At First It Looked Like Her Friend Committed Suicide, But Now She’s Being Accused Of Poisoning Her With Eye Drops And Staging Her Death
Pewaukee, Wisconsin. 37-year-old Jessy Kurczewski began taking care of her friend (who has not been named by authorities) in 2018.
Jessy said she was at her friend’s house every other day in the 6 months leading up to her friend’s death. According to Jessy’s boyfriend, Jessy would pick up her friend’s mail, do her shopping, and make sure her bills got paid.
Jessy maintained that she didn’t have a formal agreement for how she got paid by her friend for performing so many duties, and her friend would simply give her money and help her financially.
Eventually, Jessy was granted power of attorney over her friend, and she even became the sole person to inherit her friend’s estate after her death.
On October 3rd, 2018, Jessy called 911 to report that her friend was not breathing and had lost consciousness.
When officers arrived on the scene, Jessy’s friend was lying in a recliner in her living room. She looked quite pale and was surrounded by bottles of medications.
Her friend had crushed up medication sprinkled on her chest, and more medication was sitting on a plate next to her recliner. Unfortunately, by the time help had arrived Jessy’s friend had clearly already passed.
At first, it really looked like Jessy’s friend had passed away from a drug overdose, and that she had taken her own life on purpose.
Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department; pictured above is Jessy in her mugshot
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But then the autopsy results on Jessy’s friend came back in January of 2019, and it told a very different story.
Dr. Linda Biedrzycki, the Waukesha County Medical Examiner, found out that the toxicology results on Jessy’s friend pointed to her being fatally poisoned with Tetrahydrozoline.
The medical examiner then reached out to Detective Kohl at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department to share this chilling information.
“Detective Kohl noted Tetrahydrozoline is the main ingredient in eye drops,” a criminal complaint obtained by Chip Chick states.
“Dr. Biedrzycki advised that there should not be any Tetrahydrozoline in someone’s blood but that Victim A had 160ng per milliliter of Tetrahydrozoline in her blood.”
“Dr. Biedrzycki did advise that Tetrahydrozoline could be considered poisonous to the human body and it would be impossible to have that level of Tetrahydrozoline in the blood just by using it in the eyes.”
Ultimately, the death of Jessy’s friend was due to Tetrahydrozoline poisoning. Her death was now not a suicide, but a homicide.
After Dr. Biedrzycki explained all of this to Detective Kohl, an investigation into the death of Jessy’s friend was reopened.
The medical examiner thought that the pills found crushed up by Jessy’s friend on the day she died had to be entirely staged.
Detectives confronted Jessy with the new information on her friend being poisoned to death and explained that she had not been found with any eye drop bottles near her the day she passed away.
Initially, Jessy insisted that her friend kept eye drops all throughout her house.
Jessy said she had never seen her friend drink eye drops, but then she changed her story after meeting with detectives multiple times and said her friend mixed it in her drinks.
As the investigation into Jessy and her friend’s death continued, detectives pieced together that Jessy had stolen $290,210.06 from her friend.
Of that money, $130,204.40 had been written out to Jessy directly on a check from her friend. To top things off, Jessy’s friend did have money before Jessy started taking care of her, but she was basically broke after Jessy intervened.
Another thing investigators learned was that Jessy had a severe gambling addiction, and she would frequently lose large amounts of money doing this.
By now, investigators firmly believed Jessy had “had a motive, the method, and the opportunity” to purposely cause her friend’s death.
This past Friday, Jessy was arrested and charged with two counts of theft and first-degree intentional homicide.
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