News

Search warrants reveal new details in widening poison-murder probe

By BILL MOSS and AMY B. MCCRAW, Published: April 14, 2026

When Elroy Lund died on May 10, 2017, at age 72, his grown daughters immediately suspected that his wife, Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel, may have been responsible.

The two daughters “requested that Elroy’s blood be tested as they believe Gudrun had poisoned him,” according to a search warrant application on file in Sawyer County, Wisconsin.

The authorities — and the daughters — could not have known then that Casper-Leinenkugel would be charged, eight years later with two murders by poison, both before and after Elroy died — one in 2007 and the other last Dec. 1.

In the most recent case, Casper-Leinenkugel, 53, is charged with the murder of her older daughter, Leela Jean Livis, and the attempted murder of her younger daughter, Maija Lacey, and Maija’s boyfriend, Richard Evan Pegg. She is also charged with the murder in 2007 of Michael Schmidt, who lived in a camper on property she owned.

Casper-Leinenkugel’s defense attorney, Paul Bidwell of Asheville, has told reporters that his client “firmly denies the criminal allegations against her and intends to defend herself vigorously.”

Bidwell told the Hendersonville Lightning last month that nothing he’s seen implicates his client in the death of her husband in May 2017.

“Unfortunately, it just kind of adds a whole lot of speculation about this poor woman,” he said of coverage here and in Wisconsin about the investigation. “There’s no allegation against her regarding anything associated with the death of that man. There’s no reason to believe that she has anything to do with anything untoward there.”

The most recent poisoning death investigators link to Casper-Leinenkugel occurred on Dec. 1. Much more is known about the 53-year-old woman’s action around that time, thanks to details from three newly unsealed search warrants.

In December, Casper-Leinenkugel visited AdventHealth hospital, where Pegg was being treated for symptoms of poisoning. She volunteered a description of what happened. She told Dr. Anna Sullivan, the attending hospitalist on duty, “that her daughter had passed away in Jackson County and Gudrun believed it to be due to wine that was consumed at a Thanksgiving dinner the night prior,” a search warrant application said.

She also had framed an explanation for the poisoning: “that the bottle of wine was open when it was presented at the party… (and) that the open bottle was stored in a closet next to chemicals used in the barn” that contained chemicals including rat poison. Casper-Leinenkugel told the physician that “the kids play back there as well and may have ‘got to it.’”

The revelation that the daughters of Casper-Leinenkugel’s husband of two months suspected her in his death, and the disclosure that she visited the hospital where one of her alleged victims was being treated are among the new details contained in the search warrants executed in Wisconsin and North Carolina in a widening investigation that could link three deaths in the span of 18 years to Casper-Leinenkugel, who remains jailed without bond in Henderson County.

Among the other findings in the search warrants obtained by the Hendersonville Lightning were:

• The first death investigators have linked to Casper-Leinenkugel was that of Schmidt in October 2007. “She was also the last person to see the decedent alive when they had a few alcoholic drinks together,” a Henderson County sheriff’s detective said in the search warrant application. Detectives also learned that a life insurance policy, taken out just five days before Schmidt’s death, had been flagged by insurance investigators.
• Pegg, 27, who was hospitalized for six days for treatment of poisoning after the Thanksgiving gathering, “had a cyanide level of 10 at the time of admission to AdventHealth,” when a level up to 2 is considered toxic and anything higher is considered lethal, according to medical records Henderson County detectives received.
• When she voluntarily came to the sheriff’s office on Jan. 14, Casper-Leinenkugel offered a reason for text messages on her cellphone pertaining to the purchase of acetonitrile, the toxic liquid detectives say killed Michael Schmidt and 32-year-old Leela Livis. Casper-Leinenkugel told detectives that she had been “texting a subject that lived in the same house as her that she refers to as ‘Uncle Dan’ about purchasing the chemical acetonitrile from eBay. She stated that the reason that she could not order the acetonitrile herself was because she had tried to log into Amazon and eBay but could not remember her passwords.”
• Sawyer County, Wisconsin, detectives and the county coroner began investigating the death of Elroy A. Lund Jr. in January of this year, when Henderson County detectives notified them of the North Carolina murder charges, suggesting that investigators look into the deaths of anyone associated with Casper-Leinenkugel.
• Although the death of Lund, a regular beer drinker who also smoked, was deemed at the time to be of natural causes, Sawyer County medical examiner John Froemel “now believed (the death) may have been suspicious,” a detective said in a search warrant application in early February. Lund, who was 28 years older than his new wife, died exactly two months after their marriage in March 2017.
• A key piece of evidence in the investigation into Lund’s death was inadvertently fumbled away. Although the coroner at the time, Dave Dokkestul, did draw blood from Lund’s body, as the daughters requested, “that sample had later accidentally been destroyed before it could be tested,” the search warrant said. That leaves investigators with hair, saliva and other DNA material, recovered during the February search, eight years after Lund’s death, to test for poison that may have been in his body.

