The Mushroom Mystery

They care about how I feel. It's the staff on the app. It's the connections you make. Without good mental and physical help, you have nothing. That tells me how to cook to keep myself healthy.

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I've always been a glass half volt kind of guy.

And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their trials, challenges, their stories, their funny, and my candy. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half volt.

Search glass half volt with Craig Melvood from today. On YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Tonight on Dave Lie. He loved cycling. I was like, "Man, he could have been riding a guy hit."

Looking at the body, they were like, "There was foul play." That's the sad part. We knew. We were like, "David Danger." Where David's body was found, it was really difficult to know what had happened.

“Any obvious sign of trauma, gunshots to having anything like that?”

No, everything seemed very strange. We spoke to his wife, Katrina. I don't know what to do. She guided us to who could have been suspects. He came to my door three times, directly in David.

David had had some sort of relationship with a woman and a possible love triangle out there. A theory starts to emerge of a very unusual murder weapon. Yes, they talk so much from him. It could be fatal.

How stunning is it to see something like this? A real life case. It's very rare. The mushroom angle just through this into left field. It's like you were watching your friend walk into a trap.

In slow motion. It's a game. One big unfortunate game. Just flat out, conniving an evil. Dangerous mushrooms and devious lies

that a sickening mix lead to murder. I'm less jerhold. And this is daylight.

“Here's Blaine Alexander with The Mushroom Mystery.”

This place was her refuge, a respite from a weary world. How often do you walk this road? Whether from knitting almost daily. This is your normal route. Yes, it is.

It was mid-April 2020, the early days of the COVID pandemic. The world felt chaotic. But this stretch of road in Noble'sville, Indiana, offered peace for Jenny Thomas. So typically what is it like?

I mean lots of cars, lots of traffic. It's rural. It is a country road. Friday, April 24th, a beautiful picture-resk day. Jenny was on her usual walk

when she happened upon something horrific. You knew immediately what it was. Oh, definitely. Definitely dead. I knew.

It was obvious. It was a man's body. On the side of the road. Like right in here. Yes.

“Was this body buried at all or obscured or just kind of right there?”

I don't know. But he was just there laying on his side. Like you would think he was asleep.

I stood here for a second thinking,

"Can I help this person?" But it was obvious. It was too late for me to help him. That's when I knew I needed to go. And I ran.

Jenny took off up the street toward the nearest house. She found a neighbor who hopped in his truck to go look for himself. He is the one who called 911. 911 with the location of your emergency.

There's a dead body laying in the ditch. They're completely black and blue. Look at the guy at the male. I'd say I'm an older 30s, 40s, maybe 50s. And it's got a dog collar around his neck.

Okay. We will have an officer dispatch. They're just as innocent as possible. Dispatch calls me and says, "We've got a dead body."

And I was like, "Is this something real? Do we need to come out there?" And he's like, "Yeah, get in your car and start this way." Greg Lockhart and Chris Yates have worked together for more than 20 years at the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office.

But this was Yates's first death scene as a detective.

So Yates followed Lockhart's lead as they looked for clues. What condition is the body in? He didn't have a shirt on. He had a gray sweat pants on. Until we moved him, we didn't notice the shirt that he had.

But he had a shirt. Looked like it was tied around his left wrist. But he wasn't wearing a shirt. He was not wearing the shirt. One theory quickly came to mind.

Here in Indiana, the spring season brings a very specific past time. My mind had immediately went to, since it was April in Indiana. Mushrooms are a big thing that people go out and hunt for.

that it's collapsed while out hunting.

I have to stop you. Mushroom hunting? Mushroom hunting. So my relatives are edible. Uh-huh.

And people fry them. I don't know how many other different ways you can eat them, but they're very good. It's not mushroom picking, right? Why is it called mushroom hunting?

Because they're very hard to find.

“So you have to know like a specific area.”

Detectives wondered if the victim could have been one of those mushroom hunters. But a quick look at the body revealed that was probably not the case. For starters, he wasn't wearing any shoes. You noticed something else that's draped across his body. What was that?

So it was a rifle sling. For those who may not be as familiar with guns, as you are, describe a rifle sling. So imagine a big backpack strap, a three or four foot long adjustable. Just would fit on the top of a rifle and the bottom of the rifle.

You can throw it over your shoulder or carried it in the woods. We can determine it's an Uncle Mike's brand. No shirt, no shoes, and a rifle sling? Not if it made sense. But one thing was clear.

