Woman Accused of Poisoning Friend with Eye Drops, Making It Look Like Suicide: Police

A Wisconsin woman has been accused of fatally poisoning her friend with eye drops then staging it to look like a suicide, according to prosecutors.

Jessy Kurczewski, 37, was charged on Friday with homicide after police claimed she had used a lethal dose of tetrahydrozoline -- a main ingredient in eye drops -- to kill her friend in 2018. As she was accused of stealing more than $290,000 from the victim, Kurczewski was also charged with two counts of felony theft.

On Oct. 3, 2018, Kurczewski called police to say she found her friend unresponsive at the friend's home, according to a criminal complaint. When the Waukesha County sheriff’s department arrived, they found an unconscious woman lying in a recliner, with a "large amount of crushed medication on her chest and a plate directly to the left of her with a large amount of what appeared to be crushed up medication still on the plate," per reports.

Investigators initially believed the death could have been a drug overdose -- although friends of the victim claimed that was highly unlikely -- until the toxicology report came back indicating poison by tetrahydrozoline.

When police told Kurczewski that her friend had died of it and that the scene looked staged for a suicide, she claimed her friend wanted it that way and "must have staged her own suicide with the crushed pills."

It wasn't until July 9, 2019 that investigators got a search warrant for Kurczewski's home and arrested her. While in custody, authorities claim she said she had seen her friend drink "vodka with Visine" on numerous occasions before her death; When she admitted she gave the victim a water bottle filled with six bottles of Visine, Kurczewski said she didn't think it would harm her friend because of the friend's past use of such a cocktail.

Police also looked into Kurczewski's finances and concluded she committed more than $290,000 worth of fraud, including $130,204 that was "transferred fraudulently" by check from the victim to Kurczewski.

Kurczewski made her first appearance in Waukesha County court on Monday. The cash bond was set at $1 million and she is due back in court later this month.