Princeton grad, gal pal allegedly use rat poison, rosary-pea toxin on women he met on dating apps

A Princeton grad and his girlfriend tried to kill two women he met on dating apps by using rat poison, cyanide and a homemade concoction derived from ground-up rosary peas, authorities said.Paul VanDuyne Jr., 43, and gal pal Andrea Whitaker, 41, of Wisconsin now face attempted-murder charges as well as raps for aggravated battery, recklessly endangering the public and stalking for their fiendish plot, court documents state.VanDuyne, a Princeton University graduate and former mechanical engineer, had recently gotten divorced when he decided to try his hand at dating apps.He had two short-lived liaisons with the victims before meeting Whitaker more than a year ago, authorities said.Prosecutors said that soon thereafter, VanDuyne and Whitaker, a pharmacology student, launched a plan to poison the women’s personal belongings — including their vehicles and water bottles — with a variety of toxic substances.It appears Whitaker was allegedly jealous of the women.The poisonings involved the toxic rosary-pea plant, cyanide and thallium, a rodenticide which has been banned commercially in the US since 1975 because of a high number of accidental poisonings tied to it, officials said.One of the victims, who is from Rock County and still requires the use of a wheelchair because of her poisoning, landed on authorities’ radar last month after she was hospitalized with high doses of thallium in her system, NBC reported.Given the rarity of the substance, a doctor who treated her is quoted in court documents as saying, “The only way a human could have this amount of thallium in her system is if they were intentionally consuming it.”The poisoning occurred as she was driving with her middle-school-age sister to the movies and the pair suddenly became sick, according to court documents.The victim then brought her vehicle in for service, and workers noticed a foul smell like rotten eggs and found a storage tote in the vehicle that contained an unknown substance.Detectives la...