Officers could tell from the condition that whoever this was had been dead for a few days. As you look at him, is there any obvious sign of trauma? Well, can you look at him and immediately tell what happened? Gunshots to having anything like that?

No. It was so strange me. As we started when the corners got there and we started to move the body. There was no apparent trauma.

“At any point did you think maybe this was a hidden run?”

No, because you would generally have signs of trauma with that. Another theory popped up. And we started thinking, man, was it an overdose death? And then somebody didn't know what to do. And so they just dumped this body here.

They walked the same route the previous day and didn't notice anything. So investigators thought if the body had been dumped there, it happened the night before. They hoped an autopsy would tell police if they were on the right track. But the results were inconclusive. We didn't have a cause of death and everything seemed very strange.

And about to get even stranger. If somebody eats enough of it and doesn't get any sort of medical help, there's it could be fatal. Yes. It kind of clutched your chest and then fell back against the wall.

You could feel the anger radiating off of him. Yeah. You could almost feel the heat just looking at her thinking what these are the craziest stories if we've ever heard. And they find that none of it's true.

Nothing's adding up. Indiana detectives were trying to identify a man found dead on the side of the road. A victim without a name. Until. Once we got into the morgue, we fingerprinted him came back David Michael Fouts.

David Michael Fouts. So you got a name? Got a name. We found out he lived in Pendleton, Indiana.

“About how far away is that from where he was found?”

I think it's 9.5 miles. Detectives learned David Fouts was 50 years old. He worked as a senior consultant at the massive technology company sales force.

He was always trying to help other people in the sport.

Matt Tanner met David Fouts years earlier at a cycling event. It was always exciting going to the finish with Dave because he was all grin and ear to ear because we were the fastest guys and he loved it. So initially it was literally your shared speed that brought you two together. Yeah, for sure.

When Matt started his own cycling group, Dave was one of the first to join. What kind of community? What kind of feel were you trying to build here? So honestly, like initially, we were very race focused. It was called Roll Fast and we wanted fast cyclists.

We wanted to win. Yeah, and then we felt like there was more we could do with the club. We kind of decided, let's focus on what we call mental fitness. Did Dave fit into that? Yeah, very much.

Matt's wife, Chris, was the group's driver and cook. That's really how I got to know Dave is because Dave was always behind the scenes helping and working like he come into kitchen with me while I'm cooking for the team. And he'd be like, can I help? And I'm sure I'd put him to work. And so he was the mechanic for when they would go on their camps.

And so sometimes Dave would stay behind and not even ride while I'm cooking and preparing lunch or dinner. You know, he's in there preparing a bike that fell apart the day before.

So he was always in the position of helping people.

In fact, his friends say Dave was truly a Renaissance man. He had so many other interests and, you know, he would bring us eggs from his farm because, you know, he's like, oh, my chickens are laying crazy eggs. You want some of them and we're like, yeah, we would love that. And he never had children of his own.

And so he created a life that was very fulfilling and I thought that was super cool. That's notable. Yeah. In the blur of all that activity and movement, the friends say David often kept his personal life personal. He divorced his college sweetheart in 2018.

Did you know much about their divorce, mother split? It happened quickly and I would say quietly.

She grown up in a town about an hour away where her father owned a roofing business. She'd been married once before and had several grown children. Katrina and David first met through cycling.

He was so passionate with her and we had never seen that side of him before.

And he wanted to be a provider for grandkids and kids he didn't have. And he loved her kids, he loved her kids.

“When did you first find out that something had happened today?”

I believe we saw it on the news. I also thought where they found him was like a road that was plausible you could be riding on and get hit. It was a road that I've ridden on a lot. That far from his house that I was like man he could have been riding and got hit. But will he's already new? This was no biking accident.

Careful of us. It was late that night when they left the scene to break the news to David's wife. They first needed to make sure they have the right house. Do you ever reason to picture a tree? Let me go get myself on.

Katrina went inside to retrieve her phone. When she returned detectives looked at the photo and gave her the news.

We haven't recently reached this point for a few days.

We found him today. How did she respond? She kind of clutched her chest and then fell back against the wall. Stay up here for a few seconds. And we usually talk about everything and try to figure out what's happened

in the last couple of days. Katrina thought she knew. I've called the police.

“There was nothing they could do unless I said here.”

I admitted it. We just need to figure out what she's going to figure out. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to feel right now. But you know what?

