Woman Lured Men With Sex and Drugs and Left Them for Dead, Charges Say

The woman lured the men on the street in Washington Heights, sometimes with the promise of sex. At a vacant apartment or at their own places, she shared her drugs. Once the men were unconscious, she robbed them, according to prosecutors.

And when the woman left, three of the men were dead, prosecutors said at an arraignment in New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The woman, Tabitha Bundrick, 36, was brought before Justice Ann Thompson and charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of Mario Paullan, Miguel Angel Navez Ramirez, and Abrihan Rofer Fernandez Rodriguez.

Ms. Bundrick, who is being held in the Rikers Island jail complex on related burglary charges, could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder. She pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.

At a news conference, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, called Ms. Bundrick’s behavior “extremely calculated” and “callous.”

“We are focused on this type of conduct,” he said. “Holding the people who do this accountable, supporting the victims and their loved ones.”

Ms. Bundrick was charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors last year with distribution of narcotics resulting in the men’s deaths; she pleaded guilty to two counts of a lesser narcotics-distribution charge. This year, she was sentenced on her federal conviction to 13 years in prison, to be served concurrently with any sentence imposed in her state case.

The case is among several recent prosecutions in Manhattan of defendants who have lured people from outside bars and other locations and then drugged and robbed them.

In 2022 and 2023, two men were charged with committing 26 robberies and attempted robberies by targeting people in bars who looked like they had money, waiting for them outside and using drugs to subdue them, according to prosecutors. Five victims died from overdoses, including four in just 15 days. The case has yet to go to trial.

This year, three men were convicted of luring men outside Manhattan gay bars and drugging and robbing them, giving two a cocktail of drugs before abandoning them to their deaths.

On Wednesday, Ms. Bundrick appeared in court in tan jail garb, with her hair braided down her back. As she walked out of the courtroom after the hearing, her hands cuffed behind her, she kept her eyes trained on the floor. Her mother, wearing red scrubs, sat in the back of the courtroom.

Ms. Bundrick was born in Washington Heights, according to legal papers in the federal case. From an early age, she began missing developmental markers and her “intellectual functioning has not improved with age, and has instead slightly declined due to her rampant drug use,” wrote her lawyer, Kristoff I. Williams of the Federal Defenders of New York.

Ms. Bundrick experienced poverty, sexual abuse and, at a young age, began making money through prostitution, her lawyer said. Along the way she was also introduced to hard drugs.

She was not a “mastermind who targets unsuspecting men on the street and then intentionally drugs them for her own gain,” Mr. Williams argued.

“The men who tragically overdosed in this case were merely unintended victims who were swept up in Ms. Bundrick’s spiral of self-destruction,” he wrote.

In a handwritten letter submitted before her federal sentencing, Ms. Bundrick expressed remorse.

“I recognize that there’s no excuse that can make up for what I did and I’m here today because I know I must face the consequences of my actions,” she wrote, adding, “I deeply regret every decision I made and I’m determined to use this experience as a turning point.”

In the state case, Ms. Bundrick is charged with killing the three men over 10 months.

On April 30, 2023, she approached two men, including Mr. Paullan, and offered sex in exchange for money, prosecutors said, leading them to an empty apartment on West 159th Street that she had broken into. She offered the men what she said was cocaine, prosecutors said. The next morning, one of the men woke up to find his phone and other items missing.

Several of his relatives sat in court Wednesday listening to the proceedings.

In September 2023, Ms. Bundrick found her next target, said a prosecutor, Dafna Yoran. She met Mr. Navez, 39, on the street and went back to his apartment on West 158th Street, where she gave him fentanyl-laced drugs, prosecutors said. Three days later, Mr. Navez’s brother found him dead, with many of his personal belongings missing, they said.

About five months later, Ms. Bundrick met her fourth victim, prosecutors said. She encountered Mr. Fernandez, 34, near his apartment building on West 144th Street, where they chatted before going upstairs. Once inside, she again provided drugs, prosecutors said.

A few hours later, around 4 a.m., Ms. Bundrick left the building, returned and then left again with several large bags, prosecutors said.

She was arrested days later, on March 5, 2024, in her apartment, where a search uncovered four pairs of one victim’s sneakers, according to prosecutors.