Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She's FINALLY in Prison Now // The Jessy Kurczewski Murder Story

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Jessy Kurczewski was a Wisconsin woman convicted in 2023 for the first-degree intentional homicide of her friend, Lynn Hernan, for whom she had been acting as a caregiver. In October 2018, Kurczewski reported finding Hernan unresponsive in her home, initially suggesting the death was a result of a self-inflicted overdose. However, investigations and toxicology reports later determined that the death was a homicide caused by poisoning.

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Her name's Jesse. And Jesse's about 32 when all this begins, and she's living in Wisconsin. And Jesse, she has a lot of problems. She has a serious gambling problem. She has a history of theft. At one point, she goes to prison for theft and fraud. But despite all that, there's one person who's always had Jesse's back. This woman, Lynn.

And Lynn is about 30 years older than Jesse, regardless their close friends. And one day, in 2016, right around the time Jesse gets out of prison, Lynn's health starts to seriously decline. I mean, she's got a bunch of issues like lung disease and high blood pressure and gastrointestinal problems. And she keeps going to the doctor for help, but the doctors are having trouble diagnosing her. Because her symptoms are just all over the place. And that is when her good friend Jesse steps in. And she becomes Lynn's full-time caregiver. And she's with her every single day.

She does her grocery shopping for her, pays her bills for her. She handles everything. and Lynn trusts her completely. And everyone around Lynn is grateful that she has someone looking out for her. And because they're so close, Lynn doesn't actually give Jesse a paycheck for taking care of her. Instead, she covers some of Jesse's bills and rent. Here's the thing with all this, though. Even though Jesse got out of prison and is supposedly trying to get her life together,

she's still addicted to gambling. And pretty quickly, she goes right back to hitting up the casinos. and spending any money she has. The problem with this is that she doesn't have a lot of money. She doesn't even have a steady job, unless you count taking care of Lynn, which she doesn't get a paycheck for. So where is she going to get the money to keep up her gambling habit?

She's going to steal it from Lynn. So she gets to work on this plan. She gets herself named as Lynn's power of attorney. She also gets herself named as a beneficiary of Lynn's estate. she's going to take everything she can from her. Not only that, but Jesse knows that Lynn has about $250,000 sitting in a money market account. So Jesse gets access to Lynn's bank accounts and her safety deposit box, and she starts stealing money from there.

Jesse also starts writing checks to herself from Lynn's accounts, opening credit cards in Lynn's name, along with all kinds of cash withdrawals. And she doesn't even try to be subtle about this theft. Out of 22 checks from one of Lynn's accounts, 20 of them, Jesse has written to herself. And so what does she do with all this money she's stealing? Of course, she goes and gambles it all the way at the casinos, playing as much as she can, hitting up the bars and whatnot. Sometimes she'll even go shopping and she'll like buy herself a bunch of shit. She gets spa treatments for her and her friends.

she pays for trips for her and her boyfriend? Now, her boyfriend doesn't know that she's stealing all this money. I mean, she's actually been lying to him too, and saying that she has a job as a dental assistant. In fact, she'll put on scrubs every day and leave the house like, bye, honey, and she'll stay gone for hours as if she's gone to work. But she's actually out at the casino. And if all that isn't awful enough, it actually gets much worse.

Because a few years pass, and it's now 2018. And by this point, Jesse has stolen a lot of money from her friend Lynn, about $140,000. And she's gambled it all away, and there's not really much more that she can take. So now, with all that liquid cash gone, Jesse sets her eyes on Lynn's estate, which she can't get access to until Lynn is dead. which means she's got to come up with a way to make sure that Lynn dies. Now, poor Lynn, she's still having a lot of health problems, and doctors are still having trouble diagnosing her, and Jesse is still her caregiver.

So Jesse comes up with a plan to keep making Lynn sicker and sicker, and therefore no one will be shocked when she finally dies. People will just think that she died from natural causes or whatever. So Jesse gets to work on this plan. First, she starts cutting Lynn off from seeing other people. Like if one of Lynn's friends tries to set up a visit or something, Jesse will be like, oh no, sorry, Lynn is too sick for visitors. Then she starts mixing small amounts of vizene, like the eyedrops, into Lynn's water or vodka.

Vizene actually has tetrahydrozyline in it, which if you drink it, it can poison you and make you sick. and if you drink too much of it, you could actually die. So Lynn unknowingly drinks this stuff and she gets super sick. And then Jesse secretly poisons her again and again and again, until Lynn is basically sick all the time. And this goes on for at least a year, until Lynn is so consistently sick that she's in the hospital all the time. Then, at some point, Jesse finally decides that this game has been going on long.

enough. And now it's time to give her a fatal dose of the tetrahydrozylene and end her for good so that she can get her hands on that estate money. So one morning, Lynn is at home, she just got out of the hospital and is recovering. And Jesse, she's at Lynn's house doing her caregiver duties. And she brings Lynn a water bottle that she's spiked with six little bottles of vizene. And of course, Lynn drinks it. I mean, she has no reason not to trust Jesse. Then Jesse leaves. I guess so she doesn't have to witness the horrible thing she's just done. And from here, Lynn, unfortunately, dies. A few hours later, Jesse comes back, and she finds Lynn there, and she starts staging the scene to make it look like Lynn unalived herself. She crushes

up pills and she sprinkles them on Lynn's chest and torso. She puts a plate of crushed pills nearby. She sets prescription bottles all around the scene. Then Jesse calls 911 and she pretends to be all panicked and she tells them that she just found Lynn there not breathing. So police show up and they investigate and they see all the signs that Lynn unalived herself. And so Lynn's death is officially ruled a suicide. So it looks like Jesse just got away with murder and she might just inherit Lynn's entire estate. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick.

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Nor would she then leave her entire state to Jesse. I mean, he thinks Jesse might be up to something. So he goes and he reports his suspicion to the police. He also hires a probate attorney to investigate Lynn's estate. And the probate attorney does an audit and finds that Jesse had been providing fraudulent receipts to them as she was trying to cover up the fact that she had been stealing money for years. So Lynn's cousin takes these findings to the police. Then almost a year after the death, the toxicology report comes back and the medical examiner has found that Lynn

had fatal levels of tetrahydrozylene in her system. So all of a sudden, this case is reopened, and police start investigating this as a homicide. And they get a search warrant on Jesse's home, her computer, and phone, and they find internet searches with things about like, cyanide and poisoning, along with other evidence. And so they question Jesse again, and her story is all over the place now. It's constantly changing. And so, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And ultimately, Jesse goes to trial, and she's found guilty, and she gets sentenced to life in prison.