I don't know what to think. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to feel right now. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to feel right now.

But just the situation. I love my husband and I what he's done. She invited them inside. I don't know what to do. We're trying to help you walk through some stuff.

I don't know what my fault. I didn't do it though. Can I turn on the watch? Yeah. There we go.

She explained that she and David had been going through a rough patch. He was staying at another apartment and she hadn't spoken to him for days. Yeah. I physically spoke to him on Tuesday. On the phone or in person.

In person. She said she'd worried about his mental state that last time she saw him. And that he'd been talking about suicide. He isn't want to be in here anymore. My skin's crawling.

I feel like I've got bugs coming out of my skin.

“Was there anything to indicate to you that he possibly died by suicide?”

No. Nothing. The detectives knew her theory couldn't be right. David wasn't wearing any shoes. And yet?

Bottom as feet are clean. So he didn't walk there and collapse anything like that. So that means that he didn't die in that location. Whatever happened didn't happen here. Correct.

He did not miracle himself into that ditch. So there's no way. The detectives needed to know. Did David have any enemies? His wife certainly thought so.

It came to my door three times. Threatening David. July means your halfway through the year. But there's still time to reach your 2026 wellness goals. With half off an annual subscription to the start today app.

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On this week's episode, I get together with the hilarious Ken Jong. To talk through a career of unforgettable roles from the hangover movies. To the cult favorite show community and his latest in the Netflix cultural sensation. Kpop Demon Hunters. You can find our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts.

All Hamilton County Sheriff's Detectives had was a growing list of what didn't happen to David Fowlts.

They knew it wasn't a biking accident. Didn't look like suicide either. So they took a closer look at David's personal life. And sure enough, Katrina told detectives her husband had been having an affair. He wasn't the type of person I would expect to be involved with a woman like this.

David had had an affair with their housekeeper. And David had bought her a new car. David had allowed her to use his address in Pinnonton. So her kids could go to Pinnonton schools. Wow.

And that David was sending all this money to the scroll. He owned up to everything I wasn't mad. But I had a forensic county, you know, and I'm like, and you spent eight grand on a car. And spent over $30,000. I'm sorry, I'll stop, I'll stop, I'll stop.

But Katrina said he didn't. The impidelity continued. And then a man showed up at their doorstep with a threat. Do you know who this guy was?

I've never seen him in my life.

Okay. Did he say who he was? No. And I didn't ask him.

“Was this one of the woman's partner, a spouse, a husband?”

Katrina alluded that it was a father of one of her children. Who was she saying upset with David? Yes. Because of this affair. Yes.

She described him very well dressed. I wanted to speak to David. David was never there. But this unknown gentleman went out of his way to tell Katrina you're in no danger. I'm not going to harm you.

My issue is with David. Katrina said she wanted to call the police to report the man, but David stopped her. He wouldn't let me call the police about the man that keeps the door to threat to killer through four times. The housekeeper told Dateline she and David were not having an affair.

And when police interviewed her, she said he was just helping her out. He did not buy her car according to her and he really hadn't given her that much money. Okay. But he had allowed her to use his address for her kids. Does she give you names of her children's fathers?

Yes. The housekeeper didn't think anyone she knew had threatened David, but she gave them three names. Detectives tracked them down. All three males were accounted for two of them were in prison and one lived in Florida. Okay.

So in the one in Florida had had an alibi. So that road turned out to be a dead end. And detectives were back at square one on finding David's killer and finding out what killed him. The forensic pathologist said, "Look, I know there's not a glaring cause of death, but it is not natural. He did not have a heart attack, he did not have a stroke.

This is some kind of other death." However, detectives did have, well, maybe not quite a lead. But during the autopsy, the pathologist discovered something in David's stomach. What do you guys find?

“The only thing that was really there, it looked like little chunks of mushroom.”

Mushroom. Mushrooms. Those mushrooms led them to Purdue University and the lab of Dr. Catherine Ame, a professor of psychology. Help me understand what a professor of psychology is.

What do you study? We study fungi. All aspects of fungi actually in my lab. You get a phone call. Essentially asking to help police solve a murder.

Yes. Yes, I was happy to see if I could help identify the mushrooms. They had to have been a surprising phone call to save a lease. It's a little outside of my normal realm of day-to-day activity. Yeah.

