A sex worker accused of delivering deadly fentanyl doses to three men in Manhattan over a 10-month robbery spree has created an online profile seeking a penpal who is willing to correspond despite her serious charges.
“I’m super funny, loving, caring, and outgoing. Hoping to get to know you as you get to know me. Talk to you soon,” reads the profile for Tabitha Bundrick, 36, on penacon.com. She has been charged in Manhattan Criminal Court with murder, robbery, burglary, and assault after allegedly using fentanyl-laced drugs to incapacitate four men — resulting in three deaths.
Bundrick, currently serving a 13-year prison sentence following her guilty plea in federal court to two counts of narcotics distribution connected to the men’s deaths as part of a February plea deal, enjoys scary movies, working out, academics, and looks forward to “going home soon,” per her penacon.com profile.
“I am looking for someone to get to know me, accept me for who I am, and do the same for them in return,” Bundrick’s profile reads.
Prosecutors allege that Bundrick enticed three victims with offers of sex for money, only to subsequently drug them with fentanyl-laced substances, rob them, and leave them for dead.
Bundrick came to the attention of the Manhattan DA in March 2024 after being arrested on burglary and grand larceny charges, sparking an investigation that led to the recent triple homicide charges. She has remained in federal custody for related crimes during the DA’s investigation.
According to prosecutors, Bundrick first targeted victims while posing as a street vendor selling soap outside a Washington Heights laundromat, enticing two men, including 42-year-old Mario Paullan and his former brother-in-law, with an offer of paid sex on April 30, 2023.
Bundrick led the two men to a vacant apartment she’d broken into on W. 159th St near Amsterdam Ave., where she doled out a drug she told the men was “perico,” slang for cocaine, prosecutors said.
The next morning, Paullan’s friend awoke to find the victim dead beside him, with his belongings, including his wallet and cellphone, stolen, said prosecutors.
Investigators recovered footage on Paullan’s phones recorded in the hours leading up to his death, in which the victims can be heard “snorting and sniffing” as Bundrick urges them to consume more of the fentanyl-laced drug, prosecutors said. At one point, Paullan can be heard refusing Bundrick’s offer of drugs, only to then inhale a third and final line of the purported cocaine as she continued to pressure him, said prosecutors.
Bundrick is then heard in the video telling Paullan to follow her to bed, while instructing his former brother-in-law to wait, saying she could “only handle one of them,” prosecutors said.
An autopsy found that Paullan died due to acute fentanyl and alcohol intoxication, and that no trace of cocaine was found in his system, said prosecutors.
Paullan had immigrated to the United States from Ecuador and worked in construction to support his family, including a wife and three children, still living in his home country, a friend told the Daily News.
“He was a good person. He was working for his family. He told me about his family, he wanted to bring the family here,” said Fernando Guano. “He was here a couple months, he worked a lot to help his family.”
The immigrant had only been in the country for five months before his run in with Bundrick, Guano said.
“He was new to this country. He didn’t understand the danger,” Guano said.
Paullan’s son described the pain of losing his father in a letter submitted to federal court prior to Bundrick’s sentencing on federal charges in August.
“My dad’s death has been the hardest blow life has given me,” Paullan’s son, who is not named in the letter, wrote. “I felt like my world collapsed. He told me I had to be the man of the house, to take care of my mother and sister. Now, even though I feel broken inside, I dry my tears so I can hold them and tell them everything will be okay.” Paullan’s son wrote to the court.
The man’s wife, who was also not named, said Paullan’s killing had left her “to be both a mother and father, working tirelessly from Sunday to Sunday.”
“[It] is very hard for me to hold myself together emotionally and financially. It hurts not being able to be there for my children the way I wish I could,” she wrote, adding she was at a loss to explain his passing to their 4-year-old daughter.
Bundrick’s second victim would die on Sept. 27 of that year, when, after meeting 39-year-old Miguel Navez, she accompanied the man to his W. 158th St. apartment near Amsterdam Ave. where they planned to have sex prosecutors said.
There, according to prosecutors, Bundrick incapacitated the victim with fentanyl, before stealing belongings, including his cellphone and tablet, prosecutors said.
Later that day, Bundrick’s roommate used Navez’s cellphone to call 911 after the defendant suffered an asthma attack, and Bundrick herself used the phone to make several calls the day after that, including to her mother and her drug dealer, said prosecutors.
Navez’s brother found the victim dead, his pants at his knees and a drug wrapper lying on the bed next to his body, on Sept. 30, prosecutors said. Pathologists ruled his death the result of acute fentanyl and alcohol intoxication, court documents show.
Neighbors of both Paullan and Navez told The News that the victims’ grieving families held memorials at the buildings where they died.
Bundrick’s most recent alleged murder occurred on Feb. 25, 2024, when she stalked 34-year-old Abrihan Fernandez to his apartment building on W. 144th St. near Convenant Ave., where the pair chatted before heading inside together, prosecutors said.
Obtained by Daily News
Abrihan Fernandez died on Feb. 25, 2024. (Obtained by Daily News)
After incapacitating Fernandez with fentanyl, Bundrick was spotted exiting and entering the victim’s apartment multiple times, rigging the building’s door for ease of access as she hauled several large bags outside, before entering a cab that carried her to her apartment, prosecutors said.
Bundrick also stole Rodriguez’s credit cards, which her son was captured on video using the next day, said prosecutors.
The superintendent of the building where Fernandez lived told the Daily News he found the victim “cold and stiff” inside his apartment after the man’s cousin called requesting a wellness check.
The super said the building recorded footage of a woman entering the building with Fernandez, before leaving with the victim’s belongings and her face covered.
“She wiped him out, she took his clothing, his computers, sneakers, everything,” the super said. “It’s crazy, she’s a serial killer.”
In a submission to federal court prior to her August sentencing in federal court, Bundrick’s lawyer argued that she relied on drugs to “get through the experience of prostituting her body” and that she never intended to kill anyone when shared her drugs with the victims.
“Every night that Tabitha Bundrick laid down on her bare back, opened her legs, and let complete strangers sexually penetrate her body, the only thing that could get her through this terrifying outer body experience was the numbness that she achieved from being high on drugs,” Kristoff Williams from the Federal Defenders said.
“[It] was a life that she was pimped into as an impressionable teenager with a learning disability that, to this day, has capped her intellectual functioning at a third-grade level.”
