The lonely and lurid last moments of three Washington Heights men plied with lethal doses of fentanyl by Manhattan sex worker Tabitha Bundrick continue to haunt their loved ones, the killer heard at her Tuesday sentencing.
A half dozen people addressed Bundrick, 39, about the wake of devastation caused by her callous killing campaign before she was sentenced to 27 years in state prison for luring Abrihan Fernandez, Mario Paullan, and Miguel Navez to their deaths between April 2023 and February 2024.
In the fatal honey trap scheme, “Robbery was the motive, fentanyl was the means, and murder was the result,” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said in Manhattan Supreme Court, describing how Bundrick targeted all three men at random, enticed them into quiet settings off the street, and quietly doled out fatal drugs before fleecing their valuables and leaving them to die.
Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Fernandez’s inconsolable mother, Brigida Rodriguez, said her 34-year-old son had come to the U.S. in search of a better future and worked tirelessly to obtain his college degree.
“If she wanted to rob my son, why didn’t she just do that?” she said, later pointing to a ring that she said Bundrick had tried in vain to pull off her dying son’s finger.
“Why do you not look here?” Brigida addressed Bundrick. “This is his class ring. She tried to steal it, the last thing. But she couldn’t.”
Obtained by Daily News
Abrihan Fernandez died on Feb. 25, 2024. (Obtained by Daily News)
Bundrick pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and an assault charge last month in exchange for the agreed-upon term imposed by Justice Kathryn Paek on Tuesday. She is slated to serve it concurrently with a 13-year sentence she received last year in Manhattan federal court after copping to narcotics distribution charges.
Yoran on Tuesday said Bundrick, despite pleading guilty in the two cases, remained indignant in an interview for her pre-sentence report, claiming the men she singled out had solicited her for sex.
But in a stuttered statement to the court, Bundrick, wearing a crocheted cross around her neck and beads in her hair braids, said she was sorry, apologizing to the victims’ loved ones for murderous behavior she said was carried out by a drug-addled mind.
“This wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she said. “I was suffering from a drug addiction that has caused me to make bad choices and bad decisions just to get high.”
Bundrick said she accepted “full responsibility for my actions, and what I have done with my life.”
Bundrick first targeted Paullan, 42, on Apr. 30, 2023, striking up a conversation with him and his friend before offering up sex and leading them back to an empty apartment she broke into on W. 159th St. Once upstairs, she offered them cocaine that was actually fentanyl, court docs detail.
Paullan’s friend woke up the next morning to find Paullan dead and their belongings stolen.
The man’s daughter, Aileen Paullan, on Tuesday told Bundrick that she wished her no harm, only that she remember his name in the silence of her sentence.
“I am not here for vengeance. I am here because my father is no longer here, and someone has to say who he was,” she said. “My father was a happy man. He liked to joke and he was very hardworking. A man who loved his children.”
Months after Paullan’s killing, Bundrick spotted Navez, 39, making his way home from a night out, stalked him and then persuaded him to bring her up to his W. 158th St. apartment, where she plied him with fentanyl-laced drugs, charging papers detail.
Yoran said Bundrick stole multiple pairs of Navez’s sneakers from boxes she put in the recycling bin to cover her tracks, gifting the shoes to her teenage son along with the dead man’s credit card. The prosecutor noted the man’s death was initially not believed to be suspicious, and that authorities only connected the dots upon discovering his stolen cell phone had been used to call contacts of Bundrick.
Bundrick’s final victim was Fernandez, whom she followed to his W. 144th St. apartment on Feb. 25, 2024, before talking her way upstairs and drugging him. Bundrick took several trips in and out of the apartment over several hours, rigging the front door for easy access as she made off with bags of his belongings.
The man’s widow, Natalie, described him in court on Tuesday as a smart and compassionate man to whom caring came naturally and said she had been left bereft absent “the comfort of simply knowing he’s there.”
“I hope his death can serve as a reminder to be mindful of the people around us, that not everyone deserves kindness,” she said.
In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Bundrick’s “absolutely callous” conduct had devastated three families.
“Today in court, we heard powerful statements from the loved ones of the defendant’s victims, who are still mourning in anguish,” the DA said. “I hope this prison sentence will allow for some measure of healing.”