So, Dr. Rame got to work using DNA sequencing to identify the mystery mushrooms. What kind of mushroom was this? It was something called leukocybi cannatum. And what happens if you eat that kind of mushroom? Well, this is where science is a little uncertain.

There are reports of people eating this mushroom without problem. There are other reports of people having toxicity from eating this mushroom that it has a toxin called muscarin in it.

It makes people sweat and salivate and cry and basically excrete

most of their liquid very, very quickly. Leaving someone dehydrated in week.

“Do we typically see cases of people dying from muscarin poisoning?”

No. We do not. So, toxic, but not necessarily deadly? No real answers there. Maybe another conversation with David's wife could shed light on what happened?

Or maybe not. She said that she's surfed with her husband and her husband died in her arms and while she was surfing, she had her arm was bitten off by shark.

When police first spoke with David's wife Katrina, she was overwhelmed with emotion.

A few days later, they wanted to talk to her again. So, she came down to the station. "What? Glass water, coffee or anything?" "What coffee?" "What coffee?"

Detectives noticed a few things right off the bat. Katrina liked to talk a lot. Then it tells you how much you got left. Often adding details, they didn't ask about. And then we relocated to La Mura, Brazil, state a cell phone.

I had uterus cancer, greyhounds. They have their own way to do things. That was hard to get her to answer direct questions.

She would break off into a tangent and still never really answer your questions.

Katrina told them stories of a rather high profile profession as a fashion designer with big ticket clients. "We made all little losses to her in closed last year. We got car dashing and wearing our freaking clothes right now. "Did you watch this film?"

“"I think they were pretty big deal, aren't they?"”

To the detectives' ears, the stories sounded far-fetched. It's a pattern David's friends had noticed from the jump. Not long after they met, Chris and another role-fast wife took Katrina to lunch. David had introduced her by a nickname, Edie. In that lunch, Edie explained and talked about her life

and had the craziest stories I've ever heard.

In my 57 years I've never had a lunch in like that.

She knew about me and my first husband who had passed away. And I don't know if that was a catalyst for her to say crazy things. But she said that her first husband died in her arms and that she was from Brazil. That's where she lived and she surfed with her husband

and her husband died in her arms. And while she was surfing, she had her arm was bitten off by shark. Now we're both looking at her. She has two arms. So I don't know what the follow-up question for that is. So these are the craziest stories we've ever heard.

“So did Katrina just like to spin tall tails for fun?”

Or were her lies dangerous? Detectives started digging into her past and were shocked by what they found. I was assigned to Superior Court 1 at that time. Adrian Champine was a deputy prosecutor with Hendrix County, Indiana. She first crossed past with Katrina in 2011 after Katrina reported to police

that she'd been raped by a friend of her then boyfriends. She gave him a ride back to his house. She went inside with him. She was going to use the bathroom and at that time he grabbed her and assaulted her. She said that the attack was so brutal it hurt to sit for too long.

Because of these traumatic injuries that she had sustained from the attack. Did she go to the hospital or the yarn? She did go to the hospital. She was checked out. She was the police followed up, of course, with the medical providers. They told the police, "No, she did not have traumatic injuries."

She said she almost didn't report the assault because of what she did for a living. She told them that she was a photographer for celebrities and famous magazines and that it would damage her reputation to be in this situation. And she told more stories about herself that to investigators just seemed off.

“She said that she owned houses. I believe she said several houses in Indiana”

that she also had a property or house in Florida. They could not find any evidence that she owned any of these properties. They also did not find any evidence that she had any source of income for the previous three years. So police look into all of this, and they find that none of it's true. Nothing's adding up.

Most crucially, the details of the assault weren't adding up. The accused man denied raping Katrina and told police he had a witness, another woman who was part of the entire encounter. So they talked to her. Yes, what does she say?

They bring her in and she corroborates everything that the male said. It was consensual the entire time. So when police go back to Katrina, what does she say? What's her explanation? Her response was, I think I need an attorney. Police charged Katrina with false informing and dropped the investigation into the man.

The level of crime he was looking at at that time it would have been a B felony rape, which would have carried 20 years in prison. This is a very serious allegation. This is more than just a little white lie.

As a prosecutor, you know that women coming forward in sexual assault cases can be extremely difficult anyway. There's a question of believability. How upsetting is it to see something like that?

It is upsetting and I think what's very upsetting about it is that you want to believe the victim when they come forward. And I think she was banking on that when she came forward with this lie. Katrina was sentenced to almost a year of probation in order to pay about $6,000 in restitution. As they dug further into her background,

detectives investigating David's murder tracked down Katrina's family and ex-boyfriend and even her ex-husband.

