DARLINGTON — A woman accused of trying to poison the older, veterinarian husband she married after an internet romance has pleaded guilty to lesser charges in Lafayette County Circuit Court.
In a hearing Friday, June 21, Amanda Chapin, 51, pleaded guilty to a single charge of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, a Class F Felony, before judge Barbara W. McCrory.
Chapin was initially charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide following her September arrest at a Monroe hotel. She faced potentially decades in prison if convicted.
Details of the plea were not immediately available Monday, June 24. She is scheduled for a separate sentencing hearing for July 25.
The ordeal leading up to Friday’s plea hearing began Aug. 21, 2021, when her new husband was taken to the SMS Health Monroe Clinic, complaining of breathing issues. The victim, Gary Chapin, later was placed in intensive care at an area VA facility and slipped into a coma. His blood reportedly tested positive for barbiturates.
But the veteran recovered after being treated at a SMS Monroe Clinic; and at the Middleton VA Hospital.
The couple married at the Lafayette County courthouse, despite the suspicions of the man’s family.
“(Victim 1) believed he was just a ‘sugar daddy’ for Amanda,” a criminal complaint said, adding that the relationship was “fairly stormy from the beginning.”
Not long after the wedding, Chapin allegedly forged the signature on a power-of-attorney document, and then demanded her husband file a quit-claim on his house, leaving it to her. Then she is alleged to have begun poisoning him with suspected barbiturates.
Gary Chapin awoke from his coma after a four-day hospital stay and began to talk to police last August. He alleged that his new wife poisoned him three times earlier that summer, culminating in his waking up in the hospital on Aug. 25.
An arrest came on Sept. 1, when Chapin was found unresponsive in a hotel room in Monroe and was taken to a local hospital. Investigators searched the room and recovered letters addressed to her husband and his family, all denying hurting or trying to kill him over the summer — some expressing love for her husband.