A sex worker pleaded guilty to murdering three men with fatal doses of fentanyl after luring them with sex and drugs during a 10-month robbery spree in Manhattan, officials said Tuesday.
Tabitha Bundrick, 39, is expected to be sentenced to 27 years to life in state prison next month after admitting to doling out the deadly drugs to unwitting victims Abrihan Fernandez, Mario Paullan and Miguel Navez.
She’s also accused of dosing Paullan’s ex-brother-in-law, who woke up from the narcotics-induced stupor to find Paullan dead beside him, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Cops arrested Bundrick last September and charged her with multiple counts of murder, as well as assault.
“The defendant knowingly killed three people by providing them fentanyl-laced drugs”, said Bragg. “As they lay unconscious, she robbed her victims and left them to die.”
Mario Paullan
In several instances, the victims’ bodies were found by friends or family members, Bragg said.
“The defendant showed a shocking indifference to the lives of her victims and is now facing significant consequences for her conduct,” he said.
After offering up the fatal dose of fentanyl – telling at least some of her victims that the drugs were cocaine – Bundrick waited until her victims fell unconscious before robbing them of their phones, money, jewelry, clothes and sneakers, prosecutors said.
She met her victims through sex work, her attorneys said.
Bundrick’s deadly spree kicked off on April 30, 2023, when she approached Paullan, 42, and his ex-brother-in-law on the street outside a Washington Heights laundromat. She first offered to sell them detergent, only to later offer up her body in exchange for cash, according to prosecutors.
She led the pair to an empty apartment she had broken into, where she had sex with both men and gave them fentanyl, claiming it was cocaine, officials said.
Paullan recorded a video recovered by feds on his cellphone that “captured the voice of (Bundrick) as she continually pushed Paullan to take more of the purported cocaine, even as Paullan told the defendant that he did not want any more,” according to court papers.
When the ex-brother-in-law woke up the next morning, he found Paullan, 42, dead beside him and couldn’t remember the night before.
Miguel Navez, 39, died on Sept. 27, 2023. (GoFundMe)
Bundrick had already made off with the ex-brother-in-law’s cash and cellphone, which she began using to contact her family and friends just two hours after dosing her victims, court papers say. The surviving victim went to the hospital later that day after he began vomiting uncontrollably and needed medical attention.
Bundrick continued to use the cellphone belonging to Paullan’s ex-brother-in-law for a month, prosecutors said.
About five months later, on Sept. 27, 2023, Bundrick met Navez, 39, who brought her to his apartment on W. 158th St. in Washington Heights to have sex.
She administered the fatal dose of fentanyl and stole Navez’s electronics, prosecutors said. Later that day, Bundrick’s roommate used Navez’s stolen tablet to call 911 after the suspect experienced an asthma attack, court papers show.
Three days later, Navez’s worried brother came to check on him and found him dead in his bed. That same day, Bundrick used Navez’s cellphone to call her drug dealer and her mother, prosecutors say.
Bundrick met Fernandez, 34, after chatting him up on the street around 4 a.m. on Feb. 25, 2024. She then followed him back to his apartment on W. 144th St, where she gave him fentanyl, according to prosecutors.
Bundrick was later seen propping the door to Fernandez’s building open so she could grab some food without getting locked out, prosecutors say. She later called a call service and removed several bags from the victim’s apartment, including the backpack he was wearing when he met her.
Her son helped her bring the bags into her apartment and was seen removing a pair of Fernandez’s sneakers from a bag. Her son was captured on video using Fernandez’s credit card the next day.
When cops executed a search warrant of Bundrick’s home, they found four pairs of sneakers belonging to her victims inside her home, prosecutors said.
Bundrick first appeared on the Manhattan DA’s radar in March 2024 when she was arrested for burglary and grand larceny after allegedly being caught with Fernandez’s property, officials said.
The guilty plea comes about a year after Bundrick pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to two counts of narcotics distribution in connection with the men’s deaths as part of a plea agreement. The feds had initially accused her of drug distribution resulting in death.
She was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison, which was to run concurrently with any potential sentence she would receive in the state’s case against her.
The feds, who described her as “an extraordinarily dangerous individual,” had requested 30 years.
At the time, Bundrick’s lawyer in her federal case, Kristoff Williams, told the court that drug addiction issues and the need to numb herself “to get through the experience of prostituting her body” were behind the deaths.
Bundrick “undoubtedly made a poor decision when she shared her drugs with men who were just ‘looking for a good time,’ ” but that she never intended to kill anyone, he said.