They admitted she could be charming and was always down for a good time.

Anything you want to say?

“I'm really excited and all I can say people is you have to be there.”

The investigators learned that aside from sometimes helping and her father's roofing company, there was no evidence that Katrina had worked a day in her life. In fact, she seemed to lily pad from one relationship to the next. How was she getting by? Wherever the money was is where she stayed, she was all about money.

As you're talking more and more people, this pattern is starting to develop about Katrina. One financially but two, making allegations against her romantic partners. Correct. She reported her first husband to police saying he hit her.

She pressed charges. He denied hitting her, but pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. Once married to David, Katrina accused him of shoving her. David pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor domestic battery charge. Detective Lockhart looked at all of this.

He dug into David's past and couldn't find any history of David being physically abusive. As you're looking at this, did you believe that he pled guilty because he in fact was guilty of this? Or because it was the path of least resistance? I think it was the path of least resistance. Sometimes in the legal system, it's easier just to bite the bullet and move on past it.

So to speak. Months later, Katrina told police he pushed her again. But this time, David said Katrina was lying. David's attorney told Detective Lockhart, phone records show David was nowhere near Katrina when the alleged assault took place.

According to his attorney, he was going to fight that case. But he passed before the case came up. To hear abusive. No. Does that sound?

I've never seen David violent with anybody.

Anyone. David's friends, the Tanner's belief Katrina was lying when she told police he was suicidal. They never saw that. But they did see a dark side to the marriage. They remember talking to David for hours one night about his relationship.

It was kind of the same thing over and over. But at some point he said, if I end up dead, she killed me. He said this. Words.

“And we looked at each other and we like, Dave, you have to.”

You have to leave. Get rid of her. And then at the same breath, he said he wants to go back to me. He said I can't. He said I can't leave her. Can't leave her. He loves her.

Matt and Chris looked back on that conversation and became convinced. Katrina killed their friend.

And they shared that with detectives.

Detective Lockhart would now put Katrina's words under a microscope. Starting with where she was when David went missing. I need Terry. Over the country. Now.

Terry. Who was that? Detectives had more questions for David found his wife, Katrina. Starting with a key one. Where was she?

The night David was murdered. She told detectives she'd been with a man named Terry Hopkins, a long time family friend. Pops or Hoppy. Okay.

Father from another mother. These are all things that she told me about Terry. Nicknames. Nicknames. Between the two.

Clearly the two of them are close. Very close. He might add her lifelong mason. Okay. And that's friends.

Katrina said she'd met up with Terry at a house she rented in the country. I need Terry over the country house because we were going to grab some food. Because he said he was a mood for Chinese. We were spending some time together watching movie. And he said this was six to seven at night.

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't even dark yet. Katrina said she stayed there through the night. The next day she went back to the home in Pendleton.

She shared with David. Well, he's needed to speak with Terry, but he refused. So they detained him and tried to get him to answer some questions.

“Are you wanting to give us a statement and talk to us about this?”

My good sense tells me that I need to wait and request for a turning. He changed her mind to when he talked to us. I never remember. Okay. Police had to let Terry go.

To eat us and talk to you.

He doesn't answer any questions.

“Other than to tell me he called me one time and told me what a pathetic job I was doing”

with my investigation and that he was going to sue me. Terry wasn't spooked by law enforcement. He'd spent 33 years with a police department in a nearby county where he'd worked his way up to captain. How was he as an officer? Oh, he was good.

He had a good sense of humor, but also a compassion for people, especially the underdogs. This is Deb Hopkins, Terry's ex-wife. Terry wasn't talking to police, but Deb certainly was. He asked me numerous questions about Terry and Katrina. Deb told investigators she'd been Terry's wife for 45 years.

And their life together was mostly good. I could start a sense he could finish it and it was just so easy, so relax, so comfortable. But Deb says they're happy marriage unraveled after Terry retired.

He would get very upset very quickly and he would cry and he'd never cried.

You know, over the slightest thing, we had a neighborhood camp that died and he just bawled. It was a sudden change so concerning they went to see a neurologist.

“And that's when we found out that he had had a frontal lobe stroke.”

A stroke? Yeah. He didn't even know it. I thought strokes major face, sag, or arm you lose. A frontal lobe stroke does not affect your mind.