* * * * *

When Michael Schmidt died on Oct. 29, 2007, authorities at first did not regard his death as suspicious.

A supplemental death certificate filed in May 2008 listed the immediate cause of Schmidt’s death as “acute acetonitrile toxicity (probably huffing)” and categorized it as accidental. Only later did investigators take a second look, using DNA material that had been retained.

Detectives found the case when they conducted a broad search of emergency calls related to Casper-Leinenkugel’s home at 15 Schmidt Terrace in the Big Willow community and flagged the death of Schmidt, who was 42. (He had changed his name to Misha Schmidt in 2005.)

“This death was discovered by Gudrun, and she was also the last person to see the decedent alive when they had a few alcoholic drinks together,” detective Joseph Tulloch said in a search warrant application.

Schmidt had transferred his property at Schmidt Terrace to Casper-Leinenkugel in 2006, Henderson County land records show.

Casper-Leinenkugel told detectives at the time of Schmidt’s death “that she had last seen Misha Schmidt approximately two days prior and that she believed him to be a drug user and alcoholic and that he was coughing for a few days prior to his death.”

While they were waiting for toxicology reports in the Schmidt case, detectives received a letter from an investigator with the Household Finance insurance company.

“A policy had been taken out on Misha Schmidt 5 days prior to his death,” Tulloch wrote. Because “the description of Misha Schmidt from the application did not match the description of Misha Schmidt provided by the Medical Examiner … the case was being flagged for review. Through further investigation it was discovered that there was a $25,000 payout to a Nicolle Schmidt, wife of Misha Schmidt, at the time of his death.”

* * * * *

Roughly 3½ hours northwest of Green Bay and an hour and a half south of Lake Superior, Sawyer County, Wisconsin, has a population of 18,000 and a major outdoor sporting attraction. The Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in the county seat of Hayward features thousands of lures and a 143-foot-long muskie sculpture known as the Shrine to Anglers.

On Feb. 3 of this year, detective Amanda Dantzman of the Sawyer County sheriff’s office filed an affidavit for a search warrant to collect evidence at a “whitish/ivory colored trailer home” on the farm of Dave Majka. The trailer, a rental, was the residence of Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel and Elroy Lund. Specifically, Dantzman asked the court to grant her permission to search for any material that might contain Lund’s DNA, including cigarette and cigar butts, beer cans, hairbrushes or clothes; notes or documents pertaining to his death or phones or computers that could be “examined for any life insurance policy content and search history;” or “ashes of Elroy A. Lund Jr.”

Dantzman by then had been investigating Lund’s death for two weeks, at the direction of the department’s chief deputy.

Sheriff’s deputy Nate Frey and the county coroner responded to the report of Lund’s death on May 10, 2017. Neither at the time found “the death to be suspicious in manner,” Dantzman said in her case synopsis. Within hours, however, Frey got a call from Sonja Rogers, Lund’s daughter, requesting that authorities take a blood sample. Reason: “She believed there was foul play and stated she would not put it past Gudrun to ‘poison’ her father.” Although Frey got no explanation as to “why Sonja believed this,” he noted in his report “previous problems/hard feelings between the family.”

In his original report, Frey noted that Casper-Leinenkugel had made a point of explaining that because of poor circulation her husband wanted the heat to be set at 80 degrees. When he walked into the trailer on that day in May, the deputy found the room to be “extremely hot” and observed “several small space heaters all over inside.” Detective Dantzman said the wife’s comments about the heat seemed to be “irrelevant to the nature of the call” and found it “odd that Gudrun volunteered that specific information” as soon as the deputy arrived. Then she offered a possible rationale: “Det. Dantzman knows from her training and experience that climate plays a role in the body’s process of decomposition after death.”

Coroner Dave Dokkestul, the detective noted, found it "odd that Elroy was found wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and athletic socks despite it being reported that he was always cold."

Sawyer County Medical Examiner John Froemel had reopened the case, too, in January of this year after Henderson County detectives made him aware of the two homicides Casper-Leinenkugel is charged with.

Elroy Lund was no picture of health. An autopsy listed the immediate cause of death as myocardial infarction — a heart attack — on top of cirrhosis, esophageal reflux, alcohol and tobacco use. But the detective noticed from the autopsy photos that Lund’s face and upper chest “seemed to be very blue in color.” For context, she added information she learned from Froemel, the medical examiner: cyanide poisoning “causes cyanosis of the skin — a bluish discoloration due to lack of oxygen.”

When Dantzman arrived to search the trailer on Feb. 4, the couple’s landlords, Jennifer and Dave Majka, told her a local credit union had recently been sending statements to Lund’s address. “They believed this to be odd as he had been deceased since 2017,” the detective said. The Majkas told the detective they “had not opened the mail and had just thrown it away.”

