LOVE & LETHAL: EYEDROPS, ANTIFREEZE, A CLIFF & A POISONED THANKSGIVING TABLE

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Garrett Fisher. Friday, March twentieth, twenty twenty six, first day of spring. Officially, here's how we are celebrating. Four cases, four defendants, all of them accused of trying to kill the one person who was closest to them. In Salem, Massachusetts, a sixty seven year old woman is on trial right now for allegedly poisoning her living boyfriend with anti freeze. She had already taken out a life insurance policy on him, of course she did. In Gastonia, North Carolina, a former paramedic, a man who spent his career showing up when people were dying and knowing exactly what to do, was just indicted this month for allegedly killing his wife with eye drops.

0:53 Then six years later, he allegedly used the same chemical on his own eleven year old child. Let me walk you through through that again, his wife, then his child, same poison, same method, different victims. In Honolulu, Hawaii, an anesthesiologist is on trial for allegedly asking his wife to take a selfie at the edge of a cliff, pushing her when she said no, then picking up a rock and beating her head with it approximately ten times. And then and this is the part that should keep you up at night, reaching into his bag for syringes. He is a doctor. He brought syringes on a hike. And in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a mother allegedly poisoned the wine at her own twelve person Thanksgiving dinner. Her daughter drank from the bottle. Her daughter died three weeks later. The investigation into that death apparently cracked open a cold case going back to two thousand and seven. Additional deaths are still under investigation, four different methods, four different states, one shared thread. Every single one of these defendants was someone their victim loved. Someone their victim opened the door for someone their victim ate with someone their victim trusted. The most dangerous place in America is not a dark alley.

2:11 It is your own kitchen table. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is daily crime and justice. Let's start in Salem, Massachusetts, fitting given the history. Judy Church, sixty seven years old, on trial this week in Essex County for the murder of her living boyfriend, Leroy Fowler. Leroy was fifty five years old. He had been in a relationship with Judy for years. They shared a home. He trusted her, He sat at her table, slept under her roof, and counted on her. He was not safe. November eleventh, twenty twenty two, Judy Church dialed nine one one, said Leroy must have ingested something. He was pulling the bedroom apart, bloody nose, altered mental status, in medical distress.

3:02 Paramedics arrived and rushed him to the hospital. Leroy Fowler was removed from life support two days later November thirteenth, twenty twenty two. He was fifty five years old. When doctors told Fowler's family that they believed his kidney failure was the result of anti freeze poisoning, they did not hesitate. They called the police immediately. Here is what anti freeze does to a human body. Ethylene glycol, the active compound, is sweet to the taste, clear, odorless, easy to mix into a drink without detection. The body metabolizes it into oxalic acid, which attacks the kidneys. Death from antifreeze poisoning can look at first like unexplained organ failure. It has been used as a domestic murder weapon for decades, precisely because of that. A former Asheville area woman in a different case used a different chemical this year, but antifreeze remains one of the most notorious. The person closest to the victim can administer it without any visible sign of force, and by the time anyone realizes what happened, the damage is done. When detectives went to Church's home to interview her, she refused to let them inside. She stepped outside to speak with them at the door, said Leroy had not eaten or drunk anything before he became ill. Her adult son, Douglas, helpfully suggested the victim had suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning.

4:27 Neither of those. Explanations was consistent with what LeRoy's blood showed. Investigators began talking to Fowler's family, and the picture they described was one of escalating control and fear. Leroy Fowler had a second girlfriend. He had been trying in his own way to maintain a separate life. His steps untold investigators that Fowler had already told him directly that he thought Judy Church was poisoning him. His words, every time I leave Judy's place, I feel better, he knew. He told his stepson he was afraid, and he kept going back. Here is where it gets worse. Investigators found that Judy Church had approached Fowler's step son with a proposal. She allegedly offered him ten thousand dollars to kidnap Leroy from his second girlfriend's house, to tie him up and bring him back to her. That is not the behavior of someone in a troubled relationship. That is the behavior of someone who sees another human being as property, someone who will not let go, someone who has decided that if she cannot have him alive on her own terms, she will find another way. And there is one more detail. Approximately one year before Leroy Fowler's death, Judy Church had taken out a life insurance policy on him. She purchased coverage on the life of a man she had not married, a man she did not legally own, a man she allegedly decided to poison. Judy Church has pleaded not guilty.

6:01 Her defense will have its opportunity to explain all of this to a jury. The kidnapping offer, the insurance policy, the refusal to let police inside, the fact that Leroy Fowler himself suspected what was happening. That jury is sitting in Salem right now, Someone should have believed Leroy when he said he felt better every time he left her house. Someone should have looked more carefully at the insurance policy. Someone should have stopped this before a fifty five year old man ended up in a hospital on life support. Leroy Fowler was fifty five years old. He should be here. He deserved better from everyone around him and from every system that let this unfold. Remember Leroy Fowler. Joshua Hunsucker was a paramedic. Let that settle for a moment. A paramedic, a man trained to respond to emergencies, a man whose job was to show up when someone's body was failing and know exactly what to do. A man whose professional identity was built entirely around saving human lives. On March eleventh of this year, Agaston County, North Carolina grand jury indicted him on charges of first degree murder, insurance fraud, and obtaining property by false pretense. The victim was his wife, Stacy Robinson Hunsucker. Stacy died on September twenty third, twenty eighteen.