It affects your judgment, it affects your ethics, it affects your reasoning, your empathy. Deb says Terry was never the same after his diagnosis. He became verbally abusive and started having an affair. I said, "I'm leaving." Hardest thing I ever did.

Up to that point. After the divorce, Terry moved in with his friend, Katrina's father. And he started spending a lot of time around Katrina. He was still in touch with Deb too. She noticed that whenever Katrina's husband David came up in conversation, Terry would fly into a frenzy.

He would talk about David with such venom.

“You could feel the anger radiating off of him.”

Yeah. You could almost feel the heat. So Katrina's alibi for the night her husband was killed was a man who openly hated David. That was suspicious. And so was this.

On the night police tried to question Terry for days after the body was found. He had a bandaid on each hand and one big one on his forearm. And the initial thing that drew my attention is where his glasses set. There was some blood. That was a wound.

And I thought, you know, these look like he could have been in a fight. Detective Lockhart requested a search warrant to collect Terry's DNA and take pictures of his body. So he had a cross up here. And it looked like a necklace. A necklace.

There was a bruise that looked just like that cross. Like he had held something against his chest really tightly. But his whole chest was bruised. Katrina told police she was not only with Terry the night David likely died, but she also admitted to being with Terry two nights later on a Thursday.

Which is also the night we believe that the body was dumped. When police dug through Terry and Katrina's phone records, they learned the two were in constant contact except for that night. Their cell phones got shut off on the night that the but we believe the body was dumped for a period of like four hours. When they had this long communication string talking all the time and all of a sudden both phones shut off.

But detective Yates discovered that didn't necessarily mean the two weren't in communication. When he searched their cars, he found a walkie-talkie in each. Like a small walkie-talkie, like you could, you know, use it a kid or you might see, you know, some big backstory that they talk on. And detective Yates noticed other things in Terry's car.

A lot of different types of knives, tools, zip ties, tarps. It's like a perfect murder cover-up kid. Yes. Investigators now believed Katrina and Terry worked together to kill David. But why?

What did Katrina stand again from David's death? Everything.

A half million dollar life insurance policy.

The $40,000 from Salesforce as like a severance pay. The house, the two motor cycles, the three cars, well, more cars than that. His specialized bicycles that were, I mean, tens of thousands of dollars expensive. Literally everything. She would have had a very lucrative payday from David's death.

Yes. But detective Lockhart knew means in motive were not enough to make an arrest. To make a murder case, they needed to nail down a cause of death. Maybe the clue they needed was this. There was a screenshot of a death cap mushroom.

You can learn a lot about a person by looking through their phone.

There was a screenshot of a death cap mushroom. After speaking with mushroom expert Dr. A, they learned the death cap mushroom is, as its name implies, deadly. The alcanata mushrooms found in David's stomach are considered a less toxic variety. But it turns out, the two look a lot alike. They're both tall, stately, pure white mushrooms, big white cap, white gills, so very, very similar.

“Is it possible that if someone were going out trying to gather mushrooms that they made a mistake, one mushroom for the other, try and grab the deadly one, but get the other instead?”

Yeah, I think that's very reasonable hypothesis.

So maybe the detective's first inclination was, at least, partially correct.

Maybe the crime did involve mushroom hunting after all. But it was Katrina and Terry, who'd been on the prowl, planning to kill David with the lethal death cap mushroom, but accidentally grabbing the less toxic one instead. Detective Lockhart explored this theory, while Katrina seemed to explore a friendship with him. Hey there, good afternoon. So how are you? A ball of stress Katrina.

How often is she reaching out to you guys? Oh my goodness, daily, hourly. So you can't still living on the swimming they are. To say what? Talk about life-living pursuit of happiness.

I just want you to know Greg, I appreciate you. But at the same time, you are getting, I mean, growing mountains of evidence that make you fairly certain that she's the person who killed her husband. Yes.

How do you square those two?

Well it's a game. This is one big unfortunate game that we have to play. I have to be nice to her and not let her know what I know and keep her talking to me. Detective Lockhart wasn't sharing with Katrina that mountain of evidence he'd been collecting against her and Terry. The DNA results came back five months after the murder and... Terry's DNA was on the shirt that was still on the body of David.

This is a horrible piece of evidence for Terry. Very damaging. The report also showed David's DNA was found in the back of Terry's car. After reviewing the evidence, Hamilton County Prosecutor Andre Mishka developed a theory. So in our theory, the mushrooms were an attempt to kill him,

but because they were an alcanata, and not emanate of Rosa, they did not. We didn't have him in some form.

