News

Bottles of possible chemicals seized during search of poison-murder suspect’s home

By Amy McCraw, Published: April 17, 2026

Detectives searching the home of a Hendersonville woman accused of using acetonitrile to murder her daughter and in the attempted murder of her other daughter and that woman’s boyfriend seized a bottle labeled with the chemical’s name, according to recently unsealed search warrants.
A “brown bottle with red tape labeled Acetonitrile” was among 56 items seized during a search of the home of Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel at 15 Schmidt Terrace, an inventory of items seized in the search shows.
Other items seized included a laptop computer, flash drives, SD drives, thumb drives, syringes, wine, bottles of alcohol and bottles and buckets of unknown liquids.
The inventory also includes one “black flash drive ‘law’” and another “black flash drive ‘music.’”
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 accused of using acetonitrile to poison wine the three drank during a Thanksgiving meal at her home on Schmidt Terrace.
Casper-Leinenkugel is also charged with murder in the 2007 death of Michael Schmidt, 42, who lived in a camper on property she owned at the 15 Schmidt Terrace address.
A 2008 supplemental report on Schmidt’s cause of death shows he died from “acetonitrile toxicity (probable huffing)”.
Detectives from Henderson County Sheriff’s Office earlier this year executed several search warrants while investigating the deaths of Livis, 32, and Schmidt and the possible attempted murder of Lacey and Pegg.
The search warrants were sealed on a judge’s order until recently.
Warrants to search Casper-Leinenkugel’s cell phone and Pegg’s medical records were unsealed earlier this month along with a warrant to have vials of Pegg’s blood taken during the time he spent in the hospital sent to a crime lab for testing.
Former Superior Court Judge Peter Knight on Jan. 13 also issued and sealed two warrants to search Casper-Leinenkugel’s home. The warrants, unsealed late this week, were issued minutes apart and include similar information.
In an application for the warrants, detective Joseph Tulloch said detectives intended to take photographs at the property, seize computers and other electronic devices, seize items believed to contain chemicals or chemical compounds and seize financial records.
Other items seized in the search of Casper-Leinenkugel’s home include Livis’ cellphone, which Jackson County Sheriff’s Office obtained when officers there found her body in her Cullowhee apartment on Dec. 1, the day after she attended the Thanksgiving meal at her mother’s home. Henderson County detectives also seized Livis’ life insurance paperwork, her journals and funeral arrangements.
They also seized loan documents, will and trust paperwork and other notebooks, folders and boxes containing paperwork.
In addition to the bottle labeled acetonitrile, swabs from the acetonitrile bottle, a black walnut “tincture” and a bottle labeled “ketone drops” were also seized along with a glass jar and a Ziplock bag with a “leafy green substance.”
In the applications for search warrants in the case, detectives described what Casper-Leinenkugel told doctors and sheriff’s deputies shortly after Livis died and Pegg was hospitalized
In December, Casper-Leinenkugel visited the 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.’”
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.
Pegg, 27, was hospitalized for six days for treatment of poisoning after the Thanksgiving gathering and “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.
Detectives in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, have also opened an investigation into whether Casper-Leinenkugel was involved in the 2017 death of her husband, Elroy Lund.
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.”