7:35 Joshua Hunsucker told friends and family that she had died of a heart attack. She had not. Investigators determined that Stacy Robinson Hunsucker had been poisoned with tetra hydrosylen, a compound found in common over the counter eye drops, the kind of bottle sitting in medicine cabinets across the country, the kind of thing you probably have in your bathroom right now. What most people do not know about tetrahydrosyln is what it does. When it is ingested in any quantity. It causes a dramatic drop in blood pressure, a dangerous slowing of the heart rate, constricted blood vessels, sedation, seizures. In sufficient doses, it causes death, and that death to someone not specifically looking for it, can resemble cardiac failure a heart attack.

8:24 Perhaps a paramedic would know. That charges were not filed immediately after Stacy's death in twenty eighteen. It took investigators more than a year before charges were first brought, and now, in March of twenty twenty six, the grand jury has formally indicted Hunsucker on first degree murder. The insurance fraud and property charges indicate investigators believe he stood to gain financially from Stacy's death. The indictment alone is devastating, but it is not the whole story. In twenty twenty. Four, six years after Stacey died, Joshua Hunsucker was accused of poisoning his own eleven year old child. The child was brought to the hospital with low blood pressure, a dangerously slow heart rate, extreme exhaustion, and constricted blood vessels.

9:11 The child's blood tested positive for tetrahydrosylene, the same compound the same method. Investigators also found a second substance in the child's blood, a prescription antidepressant not approved for use in children. They found that specific drug inside Joshua Hunsucker's truck. He allegedly poisoned his wife, then he allegedly poisoned his own child with the same poison he allegedly used on her mother, And while all of this was being investigated, Joshua Hunsucker allegedly staged his own kidnapping and assault, fabricated an attack on himself, made a show of being a victim. Police found no evidence that any legitimate attack had occurred.

9:53 What they found instead were charges of stalking and harassing his in laws Stacy's family. The theory is that he manufactured the kidnapping scheme to draw attention away from himself and point fingers at Stacy's relatives before his arrest. Someone who stages a fake kidnapping to frame his dead wife's family is not someone who is grieving. That is someone who is managing. That is someone running a strategy. Huntsucker is due back in court for arraignment in April. Stacy Robinson Hunsucker trusted the man she married to take care of her. He had the training to know exactly how to hurt her without leaving obvious marks. He had the knowledge to make her death look like something else, and by prosecutor's account, he used every bit of that training against her.

10:42 Someone should have looked harder. In twenty eighteen, someone should have asked more questions when a paramedic's wife died of what he called a heart attack. Someone should have said something. Remember Stacy Robinson Hunsucker. March twenty fourth, twenty twenty five. The Polly Lookout, Oahu, Hawaii. If you have never been, the Nuanu poly Lookout is one of the most striking vistas in the United States. It sits high above the windward coast of Oahu, overlooking the Coolau Mountains and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Tourists fly from all over the world to stand at that edge and take a photograph. Ariel Konig went there with her husband.

11:27 She did not make it home. The same person who arrived, Gerhart Konig, is an anesthesiologist. At the time of the incident, he was employed at Maui Health. He is currently on trial in Honolulu charged with second degree attempted murder for what prosecutors say happened on that trail. According to Ariel, the couple was walking when Gerhart suggested she pose for a selfie near the edge along a steep cliff drop. She said she did not feel comfortable. She turned and walked away. Gerhart allegedly yelled at her to come back. She did not. He allegedly pushed her into the bushes. She managed to break free and move away again, and then, according to prosecutors, Gerhardt Koenig picked up a rock and used it to strike his wife in the head approximately ten times, while grabbing her hair with his other hand while smashing her face into the ground while she screamed for help. Two women heard the screaming they ran toward it. When they reached the scene, they found Ariel Koenig on her back, her husband on top of her, still hitting her. They intervened, They stopped it. But here's the detail about this case that I keep coming back to. After Ariel broke free the second time, after the push, but before the rock, she says she watched her husband reach into his bag and take out two syringes. He is an anesthesiologist. He knows exactly what syringes do. He chose to carry them on a hiking trail, and when his initial attempt to push her over the edge did not work, and when

13:00 grabbing her did not work, he reached for them. This was not a moment of rage. Rage does not require a packed bag. Rage does not require syringes. This was a plan. Two strangers intervened before those syringes were used. Ariel Koenig is alive today because of them. Following the alleged attack, Gerhart Koenig was arrested and suspended from Maui Health. Ariel Konig filed for divorce and obtained a restraining order. In her divorce petition, she stated that Gerhart had accused her of having an affair and that he had sexually abused and assaulted her during the marriage. The restraining order was later dropped, not because of anything she did, but because gerhart Konick was already being held in custody without bail.