Right, we can have him in some form, now he was dehydrated.

But then they had to pivot and go a different tack.

“And so I believe that in the early morning hours, that that's when this fixation occurs.”

Part of that theory that David likely died by strangulation. That would also explain those injuries detective saw Terry's hands and chest. Prosecutor Mishka thought that after strangling David, Katrina and Terry drove out to the country to dump his body. And as for that rifle sling found around David's neck,

they thought that was to help roll him into the ditch. We believe his means of helping to give something to grab onto in that part of his body. The Prosecutor thought this would be the best the case was going to get. It was now or never. Your arrest, Terry, tell me how that happens.

So we had the Indian State Police SWAT team descend upon him. They were trying to call him out in it took 10 to 15 minutes. Police found Katrina driving her car. And then our SWAT team took her down. When they searched her car, they found $40,000 in cash and a burner phone.

“On her cell phone, she had searched how to disappear and never be found,”

how to get fake IDs. She searched that specifically? Yes. In September of 2020, Katrina and Terry were charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

With two defendants awaiting trial and jail, investigators couldn't help but wonder if one of them might flip. Terry was interviewed in an attempt to do a plea agreement. He was in bad shape, battling heart and memory problems, but he told them a story.

He said that Katrina had used mushrooms to poison him and cooked him put him on a pizza or something. David was very lethargic from eating the mushrooms. Terry presented himself. There was a scuffle.

And Terry said I put my arm around him. As he was fussing and just squeezed for a few minutes. And then strangled him and killed him. Yes. Terry died a few months after talking to investigators.

Then in February of 2022, Katrina went on trial. Detective Lockhart says Terry's statement wasn't presented to the jury's evidence because Terry had been sick and mentally diminished when he talked. And the judge threw out that screen shot of the death cat mushroom found on Katrina's phone because those weren't the kind of mushrooms

found in David's stomach. That piece he thought was just too far of a reach

The defense argued the state's story was just that. A fiction with a gaping hole at the center of it. If prosecutors couldn't say exactly how David was killed, how could they tell the jury who killed him? After a week of trial, which was recorded on audio,

the jury reached a verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant. Katrina Louise Fouts, not guilty of murder. There's the sudden seeking feeling of augash. This might go sideways.

But on the conspiracy charge? We, the jury, find the defendant. Katrina Louise Fouts guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. Katrina was sentenced to 34 years in prison. She'll be in her 80s by the time she's released.

I was happy she went to jail and all, you know, that the system worked, I guess, doesn't bring David back. Terry's ex-wife, Deb, believes Terry Stroke, left him open to manipulation by Katrina.

“I think she made herself out to be a victim of David's”

and that's why he started hating him. She manipulates people. And she knew how to manipulate him. You think Terry fell victim to it? Oh, I know he did.

Do you think that if Terry had never had this stroke,

he would have ever been a part of this? No, he would have not. No question. No question. Deb says she's found a way to forgive Terry,

but she doesn't condone what he did. And David's family is always on her mind. I've always regretted not reaching out to David's family in offering my condolences.

“In case they are watching, what would you want to say to them?”

I'm so sorry. I know I'm not responsible for it, but David, you know, he had a full life ahead of him. And I'm so sorry that it ended that way. She could have divorced him and could have gone on.

That she didn't. And he died in such agony. And that breaks my heart. In the years after David found his death, Matt Tanner organized a memorial right for his friend,

the name, Dave Thast. It was a spin-off of role-fast and Dave. We should have called it Felt Fast. We should have. A lot of people came out.

First two years, we had really good turnout.

A lot of them, I didn't know who they were. And they showed up because they knew Dave. And great Dave's stories.

“How had he been keep one up here, remember?”

Somebody that would... would give up himself to make somebody else's day or ride or life better. Once all for this edition of "Date Line." And don't forget to check out our "Talking Date Line" podcast,

in which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Of able to Wednesday in the "Date Line" feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10. 9 Centrel.

I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News. Good night. I'm Craig Melver. Cheers, cheers.

Cheers.

I've always been a glass half-full kind of guy.

And now, I'm talking to some people who look at the world that we too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, their funny and my candy. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows.

You might just come away with your own glass half-full. Search Glass Half-full with Craig Melver from today. On YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.