Talking Dateline: The Mushroom Mystery

Dateline NBC

A podcast discussion explores the true crime story 'The Mushroom Mystery,' where a woman attempted to poison her husband with toxic mushrooms, leading to a murder conspiracy involving her friend who ultimately strangled

Key takeaways

• Mushroom poisoning attempts can backfire due to misidentification

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankowitz. We're talking Dateline. Today, with Blaine Alexander. Hello. Hello. So we're here to talk about Blaine's episode, The Mushroom Mystery. Now, that's a story about a woman named Katrina Fouts, who plotted to poison her husband David using poisonous mushrooms. That, for a variety of reasons, did not work. So Katrina's friend Terry strangled David. In the end, Terry confessed to killing David, and Katrina was found not guilty of murder, but she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Now, if you haven't seen this episode, you can stream it on Peacock or watch it on your DVR, or you can listen to it on the Dateline podcast feed and then come right back here for this discussion. And then later, we're going to have an extra clip from Blaine's interview with the killer Terry's X. wife. But first, let's talk to Aitline. Let's talk to Aitline. I was thinking about where to start. And because it's me, I'm going to start at the more trivial. There's an old joke that the other vegetables don't want to hang out with the mushroom and they're excluding him. And he goes, why? I'm a fun guy. Get it? Right? Okay. That apparently, according to your story, according to your story, it's not my joke. According to your story, that's not true. It's fungi? I mean, she's a scientist. Presumably she knows. Speaker 4 (1:37) That was one of the many things that I learned through the course of doing this story, by the way. I always thought it was fungi, but I've not dedicated years of my life to studying mushrooms. And so, yes, hearing it pronounced that way, I said, you know what, that's not how I've said it, but I trust you. I trust you. Speaker 2 (1:53) Yeah. I mean, that wrecks that joke, but okay. Speaker 4 (1:56) Keep telling it because most people don't know if that's the actual pronunciation. So you're fine. Speaker 2 (2:01) It's a crowd pleaser. Yeah. No, they can't get enough of it. This feels actually, just to delve a little deeper into this, this feels a little different from the GIF versus GIF debate, right? Because that feels like it's got a certain number of people on both sides. But, you know, when the woman who studies mushrooms for a living says fungi, then I'm inclined to stop telling that joke. So when I first heard about this story about somebody getting poisoned with mushrooms, my mind immediately went to that poisoning story in Australia from a couple of years ago in which a woman fed death cap mushrooms, actual death cat mushrooms, two members of her family, estranged members of her family, because they were going through a divorce, and I managed to kill several people and ended up getting locked up for it. But I immediately thought, oh, this was inspired by that. But not true. Your story happened before that Australia poisoning story. So maybe they got the idea from this. Speaker 4 (3:07) You know what? It's possible. But one thing that we learned in the course of this is that Katrina, the woman who has been convicted of this, she really enjoys true crime shows. I mean, that's something that she does. She watches, we know the dateline, something she watches. She watches some of the others. And so who knows where ideas are birthed, but certainly she took in a lot of it. I think the other thing is that, you know, what's interesting about mushroom culture, mushroom hunting culture, is that if you're in that part of Indiana, that's something that, you know, is pretty familiar to you. And so while you or I may not think of mushrooms as a way to poison anybody, not that we're thinking of how to poison people. But while that might not be something that's top of mind for us, it certainly makes a lot more sense because it's part of the everyday conversation. Mushrooms are just very much a part of the way of life there. I guess, although, Speaker 2 (3:56) you know, if one percent of the eggs that I ate were potentially fatal, I'd probably stop eating eggs. At least I'd stop searching for them myself. I would get ones that I trust. I mean, like, I would not be going out mushroom hunting if I lived in Indiana or anywhere else for exactly this reason. I mean, they were looking for a fatal mushroom. They didn't find one, but they found one that did some significant damage. Speaker 4 (4:25) Yeah. So do you want to know something strange? I actually am not a mushroom eater myself. And I think that it's because years ago, at some point in my very, very young developmental life, I learned that mushrooms could be poisonous. And for whatever reason, I then decided that I didn't like mushrooms. And then I got older, it became a texture thing. And I just don't necessarily eat them. I pick them off of pizzas if I have them. Not because I think I'm going to get poisoned at this. point, but I just, I'm not a mushroom girl, and I think that it started, you know, in my mind from there. But to your point, yes, I mean, you know, as we were interviewing Dr. A. I mean, I just asked about, when you think about the fact that somebody goes out and is looking for a specific type of mushroom, they happen upon another less dangerous, but still dangerous mushroom that looks remarkably similar to the deadly one. And very similar. that's not an uncommon mistake if you're out there, even if you're well-versed on mushrooms, if you're an amateur mushroom hunter. That's something that could happen. So mistakes like that can happen is the point. Speaker 2 (5:28) Yeah, this is, I just would never, I would never do that. Speaker 4 (5:33) You know what's interesting is that I had never heard of mushroom hunting in my life until I shot this story and another story. And within the course of about a month, I believe it or not, had two stories. that included mushroom hunting back to back in Kentucky and Indiana. Never heard of it before. It's this story and then my previous story, the Bluegrass Murder, the Bluegrass Mystery, where it was a group of mushroom hunters that happened upon Ella Jackson's body, right? And so never had I heard of it before. And then suddenly back-to-back stories, they play big roles. Very interesting. Speaker 2 (6:10) Okay. So investigators believe that Katrina maybe put it on some pizza, but not a pizza she made, like some frozen pizza or something that she said. Speaker 4 (6:21) Like takeout or something like that. Yeah, just kind of put it on there. But obviously enough Speaker 2 (6:25) for him to eat it. And whatever Dave's feelings were about her, it doesn't seem that he was afraid of her enough to worry about anything he might have eaten. Well, you know what's really, Speaker 4 (6:38) in speaking with Dave's friends about this, they really gave a lot of insight into how he was feeling because they talked about a man who was just absolutely taken by Katrina. I mean, just really head over heels in love, smitten with this woman, crying at the possibility or the thought of losing her. Even after, as we talked about in the story, she'd done some pretty kind of awful things to him. And yet he still was