The Mushroom Mystery

22:49She has two arms, so I don't know what the follow-up question for that is. So these are the craziest stories I've ever heard. So did Katrina just like to spin tall tales 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 One at that time. Adrienne Champagne was a deputy prosecutor with Hendricks County, Indiana. She first crossed paths with Katrina in 2011 after Katrina reported to police that she'd been raped by a friend of her then-boyfriend's. She gave him a ride back to his house. She went inside with him.

23:31She was going to use the bathroom, and that 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 ER? 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.

24:21And 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. Right. 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.

25:05So they talked to her. Yes. What does she say? They bring her in and she corroborates everything that the mail 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 up to 20 years in prison. This is a very serious allegation. This is more than just a little white lie. Correct. As a prosecutor, you know that women coming forward in sexual assault cases can be extremely difficult anyway.

25:51There's the 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 and ordered to pay about$6 ,000 in restitution. As they dug further into her background, detectives investigating David's murder tracked down Katrina's family, an ex-boyfriend, and even her ex-husband. They admitted she could be charming and was always down for a good time.

26:33Anything 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 at 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 is she getting by? Wherever the money was is where she stayed. She was all about money. As you're talking to 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.

27:13She 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.

27:52Months 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 Dave violent with anybody. No, anyone. David's friends, the Tanners, believe 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.

28:34It 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, right? And we looked at each other and we're like, Dave, you have to. You have to leave. Get rid of her. And yet in the same breath, he's saying he wants to go back to her. 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.

29:09I meet Terry over at the country house. Terry? Who was that?

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31:20detectives had more questions for david founce's 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 longtime family friend. Pops or Hoppy. Okay. A 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. Him and my dad are lifelong masons. Okay. And best friends. Katrina said she'd met up with Terry at a house she rented in the country. I meet Terry over at the country house because we were going to grab some food because he said he was in the mood for Chinese.

31:58We were going to spend some time together, watch a movie. And you said this was 6 to 7 at night? Yeah. Somewhere in there? 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. Police needed to speak with Terry, but he refused. So they detained him and tried to get him to answer some questions. Are you willing to give us a statement and talk to us about this? My good sense tells me that I need to wait and request for an attorney. If you change your mind, you want to talk to us? We have our number, okay?

32:32Police had to let Terry go, but they kept digging. So he doesn't 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 the 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 passion for people, especially the underdogs. This is Deb Hopkins, Terry's ex-wife. Terry wasn't talking to police, but Deb certainly was.

33:10He 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 sentence, he could finish it, and it was just so easy, so relaxed, so comfortable. But Deb says their happy marriage unraveled after Terry retired. He would get very upset very quickly and he would cry and he never cried. Hmm. You know, over the slightest thing, we had a neighborhood cat 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.

33:50A stroke? Yeah. He didn't even know it. I thought strokes made your face sag or your arm. A frontal lobe stroke does none of that. It affects 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.

34:35He would talk about David with such venom. You could feel the anger radiating off of him toward David. 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 four days after the body was found? He had a Band-Aid on each hand and one big one on his forearm. And the initial thing that drew my attention is where his glasses sat. There was some blood. It 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.

35:16So he had a cross up here and it looked like... A tattoo or a necklace? A necklace. 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 we believe the body was dumped for a period of like four hours.

35:55When 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, You could use it as a kid, or you might see some big box store 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 kit. Yes. Investigators now believed Katrina and Terry worked together to kill David.

36:33But why? What did Katrina stand to gain 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 motorcycles, 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 and 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.

37:15There was a screenshot of a death cap mushroom.

37:30you can learn a lot about a person by looking through their phone and when detectives reviewed the contents of katrina's photo roll they stumbled upon one very telling picture 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 Elkanata 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?

38:18Yeah, I think that's a 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 cat 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. Are your parents still living?

39:00I'm assuming 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...

39:39Terry's DNA was on the shirt that was still on the body of David. This is a horrible piece of evidence for Terry. Very damning. The report also showed David's DNA was found in the back of Terry's car. After reviewing the evidence, Hamilton County Prosecutor Andre Mischka developed a theory. So in our theory, the mushrooms were an attempt to kill him, but because they were an Elcanatum and not Amanita varosa, they did not. Weakened him in some form. Right, weakened him in some form. Now he was dehydrated, but then they had to pivot and go a different tack. And so we believe that in the early morning hours, that that's when the asphyxiation occurs.

40:21Part of that theory, that David likely died by strangulation. That would also explain those injuries detectives saw on 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 is a 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. You arrest Terry. Tell me how that happens. So we had the Indiana State Police SWAT team descend upon him.

41:02They were trying to call him out, and 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.

41:41He 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 them, put them 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 as evidence because Terry had been sick and mentally diminished when he talked.

42:23And the judge threw out that screenshot 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 to be relevant to present to the jury. 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.

43:01There's the sudden seeking feeling of, oh gosh, 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, the system worked, I guess. Doesn't bring Dave back. Terry's ex-wife, Deb, believes Terry's 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.

43:48You 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 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 and 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.

44:24She could have divorced him and could have gone on, but she didn't. And he died in such agony. And that breaks my heart. In the years after David Fouts' death, Matt Tanner organized a memorial ride for his friend. The name? DaveFast. It was a spinoff of RollFast and Dave. We should have called it FoutsFast. We should have. A lot of people came out. First two years, we had really good turnouts. A lot of them, I didn't know who they were. And they showed up because they knew Dave. They had great Dave stories. How do you think he'd want to be remembered? somebody that would give up himself to make somebody else's day or ride or life better.

45:08That's all for this edition of Dateline. And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, in which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10, 9 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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