Joshua Lee Hunsucker also denied fraud-related charges tied to his wife’s 2018 death as prosecutors continue separate witness intimidation and obstruction cases.
GASTONIA, NC — A Gaston County man accused of killing his wife by slipping a chemical found in eye drops into her drinks pleaded not guilty Monday to murder, insurance fraud and related charges in a case that has stretched from a 2018 death into a broader dispute over witnesses, money and custody of the couple’s children.
Joshua Lee Hunsucker, 41, entered the plea in Gaston County after a March 26 indictment renewed focus on one of the region’s most unusual homicide cases. Prosecutors say Hunsucker poisoned his wife, Stacy Robinson Hunsucker, over time with tetrahydrozoline, then sought a life insurance payout after her death. The case matters now because it has moved back to center court seven years later, with the murder charge joined by fraud allegations and a defense request to move the trial out of Gaston County because of intense local publicity.
Stacy Hunsucker died on Sept. 23, 2018, after a medical emergency at the family’s home in Mount Holly, west of Charlotte. Authorities have said her death was first treated as a sudden medical crisis. Joshua Hunsucker, then a paramedic, told differing accounts about the moments before she collapsed, according to earlier court records described by investigators. He refused an autopsy and had her body cremated soon after, investigators said. The case changed direction when a preserved blood sample, saved because Stacy Hunsucker was an organ donor, was later tested and showed high levels of tetrahydrozoline, a drug commonly found in over-the-counter eye drops and some nasal sprays. Investigators have said the finding pushed the death from a suspected natural event into a homicide investigation. State insurance investigators and Gaston County police announced his arrest in December 2019. On Monday, Hunsucker stood in court and did not personally address the judge, while his lawyer entered the not guilty plea on his behalf.
Prosecutors say the alleged motive was financial. Court records and past news coverage say Hunsucker collected or tried to collect more than $200,000 in life insurance money after his wife’s death. He is now charged not only with first-degree murder, but also with insurance fraud and obtaining property by false pretenses. Those charges sharpen the state’s argument that the case was not simply about a hidden poison, but about a planned killing followed by an effort to profit from it. Hunsucker has denied the charges. His attorney told the court this week that the case has drawn heavy attention in Mount Holly and the larger Gaston County area, which is why the defense again wants the trial moved. That request, known as a motion for change of venue, argues that years of local and national coverage have made it harder to seat a fair jury. The court had not announced a ruling on that motion as of Tuesday.
The allegations grew beyond the original death investigation in 2024, when prosecutors accused Hunsucker of targeting witnesses and one of his daughters while he was out on bond. According to prosecutors, he staged his own kidnapping in February 2023 and claimed his in-laws had attacked him and injected him with an unknown substance. Investigators later said the reported attack did not happen as described. Court filings summarized in later hearings say he used zip ties in the staged incident and tried to cast suspicion on his late wife’s parents, who are key witnesses in the murder case. Prosecutors also alleged in bond filings that he drove past a witness’s home for years, followed family members, videotaped them and sent a package telling one witness to “drop” the case. In the same set of allegations, prosecutors said one of Hunsucker’s daughters was poisoned with tetrahydrozoline and an antidepressant not approved for children, causing medical problems and a hospital stay. The girl survived. Those accusations remain separate from the 2018 murder count, but they have become central to the state’s argument that Hunsucker poses a danger to witnesses and family members.
The case has also drawn attention because of the unusual substance at its center. Tetrahydrozoline is widely sold in products meant to reduce eye redness, yet in large amounts it can be toxic and, according to prosecutors, deadly. Investigators have said the drug was not discovered through a standard autopsy but through preserved blood that remained available after Stacy Hunsucker’s death. That detail has shaped public attention around the case for years. Hunsucker, a former paramedic and flight medic, has faced scrutiny not only because of the poisoning allegation but because of his medical background, which prosecutors say gave him knowledge of how a poisoning might be disguised as a natural emergency. Separate past allegations also added to the public profile of the case, including a 2021 charge that he set a piece of medical equipment on fire aboard a helicopter while working for a Charlotte-area health system. No injuries were reported in that incident. The helicopter case is not the basis for Monday’s plea, but it has added to the long record surrounding him and to the defense’s claim that publicity has saturated the area.
Legally, the case now stands at a critical pretrial stage. Hunsucker has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, insurance fraud and obtaining property by false pretenses in the death of his wife. Separate witness intimidation and obstruction allegations remain pending from the 2024 arrest. His bond on the murder case was revoked after prosecutors raised the newer allegations, and he remains jailed. The next major questions are whether a judge will move the trial out of Gaston County, whether the state will seek to try the poisoning and fraud counts first, and how prosecutors will present evidence tied to the daughter poisoning and alleged harassment of witnesses. North Carolina first-degree murder cases can carry life without parole or, in some circumstances, the death penalty, though prosecutors had not publicly announced any decision on punishment this week. Court officials also had not announced a trial date. For now, the case remains in the hands of the superior court, with pretrial motions likely to shape what jurors eventually hear and where they will hear it.
Outside court and in repeated television coverage over the years, the case has mixed grim medical detail with the smaller setting of a family tragedy that never settled. Stacy Hunsucker has been remembered in earlier reports as a mother of two and a preschool teacher whose death stunned relatives and friends. The family once lived what looked like a conventional suburban life in Mount Holly, a small city along the Catawba River, before the case widened into accusations of fraud, stalking and harm to a child. Prosecutors have framed the matter as a long-running pattern, not a single act from 2018. The defense, by contrast, has focused in recent filings on the effect of publicity and the need for a fair trial. Those competing views were both present Monday, even in a brief hearing: the state pressing forward on a years-old homicide case with new layers, and the defense trying to slow or relocate the path to trial. As of now, the charges remain allegations, and the court process still has major steps left before a jury is chosen.
Hunsucker’s not guilty plea keeps all charges contested and sends the case into its next round of motions, including the venue request and other pretrial hearings. The next milestone will be the court’s decision on where the case will be tried and whether any hearing dates are set in the coming weeks.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.