Six days later, Jennifer called Dantzman to let her know another credit union statement had arrived. After getting a second search warrant, the detective opened the envelope. The savings and checking accounts in Lund’s name contained a total of $1,079.94.

* * * * *

In a 2,300-word story on the Sawyer County investigation published on April 8, the Ladysmith News reported that townspeople assumed that Lund was the father of a son born after his death.

“Some friends of Lund were pleased to hear, at the time of his death, that there would be a ‘Little Elroy,’ as Casper-Leinenkugel was believed to be pregnant at the time that he died,” reporter Laura Jennerman wrote. “Exeland locals and friends of Lund believe the nine-year-old son of Casper-Leinenkugel mentioned in news reports is Lund’s son. The Caturias (friends of Lund) referred to the nine-year-old, who they have met a number of times during Casper-Leinenkugel’s visits, as a ‘smart little boy.’”

The search warrants the Lightning reviewed confirm Casper-Leinenkugel’s pregnancy. In the “social history” section of Lund’s autopsy, the coroner reported that he had spoken with “Aubrey at Child Protective Services,” who relayed “concerns that Gudrun was drinking beer while pregnant.” Also in the autopsy report was a reference to a call from one of Lund’s daughters to a sheriff’s deputy “about the paternity of Gudrun’s child.” The coroner noted that he had emailed the state laboratory to “hold onto to Elroy’s blood sample.” There is no reference to a paternity test.

The Lightning reported on Jan. 20 that one family member recalled that Casper-Leinenkugel brought two younger children with her to daughter Leela’s funeral last December.

“She has a little boy about 9, and the little girl looked to be about 3,” Sandra Riddle, who is the mother of Casper-Leinenkugel’s ex-husband, Stacey Shelton, told the Lightning. “Somebody needs to check into her mental state. She wasn’t grieving. The people (Leela) worked with grieved more for her than her mother did. I just thought, maybe she’s in  shock or something.”

* * * * *

A recently unsealed search warrant application filed in January in Henderson County Superior Court contains numerous new details of Casper-Leinenkugel’s involvement at the Thanksgiving weekend gathering at her home, her actions afterwards and her statements to detectives when she voluntarily visited the sheriff’s office for an interview.

The daughters, Leela Livis and Maija Lacey, and Evan Pegg fell ill after attending the meal on Sunday, Nov. 30, at Casper-Leinenkugel’s home at 15 Schmidt Terrace off Big Willow Road. Livis died at her home in Cullowhee the next day. Pegg was hospitalized at AdventHealth in Henderson County after the meal.

In his application for a warrant to search Casper-Leinenkugel’s cell phone, detective Tulloch detailed his interview with the Advent hospitalist who talked with Casper-Leinenkugel when Pegg was in the hospital. Tulloch also received a search warrant for Pegg’s medical records created during his six-day recovery at AdventHealth.

“When I received the records, I reviewed them. I found that on 12/31/2025, a blood test returned from an outside laboratory confirmed that Richard had a cyanide level of 10 at the time of admission to AdventHealth. According to AdventHealth records, blood levels of .5 to 2 of Cyanide are considered toxic levels and levels above 2 are considered lethal,” according to the search warrant.

In a separate search warrant issued in Henderson County on Jan. 6 and recently unsealed, detectives received permission to send samples of Pegg’s blood taken at AdventHealth to the Western Carolina Crime Lab in Edneyville for further testing. The search warrant shows that 16 tubes of Pegg’s blood were seized when the search warrant was executed.

Jackson County investigators had contacted the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office in December after medical examiners found acetonitrile in Livis’ blood at the time of her death, and it “appeared to indicate the toxin was consumed at 15 Schmidt Terrace during the Thanksgiving dinner,” Tulloch said in his search warrant application.

Jackson County investigators determined that Casper-Leinenkugel, Livis, Lacey and Pegg had attended the meal at her home on Schmidt Terrace. Also present, the detective wrote, were “Landon Phillips (reported by Gudrun as her boyfriend in the Jackson County report) and Jeffrey Bosch (reported by Mia to be Gudrun’s boyfriend).”

Both Phillips and Bosch had past business associations with Casper-Leinenkugel, records show.

Bosch is identified on linkedin.com as executive director of the former Bean Werks Coffee & Tea business in Asheville. Records from the N.C. Secretary of State’s Office list Casper-Leinenkugel as business manager and trustee of Bean Werks in 2023 and 2024.

The Asheville Citizen Times reported in February that Casper-Leinenkugel was a co-owner of Bean Werks Coffee & Tea on Haywood Road and had been associated with a variety of other businesses in Buncombe and Henderson counties over the past 20 years.

