News

Timeline of Casper-Leinenkugel poison-murder case

By Lightning Reports, Published: April 22, 2026

Timeline of Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel poison-murder case:

• Oct. 20, 2004: Linda Jean Casper changes her name to Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel.
• March 2, 2006: Casper-Leinenkugel becomes owner of a 2,548-square-foot 2½-bath home on 3.3 acres at 15 Schmidt Terrace off Big Willow Road. Built in 1993, the ranch-style 2,548-square-foot 2½-bath home is valued on the tax books at $385,000. Land records show the purchase price as $0.
• Oct. 12, 2007: Casper-Leinenkugel registers to vote in Henderson County (unaffiliated).
• Oct. 29, 2007: Michael “Mischa” Schmidt, 42, dies at 15 Schmidt Terrace.
• 2016: Casper-Leinenkugel is sued by her partners in the Patton Public House, a restaurant and bar, for fraud and mismanagement. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed with no finding of liability on Casper-Leinenkugel’s part, the Asheville Citizen Times reported.
• March 10, 2017: Casper-Leinenkugel marries Elroy A. Lund Jr., 72, in Wisconsin, where she has roots. The marriage takes place one day before her 44th birthday.
• May 10, 2017: Lund dies at the trailer home the couple shared in Weirgor, Wisconsin. Lund “died in his sleep from natural causes on Wednesday at his home,” an obituary says. Casper-Leinenkugel has his remains cremated.
• Late 2017 or early 2018: Casper-Leinenkugel bears a son (exact date and location of his birth is unclear). Friends of Lund in the Northwoods of Wisconsin where he was from talked about a “little Elroy” he left behind, according to coverage of the poison-murder case in the Ladysmith News. Search warrants issued in February in Wisconsin of this year say Casper-Leinenkugel was pregnant when Lund died.
• Nov. 30, 2025: Casper-Leinenkugel hosts dinner for family and friends at her Schmidt Terrace home the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Guests include her daughters Leela Jean Livis and Maija (spelled Mia in police reports) Lacey and Maija’s boyfriend Richard Evan Pegg. Also present were Landon Phillips and Jeffrey Bosch, both of whom had been associated with Casper-Leinenkugel in business ventures in Asheville. A detective wrote that Phillips was “reported by Gudrun as her boyfriend” while Bosch was “reported by Mia to be Gudrun’s boyfriend.” The daughters and Pegg, 27, all drank wine authorities say was laced with acetonitrile, a toxin that converts to cyanide when metabolized in the body. All three become ill with severe flu-like symptoms, according to investigative reports.
• Dec. 1, 2015: Maija, who suffered minor symptoms from the effects of the toxin, calls 911 to transport Pegg to AdventHealth, where he is hospitalized for six days while being treated for acetonitrile poisoning.
• Dec. 1, 2025: Jackson County sheriff’s deputies responding to a call from Casper-Leinenkugel requesting a welfare check on her daughter find Livis’s body at her home in Cullowhee. Detectives open an investigation in the death of Livis, 32.
• Dec. 19, 2025: Jackson County investigators contact the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office about Livis’s death, reporting that the county medical examiner had informed them that “the deceased individual showed high levels of the chemical acetonitrile” believed to have been put into wine “consumed at 15 Schmidt Terrace during the Thanksgiving dinner,” according to a search warrant application made by Henderson County sheriff’s Detective Joseph Tulloch.
• Jan. 14, 2025: Casper-Leinenkugel meets voluntarily with Henderson County sheriff’s detectives. During the interview, she describes why there was a text conversation on her phone pertaining to purchasing acetonitrile. She explains that because she had lost her Amazon and eBay passwords, an “uncle Dan” bought the toxin online for her.
• Jan. 16: Detectives arrest Casper-Leinenkugel. She is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the poisoning deaths of her daughter, Leela, on Dec. 1, and Michael Schmidt in October 2007 plus two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the cases of younger daughter Maija Lacey and Evan Pegg.
• Feb. 3: A detective in Sawyer County submits an application for a warrant to search the trailer home of Elroy Lund and Casper-Leinenkugel. In it, she tells the court that while Lund’s death was initially “deemed to be a natural death and not suspicious in manner,” the notification from Henderson County detectives about the poison-murder charges had caused her bosses to direct her to reopen the file on Lund’s death. The Wisconsin detective, Amanda Dantzman, reports that the deputy who responded to the call about Lund’s death noted that a daughter had asked authorities to take a blood sample from her father. “She believed there was foul play and stated she would not put it past Gudrun to ‘poison’ her father,” Dantzman writes.
• Feb. 26: In a hearing in Henderson County Superior Court, prosecutors announce that they won’t seek the death penalty against Casper-Leinenkugel. One of the defendant’s supporters in the courtroom is daughter Maija. “I have never been involved with a criminal case where the defendant is charged with attempting to murder a family member who appears in court in support,” says Casper-Leinenkugel’s attorney, Paul Bidwell, who continues to maintain his client’s innocence.
• April 17: The Lightning reports that newly unsealed search warrants show that a “brown bottle with red tape labeled acetonitrile” was among 56 items seized during a search of the home of Casper-Leinenkugel’s home.