the toothpaste kind of deeper. And so I wasn’t getting a full amount,’ Jones told WREG.

One of the couple’s children also became sick after using the toothpaste, Jones claimed.

At Wortman’s sentencing hearing in 2015, prosecutors said his boss noticed he had been using a work computer to search for tips on how to hire a hitman by paying in Bitcoin and how to poison someone.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had an agent pose as a hitman to snare him.

He paid the agent, told her his wife’s address, when she would be home and left potential murder weapons around the couple’s $400,000 house.

While awaiting trial on two attempted murder charges, he then tried to pay a fellow inmate to kill his wife.

He admitted two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of solicitation of first-degree murder and was given a 30-year sentence with eligibility for parole after he served 30 percent of his time.

Wortman previously applied for parole after just four years, ‘because of good behavior and good standing and time reduced,’ Jones said.

His request was denied in 2019 and the parole board said they would not reexamine the case for another seven years.

Jones told WREG that her three children were young when their father attempted to have her killed and that they are now adults.

She said that her two daughters and son support her efforts to keep Wortman behind bars.

The mother added that the children were ‘well protected’ and have had no contact with their father, but she believes that if he were to be released, the first thing he would do is try to speak to them.

She encouraged others to sign the petition not just for her own safety, but that of the general public.

‘I don’t want him to be roaming the streets and having freedom to do what he wants to do. Cause it’s a scary thought,’ Jones said.