Drop by Drop, Prosecutor Says, Man Killed His Wife

"They said she had a heart attack," a neighbor in the Charlotte area said. Stacy Hunsucker did have heart problems; she had a pacemaker. But a North Carolina prosecutor says that's not why she died last year. Blood that remained after an organ donation provided a clue, WJZY reports. "It tested high levels of tetrahydrozaline," the prosecutor said. "It's an ingredient in eye drops." Joshua Hunsucker, 35, who posted on social media that he was staying home from work to care for his wife of eight years, poisoned her "with Visine or a similar product," the prosecutor said. He's charged with first-degree murder. A judge set bond at $1.5 million.

Hunsucker collected $250,000 from his wife's two life insurance policies, per the Shelby Star, and it was his mother-in-law's tip about possible insurance fraud that prompted the investigation. He didn't permit an autopsy after she was taken to a hospital and died, an affidavit says, but the blood tested later found tetrahydrozoline at 30 to 40 times normal levels. That much would have a "dramatic effect on her heart," a state insurance fraud investigator said in a hearing, causing it to stop beating. Weeks before Stacy Hunsucker’s death, a woman in South Carolina, about 35 miles away, was charged with killing her husband by putting eye drops in his water. The case was widely covered in Charlotte. (An Iowa man was convicted of murder after first saying his wife had fallen on a rake.)