After Paramedic’s Wife Died, She Started Babysitting His Kids. Then the Sitter Noticed Something Wasn’t Right (Exclusive)
A preschool teacher turned busy stay-at-home mother to two young daughters, Stacy Hunsucker liked to fill what free time she had with art projects and watching sports on TV.
“She did a lot of crafty things, like making little painted wooden signs,” says her friend Shellie O’Day, who stopped by the Mount Holly, N.C., home Stacy shared with her husband, Joshua, a flight paramedic, and their girls Piper and Willow in the summer of 2018 to pick up a “welcome” sign O’Day purchased for $50.
The pair lingered for a few minutes, chatting about their lives and plans. “She was trying to lose a little bit of weight, which after having kids and being a little older gets hard,” O’Day recalls. “It was a normal, everyday conversation. She seemed fine.”
Yet, some six weeks later, Stacy’s health and apparent happiness took a drastic turn for the worse. On Sept. 23, 2018, Joshua, 40, called 911 and told responding officers he had found his 32-year-old wife “not breathing and blue” when he returned from going outside to check that their vehicles were locked after hearing of a rash of car thefts in the neighborhood.
Stacy was pronounced dead of an apparent heart attack. Outwardly, Joshua seemed subdued by his loss—but his behavior in the days that followed raised eyebrows. Authorities say Joshua refused to allow a coroner to perform an autopsy, stating that he did not want his wife “to be cut up,” even though Stacy had registered to be an organ donor. Within two days, Stacy’s body was cremated, and Joshua filed a claim for her $250,000 life insurance policy.
Stacy Hunsucker and her daughters Piper and Willow.
Tipped off by Stacy’s mother, Suzie Robinson, that Joshua was having a relationship with a coworker, insurance investigators launched a probe into Stacy’s death. State authorities then discovered Joshua had given conflicting accounts of his whereabouts prior to finding his wife unconscious, telling one friend that he had gone for a walk to burn off some energy but another that he was in the backyard cutting wood. In a third account, Robinson says, her son-in-law claimed he was working on his computer with his back toward Stacy when he turned around and noticed her slumped over the side of their couch.
Upon learning Stacy was an organ donor, officials acquired a search warrant and analyzed a routine blood sample that was drawn after Stacy’s death and preserved by the organ donor lab. They made an alarming discovery: Her blood had elevated levels of the active ingredient in eye drops, tetrahydrozoline, a chemical that, if ingested, can cause cardiac arrest.
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On Dec. 19, 2019, Joshua was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and insurance fraud. Prosecutors now believe he began poisoning his wife with eye drops in her drinks “over a period of time leading to her death,” according to court documents. Joshua has pleaded not guilty and was freed on $1.5 million bail.
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News of Joshua’s arrest shook the Hunsuckers’ placid, close-knit community. “I was shocked,” says O’Day. “I was like, ‘If I wrote 10 people that I knew that I thought would commit a crime, he wouldn’t even be a glimpse in my brain. I would’ve never thought that, ever.”
Mike Hensdill/USA TODAY NETWORK/ Imagn Images
Joshua Hunsucker in court
The high school sweethearts were married in Myrtle Beach, S.C., 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. On nights out Stacy and Joshua went to concerts and cookouts with friends. “Just a cute couple,” says O’Day. “I never heard them argue.”
But over the course of more than a decade together, the Hunsuckers suffered several setbacks. According to news reports citing a now-disabled GoFundMe page, Stacy began experiencing unspecified medical problems in 2013 after the birth of her first daughter, Piper. Months later a fire at their home destroyed many of their belongings. The following year Stacy was hospitalized for low blood pressure and a low heart rate after giving birth to her second daughter, Willow. She was admitted again months later and had a pacemaker implanted.
Related: Paramedic Allegedly Used Eye Drops to Kill Wife: ‘She Was a Great Mother,’ Says Friend
“After many tests, the doctors are still stumped to what is [going] on,” the GoFundMe organizer reportedly wrote.
After Stacy died, Joshua’s colleagues allegedly told investigators that Joshua seemed “unaffected” and “quickly moved on” with a new girlfriend, who became a fixture at the home he once shared with Stacy.
“He was all over her all the time,” says babysitter Kailyn Macdonald, who started working for Joshua months after Stacy’s death. “They talked about moving into a house together—not that house, but buying a house together.” Macdonald remembers that Joshua rarely spoke about his deceased spouse. “He never said, ‘I miss Stacy,’ or, ‘I miss their mother.’ I don’t understand that. When my dad died, I literally talked about him nonstop.”
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After Joshua was released from custody, relations with Stacy’s parents—who have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against him and since sought custody of Piper, now 12, and Willow, now 10—grew increasingly tense. Authorities claim Joshua “engaged in a pattern of harassment” directed at Suzie and John Robinson. His strange behavior allegedly included recording and photographing the couple at Piper’s lacrosse practices, making vulgar gestures toward them in public and hanging out in their church’s parking lot while they attended services.
On Feb. 4, 2023, authorities attest, Joshua falsely reported to police that he had been “pistol-whipped in the head,” zip-tied and injected with an unknown chemical by John after Joshua pulled to the side of a road to change a flat tire. But authorities say they were unable to find evidence to support his claim. They believe Joshua faked the kidnapping to “shift responsibility” for Stacy’s death to her parents, according to a motion to revoke his bond.
Shockingly, 20 days after the supposed roadside incident, prosecutors contend, Joshua tried to poison older daughter Piper by putting “the same substance that killed his wife” into a beverage bottle. The alleged poisoning, prosecutors said, was “once again done with an attempt to implicate Mr. and Mrs. Robinson in the death of his wife and remove the Robinsons from the lives of his daughters,” according to the motion. Also found in Piper’s system was a depression medication that is not prescribed for children—the same medication investigators claim to have found in a bag in Joshua’s truck when he filed the kidnapping report against his father-in-law.
Joshua was arrested again on Aug. 6, 2024, and charged with witness intimidation and obstruction of justice. He is now awaiting trial at the Gaston County Jail. Meanwhile Stacy’s loved ones remain sad and perplexed by her death. “Stacy was always such a kind, loving person,” Philip Smith, a member of her church, said. “She only brought goodness wherever she went.”
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