Hunsucker is charged with killing Stacy Robinson Hunsucker to collect life insurance. He filed for her US$250,000 life insurance policy two days after her death, leading her mother to file an allegation of insurance fraud against him.
Hunsucker had Stacy Hunsucker’s body cremated, but a sample of Stacy Hunsucker’s blood was preserved because she was an organ donor. Tests of it revealed tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant used in eye drops for treating redness. Ingesting it can affect the heart or cause a coma, along with other symptoms such as nausea and drowsiness, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Before his wife’s death, Hunsucker allegedly had told two former co-workers that if he killed someone, he would do it with Visine.
Hunsucker was arrested in December 2019 and was released on a bond of US$1.5 million. Leading up to the alleged February 2023 poisoning of his daughter, he had “engaged in a pattern of harassment” against his former wife’s parents, John and Susie Robinson, prosecutors said.
He allegedly routinely photographed and videotaped the Robinsons at his daughter’s sports practices; drove by their house and sent mail demanding they “drop” the murder case; and followed them, made “vulgar gestures” at them in public and suggested he knew when they changed their routines.
On February 4, 2023, Hunsucker allegedly staged his own kidnapping, reporting that he was “pistol-whipped in the head”, zip-tied and injected with something after stopping to change a flat tyre, according to the filing. He accused John Robinson of the attack.
A police investigation found no evidence of such an attack and alleged that Hunsucker created the scenario to “shift responsibility … to the Robinsons for his wife’s death”. The grand jurors charged Hunsucker with attempting to intimidate Robinson with the accusations.
A few weeks later, Hunsucker’s daughter was hospitalised after drinking a beverage in which Hunsucker had allegedly put eye drops, according to prosecutors. The child had a low heart rate, low blood pressure and extreme exhaustion and sleepiness, prosecutors said.
An antidepressant not approved for children was also found in the girl’s system, according to prosecutors. The same drug was found in Hunsucker’s bag when police responded to the false kidnapping report a few weeks earlier, they said.
Hunsucker told medical workers that it appeared his daughter had been given Visine, even though her symptoms shouldn’t have necessarily led him to that conclusion, prosecutors said.
Separately, Hunsucker is charged in a neighbouring county with setting fire to a medical helicopter while working as a paramedic.
