'Murder, greed, lies': State claims woman poisoned friend with eye drops, defense calls it suicide

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Both sides laid out their arguments in the eye drop murder trial on Tuesday, Oct. 24.

In 2018, 39-year-old Jessy Kurczewski allegedly killed 62-year-old Lynn Hernan, a family friend she was a caregiver for.

Prosecutors on Tuesday called this trial about "murder, greed and lies" before outlining who Hernan was, a woman they called "frugal" who they believed was worth more dead than alive to Kurczewski, one of only two people named in Hernan's will. The Franklin woman also faces two counts of theft for allegedly stealing over $290K from Hernan, who she had power of attorney.

During opening statements, Waukesha County Assistant District Attorney Randy Sitzberger shared police found deleted PDF documents on Kurczewski's phone related to different types of poisonings like household poisonings and cyanide poisonings.

"When the detectives ask [Kurczewski], ' did you know it was going to kill her?' She said, 'I was sick because I knew it could kill her,'" Sitzberger said. "In fact, you're going to hear that she didn't spend the day worried about Lynn. She was opening a JCPenney credit card in Lynn's name that same morning."

Hernan's cause of death was ruled a homicide after fatal levels of tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in eye drops, were found in her system.

However, the defense said this case was not a homicide but a suicide.

Kurczewski initially denied involvement in the death but later admitted giving Hernan a water bottle with six bottles of Visine in it to help her commit suicide. The bottle is physical evidence the defense said Tuesday that their client would have disposed of had she intended to kill her friend.

They also shared that Hernan often drank vodka with eye drops in it and that she had 25 to 30 prescription pills in her body when she died. The criminal complaint says Hernan was found with crushed-up medication on her chest and on a nearby table, but no bottles of eye drops were found near her.

Kurczewski was brought to tears as photos of her and Hernan were shown in court while her attorney explained her relationship to the 62-year-old.

"If Lynn Hernan were here today, she would say, 'Are you crazy?' to the prosecution. That's my, that's my daughter that you have sitting there at the desk over there, that's my daughter. She knows everything I was doing when I was doing this," Kurczewski's defense attorney, Pablo Galaviz, said.

The defense also told the jury they plan to call a witness they call "the world's leading expert on tetrahydrozoline poisoning' to testify during this trial.

The state began to call witnesses to the stand on Tuesday, bringing up law enforcement officers who were first on the scene in 2018 when Kurczewski called 911, claiming she found Hernan unconscious. They also brought up a former deputy medical examiner for Waukesha County.

The trial continues at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 25.