Bean Werks was dissolved on Nov. 21, 2025, after failing to file annual reports, corporate records show.

Phillips was a manager and co-owner of the former Tolliver’s Crossing bar and restaurant in Asheville. That business was dissolved May 2013, also for failing to file annual reports. Phillips hired Casper-Leinenkugel as bookkeeper at Tolliver’s Crossing in 2009, the Citizen Times reported.

* * * * *

 

Casper-Leinenkugel told investigators that Livis, Lacey and Pegg left the home after the meal and began to feel ill with flu-like symptoms that evening.

Unable to reach her daughter in Cullowhee on the Monday morning after the dinner, Casper-Leinenkugel contacted the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to request a welfare check.

“Gudrun and Landon then traveled to Leela’s residence, where they met with deputies from Jackson County,” detectives said in the search warrant. “Gudrun stated to deputies at the scene that Leela, Mia and Richard all had drank from an open bottle of wine at the party. Gudrun stated that Mia did not drink much of the wine, as Mia tasted the wine then spit it out, saying that it tasted ‘off.’

“Richard and Leela consumed the rest of the wine (and) Gudrun said that both of them had flu-like symptoms. Landon told deputies that the bottle was a screw-top bottle and that they still had it at the house and would bring it to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.”

Phillips later brought the wine bottle he said was from the dinner to Jackson County investigators. A report from Jackson County investigators indicated that both Phillips and Casper-Leinenkugel told them the wine might have caused the sickness Livis and Pegg suffered.

Henderson County detectives on Dec. 30 interviewed Mia Lacey, the younger daughter, about the Thanksgiving gathering. (Sheriff’s reports spell the name Mia; Lacey spells it Maija, pronounced My-a.)

“Mia stated that she was not sure who initiated the wine drinking, whether it was Leela or Gudrun,” detectives wrote. “Mia stated that it was her mother, Gudrun, who retrieved the bottle of wine from a storage closet located adjacent to the master bedroom, which is her mother’s bedroom.”

The closet is used to store various household items, including wine. The bottle had been opened and a small amount was missing when it was offered to those gathered for the dinner, according to the search warrant.

“Mia states that Richard and Leela had a full glass, which was a champagne flute-style glass. Mia stated that both Leela and Richard finished the whole glass, while she had only about a ‘shot’ glass full because a fly landed in her glass,” the warrant said. “Mia stated that her mother, Gudrun, is allergic to grapes, so she did not have any: she drank blackberry wine instead. Mia states that Jeff did not consume any wine.”

Lacey and Pegg left the dinner party at about 8:30 p.m. Pegg began feeling sick around midnight. Around 8 a.m. the next day, Lacey called 911 to transport Pegg to Advent hospital.

* * * * *

When Casper-Leinenkugel sat down with Henderson County detectives at the sheriff’s office on Jan. 14, she produced her cell phone to show text messages. They included texts she exchanged with Lacey and “the final text messages from Leela Livis” before her death, according to the warrant. Casper-Leinenkugel also volunteered the information about “Uncle Dan” purchasing acetonitrile from eBay.

The detective’s application said “a search of this phone would show records of those attempts along with communications with the above people.”

Investigators intended to have the phone examined by a competent analyst to extract “call logs, pictures, instant messages, text messages voicemail messages and videos.”

After a Superior Court judge issued the search warrant on Jan. 29, detectives executed it the next day and seized about “101 GB of data” from the cell phone. The search warrant was returned to Henderson County’s Clerk of Superior Court on March 3.

* * * * *

In business, relationships and routine matters, Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel — still known in Wisconsin as Linda Casper — seems to have skirted the rules, teetered on the edge of the law and then concocted fabulous stories when wrongdoing is alleged.

In lawsuits, she has been charged with fraud, failure to pay employees, business mismanagement. Reporting on her checkered business background in Buncombe County, the Citizen Times quoted one of her restaurant bosses recalling his experience with her. “She frequently changed her background, claiming to be a former pilot, firefighter and EMT,” the restaurant owner said.

She’s piled up eight traffic tickets in North Carolina since 2010 for minor driving offenses: speeding, expired vehicle registration, seatbelt violation, driving while license revoked.

She told people back in Wisconsin she’s from the Leinenkugel family that owns the brewery that is now part of Molson Coors. In an interview with the Lightning, a longtime friend of her dead husband’s said someone in Exeland knew the Leinenkugels. No one in the brewery family knows Linda.

For the bigger things, she had alibis. Failing to pay employees of the Patton Public House, a failed restaurant and bar in Asheville, was the fault of a payroll company.

She seemed to have prepackaged explanations for investigators before they could ask questions: about the hot trailer where her husband died, about the purchase of a chemical that turns to cyanide, about how poison could have gotten into wine.

She faces two charges of murder and could face a third.

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