13:44 Ariel Koenig has made clear that she intends to testify at trial. Gerhart Koenig has pleaded not guilty. His defense will have its opportunity to explain the rock, the syringes, and the hiking trail to the jury. Ariel Koenig survived. She she went to that lookout with her husband, and she survived only because she screamed loudly enough for two strangers to run toward the sound. She deserved better than that trail. She deserved better than that marriage, and she is going to walk into that courtroom and say so out loud. Thanksgiving is supposed to be saved. That is the entire cultural promise of the holiday. You gather with your family, you sit at a table someone you love set for.

14:38 You, You eat food they prepared with. Their hands, and you go home full and warm because the people who share your blood are the people who would never hurt you. In November of twenty twenty five, Gudran Casper Leinenkogle hosted a twelve person Thanksgiving dinner at her home in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Leela Livis was there. She was thirty two years old. She was Gudrin's daughter. She came to her mother's table. She accepted a glass of wine. She drank it, so did another daughter and that daughter's boyfriend. All three drank from the same bottle. That bottle had been poisoned with Acetonite trial, a clear, colorless, odorless industrial solvent used commercially as a cleaning agent, a laboratory chemical, and a solvent for spinning fibers. The Centers for Disease Control classifies it as a compound that causes delayed toxicity. The human body metabolizes a satana trial slowly over hours and days, and converts it to cyanide. That delay is the poison's cruelty. Victims feel relatively fine at first, then they do not. After the dinner, three guests began feeling ill. Leela Lives died on December first, twenty twenty five, three weeks after she drank her mother's Thanksgiving wine.

15:56 She was thirty two years old. The two other victims I did in court documents as Maja Lacey and Richard Pegg survived. Gudrin casper Lin and Kugel was arrested on January sixteenth, twenty twenty six. She is charged with two counts of first degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, and three counts of distributing prohibited food or beverages. She has been denied bond. She is facing the death penalty. I want to stop on that second murder charge because this is not just a twenty twenty five case. Investigators say that working the Thanksgiving poisoning case led them to revisit the two thousand and seven death of a man named Michael Schmidt. He was forty two years old. He died in a house fire in Hendersonville.

16:41 That case had been cold for nearly eighteen years. Prosecutors now believe Casperlen and Kougel was responsible for his death as well. At her bond hearing in January, authorities also revealed that she is linked to additional deaths that are still under active investigation. This is not a woman who made one terrible Tich choice in a moment of crisis. This is a pattern. This is a history. Before her arrest, Gudrun casper Len and Coogle owned a restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. She fed people for a living. She understood food, She understood hospitality. She understood the trust that exists when someone sits at your table and accepts what you put in front of them. And, according to prosecutors, she used that understanding as a weapon. She chose a poison that does not act immediately, a poison that lets guests go home feeling mostly fine before it kills them. A poison that requires planning, sourcing, and the kind of calm, deliberate action that is the opposite of impulse. Leela Livis came to Thanksgiving dinner. She sat at her mother's table. She drank from the glass her mother put in front of her.

17:49 She was thirty two years old. She deserved to walk out of that house. She deserved to see thirty three. She deserved a mother who would have done anything to protect her instead of the opposite. Someone should have found this sooner. Michael Schmidt should have had justice eighteen years ago. Leela Livis might still be alive if that case had not gone cold in two thousand and seven. Remember Leela Livis. That is daily crime and justice for Friday, March twentieth, twenty twenty six. Judy Church on trial in Salem, Massachusetts, charged with allegedly poisoning her living boyfriend Leroy Fowler with anti freeze after taking out a life insurance policy on him.

18:32 Jury is seated, trial under way. Joshua Hunsucker indicted in Gaston County, North Carolina. Former paramedic charged with allegedly killing his wife Stacy with eye drops, then allegedly poisoning his own child six years later. Arraignment in April. Gerhard Koenig on trial in Honolulu, anesthesiologists charged with allegedly luring his wife Ariel to the edge of a cliff, beating her with a rock, and reaching for syringes before two witnesses intervened. She survived. She is going to testify and Gudrian Casper Lyne and Coogle awaiting trial in Hendersonville, North Carolina, facing the death penalty for allegedly poisoning the Thanksgiving wine that killed her daughter, Leela Leavis, a second murder charge tied to a two thousand and seven cold case. Additional deaths still under investigation.

19:23 These were not strangers, These were not random attacks. Every single one of these victims was sitting at a table with someone they trusted when their life was put in danger. Do better. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime and Justice. Daily Crime and Justice is an entertainment podcast. We research our stories using publicly available sources, news outlets, court records, tabloids, and, yes, the Internet, which is occasionally wrong. We also use AI assisted research tools, which means we work fast, but we are not infallible. We try hard to get things right.

20:05 Sometimes we won't. If we make an error, we'll correct it. We are not lawyers, investigators, or the court of record. We're storytellers covering cases that matter. Nothing on this show should be taken as legal fact or used in your own legal proceedings. Treat it like what it is, quality entertainment about real events, consumed responsibly.