After the health care worker’s wife passed away, she began to take care of his children. Then the nanny notices something is incorrect (exclusive)

Stacy Hunsucker, a preschool teacher turns into a full-time mother of two young daughters, enjoys filling her free time in art projects and watching sports on TV.

“She did a lot of crafty things like making wooden signs that were barely painted with wood,” said her friend Shellie O’Day, who stopped in Mount Holly, North Carolina, to share with her husband Joshua, a paramedic driver and their girls Piper Piper and Willow in the summer of 2018 for a $50 “welcome” sign.

The two lingered for a few minutes, talking about their lives and plans. “She tried to lose a little weight and after having a baby and getting older, she would be harder,” Ori recalls. “It was a normal daily conversation. She looked good.”

However, about six weeks later, Stacey’s health and obvious happiness made the situation worse. On September 23, 2018, Joshua, 40, called 911 and told the response officer that when he returned from outside to check their vehicle after hearing a nearby car theft, he found his 32-year-old wife “don’t breathe and blue.”

Stacey was declared dead from a noticeable heart attack. Outside, Joshua seemed to be gentle with the loss, but in the days after his eyebrows were raised, his behavior. Authorities said Joshua refused to allow the coroner to perform an autopsy and said he did not want his wife to be “reduced”, even though Stacey had registered as an organ donor. Within two days, Stacey’s body was cremated and Joshua filed a claim for her $250,000 life insurance policy.

Insurance investigators launched an investigation into Stacy’s death, which was proposed by Stacy’s mother, Suzie Robinson, and Joshua had a relationship with his colleagues. State authorities later discovered that Joshua had a conflicting account of his wife’s whereabouts before he found out that he was unconscious and told a friend that he had gone for a walk to burn some energy, but another he cut wood in his backyard. In the third account, Robinson said, her son-in-law claimed that he leaned against Stacy on his computer and noticed her falling on the side of the sofa as he turned around.

After learning that Stacy was an organ donor, officials obtained a search warrant and analyzed conventional blood samples drawn after Stacy’s death and were preserved by the organ donor laboratory. They found a shocking discovery: the level of her blood in the active ingredient in eye drops, tetrahydrazoline, a chemical that, if ingested, could cause cardiac arrest.

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On December 19, 2019, Joshua was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and insurance fraud. Prosecutors now believe that his wife, who had been dripping her eyes into the drink, “causing her death for a while”, said court documents. Joshua pleaded not guilty and was released on $1.5 million bail.

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News of Joshua’s arrest shocked the calm, close-knit community of the Hunsuckers. “I was shocked,” Ori said. “I was like, ‘If I wrote 10 people, I knew I thought it would be a crime, he wouldn’t even catch a glimpse in my head. I would never think of that.”

The high school sweethearts were married in Myrtle Beach, SC, in 2010. At home in Mount Holly, Stacy worked as a teacher at First Methodist Church Preschool, as a paralegal at two law firms and then as a full-time homemaker, while Joshua, a former college football player, became a paramedic aboard medical evacuation helicopters with Atrium Health’s MedCenter Air. At night, Stacy and Joshua join in concerts and cooking with friends. “Just a lovely couple,” Ori said. “I’ve never heard them argue.”

But over the course of more than a decade, the Hunsuckers suffered several setbacks. According to the news report, citing the now-leading GoFundMe page, Stacy began experiencing unspecified medical problems in 2013 after the birth of her first daughter Piper. A few months later, the fire in their home destroyed many of their property. The following year, Stacy was hospitalized for hypotension and suffered from low heart rate after giving birth to her second daughter, Willow. A few months later, she was admitted again and had a pacemaker implant.

Related: Caregivers allegedly use eye drops to kill their wife: “She is a great mother,” said friend

“After multiple tests, what doctors are still considered [going] GoFundMe organizers reportedly wrote.

After Stacy’s death, Joshua’s colleagues allegedly told investigators that Joshua appeared to be “unaffected” and “moved quickly” with a new girlfriend, who became a fixture in the home he once shared with Stacy.

Related: Man accused of poisoning his 10-year-old daughter after allegedly killing his wife with the same substance: da

“He’s always on her,” said Nanny Kailyn MacDonald, who began working in Joshua a few months after his death. “They talk about moving into the house together – not that house, but buying the house together.” MacDonald remembers that Joshua rarely talks about his late spouse. “He never said, ‘I miss Stacey’, or, ‘I miss their mother.’ I don’t understand, when my father passed away, I was actually talking about him.”

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Joshua’s relationship with Stacy’s parents after his release – they filed a lawsuit against him for illegal death, and since then he has sought custody of Piper, 12, and Willow, now 10, growing nervous. Authorities called Joshua “engaged in harassment mode” and targeted Suzy and John Robinson. His strange behavior allegedly included recording and filming the couple during Piper’s hockey practice, imposing vulgar gestures on them in public and hanging out in the church’s parking lot while they were attending the service.

On February 4, 2023, authorities proved that Joshua mistakenly reported to the police that he had been “hit a pistol to the head” and John pulled along Joshua to the side of the road and changed into a flat tire after changing to a ZIP tie and injected with an unknown chemical. But authorities said they could not find evidence to support his claim. They believe that under the motion to withdraw the bond, Joshua forged the kidnapping, transferring the responsibility for Stacy’s death to his parents.

Shockingly, 20 days after the supposed roadside incident, prosecutors believe that Joshua tried to poison his eldest daughter Piper by putting “the same substance that killed his wife” into a drink bottle. Prosecutors said the alleged poisoning was “again attempt to implicate the Robinsons and their wife’s death and evacuate Robinson from their daughter’s life.” A depression drug was also found in Piper’s system, which was not prescribed for children, and investigators of the same drug claimed to have a kidnapping report against his father-in-law in a bag in a Joshua truck.

Joshua was arrested again on August 6, 2024 and was accused of witnesses of intimidation and obstruction of justice. He is now awaiting trial in the Gaston County Jail. Meanwhile, Stacey’s loved ones remain sad and confused about her death. “Stacy has always been such a kind, loving person,” said Philip Smith, her church member. “She can only bring good things where she can go.”

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