Authorities said a Wisconsin couple who have been charged with attempted murder attempted to poison two women the man had dated after meeting them online.
Criminal proceedings filed in the Madison area have charged Paul VanDuyne Jr., 43, and Andrea Whitaker, 41, with stalking, recklessly endangering the public, aggravated violence, and attempted murder.
They made separate court appearances on Friday in Janesville, Dane County, which is also the location of the state capital. Prosecutors said VanDuyne has access to significant resources, and his bail was set at $10 million for him and $4 million for Whitaker.
According to jail records, neither entered a plea and both remained in custody. Requests for comment from the defendants’ separate attorneys were not immediately answered.
One of the two victims, who both met VanDuyne through a dating app and saw him only a few times, talked about how she found a stranger in her garage in April, squatting next to her car, and subsequently realised it was Whitaker.
In redacted court documents, the woman is labelled as the Dane County victim, while the other woman is identified as the Rock County victim. She met VanDuyne over a year ago, went on two dates with him, and informed him that she had no interest in seeing him again, the Dane County lady said in court on Friday.
“I was never his girlfriend, yet he and Andrea developed the delusion that I was,” she stated in court Friday. “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.”
The woman, who attended VanDuyne’s court, stated that she has installed a security system, hides her car, and has people stay with her overnight after learning of the accusations against the pair.
“I need the court’s protection,” she stated. “The community needs the court’s protection.”
According to the prosecution, VanDuyne met Whitaker online around the time he dated the victims and continued their virtual relationship while she was attending out-of-area pharmacology classes.
According to accounts in case records, she moved close after finishing her classes, and the two met in person in the spring.
Princeton University verified that VanDuyne had graduated more than two decades earlier. In court on Friday, his attorney stated that he had worked as a mechanical engineer. He was recently divorced, according to documents in the Rock County case, and began dating the victims after meeting them on unnamed dating apps or websites.
Prosecutors claimed that he and Whitaker formed a conspiracy against the victims after he connected with Whitaker.
According to court filings, the Rock County victim was brought to the notice of authorities in early May after a Wisconsin Poison Centre physician reported that a woman had been hospitalised with thallium in her system.
In the past, thallium was frequently employed to eradicate rodents. It has been prohibited from domestic usage in the United States since 1965 and from commercial use since 1975, primarily due to unintentional poisonings.
“The only way a human could have this amount of thallium in her system is if they were intentionally consuming it,” the doctor, who is only named by her last name, is quoted as adding.
According to the Rock County filings, prosecutors said the victim did not indicate any suicidal behaviour and had trouble coming up with names of potential poisoners, but they were screened, until VanDuyne sprang to mind.
According to the records, she informed officers about texts she had received in early 2025 from the man she dated for almost two years prior, whom she knew only as Paul.
According to the court filings, she provided authorities with VanDuyne’s number, and they began investigating him this month.
After months without communication, she said he texted her in the spring. According to the records, the Rock County victim claimed that he labelled her “evil” and held her responsible for his girlfriend Whitaker’s suicide when she learned of their past relationship.
Whitaker didn’t end her own life.
She really played a key role in the plan to murder the other two women VanDuyne had dated, according to court filings, and they collaborated to contaminate cars and water bottles with poisons they either created themselves or purchased.
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According to the records, the woman who took her middle-school-aged sister to the movies in May caused both of them to get sick, which led to the Rock County victim’s hospitalisation. According to the records, the victim brought her car to a dealership, where employees complained of an unpleasant stench and threw out a storage container they said contained an unidentified substance.
Detectives determined that the chemical was hydrogen sulphide, a poisonous gas, because the woman and her sister reported a stench similar to rotten eggs.
The Rock County victim was still in a wheelchair due to her poisoning, according to Rock County Sheriff Curtis Fell. She probably would have passed away if she hadn’t gotten the medical attention she has, including an antidote that was transported overnight from California, he added.
According to the records, the other victim, a Dane County lady, was impacted by the alleged conspiracy shortly after, in mid-May, when onlookers claimed that someone had broken into her car twice at a Costco parking lot.
According to the records, a witness in the Costco parking lot claimed to have seen a man get into a Chrysler Pacifica minivan that was identified as belonging to VanDuyne.
According to court documents, following one of the events, the victim complained that the bottled water she had left in her car tasted awful. Both cyanide and thallium were detected in the water.
According to the records, authorities reexamined the Rock County victim’s car after realising that the two ladies might have been the victims of the same offender and came to the conclusion that it had been the target of break-ins or attempts with markings resembling those found in the Costco attempts.
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According to the records, detectives obtained a judge’s approval to follow VanDuyne’s path and discovered him making his way to the victim’s home in Rock County. Authorities claim that following that excursion, they discovered a trail camera hanging on a tree across from the victim’s residence.
In other cases, authorities stated in court filings that the couple conspired to poison the victims repeatedly using cyanide, thallium, and abrin, including once inserting a powdered material into a victim’s car’s ventilation system.
According to the documents, authorities stated that rosary pea seeds can be ground to make abrin.
According to the court filings, a tan bag containing many vials was discovered during a search of VanDuyne’s minivan on Thursday. According to the records, authorities discovered a seed grinder at his house and rosary peas in the bag.
According to the records, the FBI hazardous materials team was brought in to assist with the search, and members actively participated on many occasions.
VanDuyne and Whitaker were charged with attempted murder and stalking, and Whitaker was charged with attempted murder and aiding a felon. The offenders were scheduled to appear in Rock County court the following week.
On August 4, VanDuyne is due in Dane County court once more. Whitaker is expected to visit there on July 2.
