According to investigators, a Princeton graduate and his girlfriend attempted to murder two women he met through dating apps using cyanide, rat poison, and a homemade mixture made from ground-up rosary peas.
According to court filings, Paul VanDuyne Jr., 43, and his friend Andrea Whitaker, 41, of Wisconsin, are now charged with attempted murder and rape for aggravated violence, recklessly endangering the public, and stalking as part of their demonic scheme.
After graduating from Princeton University and working as a mechanical engineer, VanDuyne decided to give dating apps a try after being divorced lately. Before meeting Whitaker more than a year ago, he had two brief relationships with the victims, according to the investigators.
Soon after, according to the prosecution, VanDuyne and Whitaker, a student of pharmacology, devised a scheme to contaminate the women’s personal property, including their cars and water bottles, with a range of harmful chemicals.
Apparently, Whitaker was envious of the women.
The poisonings included cyanide, a rodenticide that has been prohibited from sale in the United States since 1975 due to a large number of unintentional poisonings linked to it, thallium, and the deadly rosary pea plant, according to officials.
One of the victims, who lives in Rock County and still needs a wheelchair due to her poisoning, came to the attention of authorities last month after being admitted to the hospital with elevated thallium levels.
According to court filings, a doctor who treated her stated, “The only way a human could have this amount of thallium in her system is if they were intentionally consuming it,” indicating how uncommon the material is.
According to court documents, the poisoning happened while she and her middle-school-aged sister were driving to the movies when they both unexpectedly fell ill.
After the victim brought her car in for maintenance, staff discovered a storage bag inside that contained an unidentified item and detected a bad odour similar to rotten eggs.
Based on the employees’ descriptions of the foul smell, detectives later came to the conclusion that the material was most likely hydrogen sulphide, a poisonous gas.
According to investigators, the person was also poisoned by thallium. According to Rock County Sheriff Curtis Fell, the only thing that saved her was an antidote that was sent in overnight from California.
More than a year ago, the other victim, who hails from Dane County, went on two dates with VanDuyne before telling him she no longer wanted to see him, she testified in court on Friday. According to her, he and Whitaker allegedly devised a murderous scheme based on those two dates.
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“I was never his girlfriend, yet he and Andrea developed the delusion that I was,” she stated.
“This delusion was so strong, they tried to murder me. Their actions and motivations are disconnected from reality. Both have shown their capacity for evil,” according to the woman.
After consuming a bottle of water she had left in her car while parked at a Costco, she became ill. The water tasted awful, she remembered.
Later, witnesses at the Costco said they saw someone breaking into her vehicle before boarding a Chrysler Pacifica minivan, which police later connected to VanDuyne.
When the woman disclosed that VanDuyne had sent her unsettling texts earlier this year, police began to check into him in an attempt to determine who might have wished to harm her.
He allegedly labelled her “evil” in the texts and made up the story that she made Whitaker, who is still alive, commit suicide when she found out they were dating.
According to investigators, the couple even laced a powdered substance into one of their victims’ cars’ ventilation systems as part of their conspiracy.
According to criminal records, officers discovered many glass vials, rosary peas, and a seed grinder in VanDuyne’s house after searching his minivan.
Whitaker is still being held on $4 million bond, while VanDuyne is still in jail on $10 million bail.
Although it was not immediately clear what that meant, prosecutors claim that VanDuyne’s bail is significantly greater since he has access to large financial resources.
VanDuyne is scheduled to appear in Dane County Court on August 4th, while Whitaker’s next court date is July 2.
