North Carolina Mom Invited Two Daughters to Thanksgiving Dinner—Only One SurvivedKC Baker,
Leela Livis, Gudrun Casper-Leinenkugel, Maija Lacey
The last time Travis Peterson ever heard from his daughter, Leela Livis, was on Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. “I sent a text wishing her a happy Thanksgiving,” Peterson, 55, tells PEOPLE. “She wished me a happy Thanksgiving, too.”
Thanksgiving dinnerCredit: Mrunknown6T9/Shutterstock
But days later, as Livis, 32, celebrated with her half-sister, Maija Lacey, 28, and Lacey’s boyfriend, Richard Pegg, 27, at a post-Thanksgiving dinner hosted by the siblings’s mother, Gudrun Casper-Leinenkugel, 53, the evening took a sinister turn.Livis and Pegg became violently ill after drinking wine at the dinner. Pegg was hospitalized and later recovered—but Livis was found dead at her home on Dec. 1. “Losing Leela was a gut punch,” says Peterson.
Gudrun Casper-Leinenkugel in court in Hendersonville, N.C., on Feb. 26, 2026Credit: Josh Bell/USA TODAY/Reuters
Another shock followed in 2026 when Casper-Leinenkugel was charged with murder in her daughter’s death and attempted murder in Lacey and Pegg’s non-lethal poisonings after drinking wine from a screw-top bottle at her dinner table. Casper-Leinenkugel has pleaded not guilty.
Why would a seemingly loving mother allegedly try to poison her family? Read about it in the new issue of PEOPLE.
Go Inside the Thanksgiving Dinner Poisoning Case
Casper-Leinenkugel is charged in the death of a friend who was poisoned with the same lethal chemical as she allegedly used in the tainted Thanksgiving wine
Authorities are taking a new look at the 2017 death of one of her husbands
Her surviving daughter believes she’s innocentJoin & Keep Reading
Source: Crime
