Transcript of Talking Dateline: The Mushroom Mystery

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Hi everybody, I'm Josh Mankiewicz. 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 ex-wife. But first, let's talk Dateline.

Let's talk Dateline.

I was thinking about where to start, um, 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—

It's very good, by the way.

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.

That was one of the many things that I learned through the course of doing the 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.

Yeah. I mean, that wrecks that joke, but okay.

Um, keep telling it because most people don't know.

Oh yeah.

No, no, actual pronunciation.

So you're fine.

It's a crowd pleaser. Yeah. No, they, 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 JIF 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 cap mushrooms, to members of her family, estranged members of her family because they were going through a divorce. And 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.

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, you know, if 1% 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 is— that— that—

Dangerous enough.

Did some significant damage.

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— 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. Aimee, 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, you know, well-versed 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.

Yeah, this is— I just would never, I would never do that.

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. This— 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.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, 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 saw.

Like takeout or something like that. Yeah. Just kind of put it on there, but obviously enough 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— 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 thinking, "Gosh, I cannot lose this woman. I love this woman. I'm really, you know, wanting to be with her." He couldn't give her up.

And you know what's interesting is that people don't want to see whether they're men or women, they don't want to recognize the things that they clearly do see with their own two eyes. Like, this person is dangerous. This person treats me badly, doesn't respect me, lies to me, has done secret things that hurt me, and they, for whatever reason, can't stop.

I think that it speaks to two things. I think it speaks to, one, the blinding nature of love, or the illusion of love. Right? Like how you think that you are so with someone that you're willing to look past all sorts of things. But I also think that it speaks to the fear that so many people have of being alone and of being lonely. And, you know, we've done stories, you've done plenty, I certainly have, where people do not want to be by themselves, where they would get into a terrible situation where even if it's like their friends, their family are saying, gosh, this seems like a really bad match, but they really, really want to be not by themselves. And I want to point out one thing too. I mean, in this situation, David, he had the money, he had the job, he had the, you know, the, the, he could have easily walked away and not been any worse for the wear financially or in terms of home or things like that. So it really was this, this, uh, kind of like magnetic-like draw, uh, that she had on him.

When we get back, we have an extra clip from Blaine's interview with the accomplice's ex-wife Deb.

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Let's just talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the investigation. So, you know, the bodies found just Lying on the side of the road, it almost feels as if there was no attempt to conceal the body. I mean, if you'd move the body another 10 yards, sort of farther off the shoulder and into that ditch, uh, who knows how long it would have been before, uh, uh, before anybody found it. I mean, it does kind of feel like the body was found within the first 24 hours, largely because there wasn't much of an attempt to hide that.

I think you're absolutely right. And I have to say that actually walking that route with Jenny, who we met at the very beginning, I mean, that was her normal walking route. And so being able to be with her and having her point and say, "No, no, no, it was right here." Because as you know how it is, when we're preparing for these stories, we're reading all this information, we kind of look at pictures and things, but you don't really get an accurate picture or understanding of kind of where things are situated until you get a chance to go to the scene. And so, as I was reading and everything, I didn't realize just how close it was to the road until I got out there with Jenny. And she said, "No, no, no, it was right here." It was actually right there. Like, I mean, it was not too far off the road at all. You know, in talking with the investigators, it seemed like they got the sense that it was difficult to move David Fouts' body. Like, this is somebody who was a very athletic man. He was in great shape. I mean, he was a muscular dude.

He rode bicycles all the time, right? This is a— I mean, this is a very physically fit man.

This is where the phrase dead weight comes from. Like, moving a lifeless body is much harder than people think it's gonna be.

Yes, exactly.

Let's talk about Katrina and the investigators, because that little dance is something that you and I have both seen before in stories in which the person who was under suspicion sort of engages with the investigators to, one, seem cooperative, and two, kind of figure out how much suspicion they're under, and three, sort of what they have and where the investigation is going, and four, point some fingers at other people. And it does not appear in this instance that those two guys were in any way fooled by any of that.

I mean, I think that they saw through Katrina from the very beginning. I think that when you look at those interviews down at the station where she's talking about Fashion Week and the Kardashians or her clients and all of these things, I mean, from, from the very beginning, they said, gosh, there's something going on with this lady. She likes to talk a lot. And what she's saying is not truthful. And then, yes, after a while, once she started calling the investigator repeatedly, and I mean, I asked him, I said, what was she talking about? What were you talking about? He said, anything, literally. Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, whatever it was. He knew that that was a way to just kind of keep her there, keep her on the hook while they got enough to basically be able to make an arrest.

The hardest thing for investigators sometimes is a person of interest or suspect who immediately says, you know, I'm invoking my right to counsel. And if you want to talk to me anymore, you know, you can call my attorney. And then they just don't talk. And then they never talk and then they don't testify. And so you don't really have either at the investigative level or the prosecutorial level an opportunity to challenge them, which is actually one reason why when those people sit down with you or me or Andrea or Keith or Lester or Dennis, like frequently, like this is the only time they're getting crossed, right? Because the police didn't have a chance to do it and prosecutors didn't have a chance to do it. But the thing that they love is somebody like Katrina who won't shut up. I mean, not only is she saying a bunch of things that are provably not true, but she's telling them to look every single place except right at her.

Yes. I mean, you've heard the— you've heard the expression before. When I was a young reporter, one of the older folks in our newsroom—

You're still a young reporter.

But I was a young— when I was a young in the game reporter. I'm 40 now, by the way, Josh. I've crossed the threshold. Okay. That's where we're— we're—

I don't know what—

I'm not middle-aged. I'm not claiming that, but I'm not young anymore.

That sounds ferociously young to me. Yeah.

When I was a very young in the game and young by age reporter, One of my mentors, his name was Hampton Pearson, and he told me that one day, I was doing a lot of live shots, and he said, "Just be careful that you don't get out too far in front of your skis." Right? Like, even if you have time to fill, even if you, you know, need to say something because of this amount of time they've slotted you in the rundown, just make sure that you're within the bounds of what you have confirmed and what you know. Um, and I think that in thinking about Katrina, she was doing a lot of talking without any sort of guardrails. And so, yes, there were lies coming out, but certainly investigators would look at that and say, "There's gonna be something there." something that comes out that could be useful to us in building a case.

Okay. So this is an opportunity, because this is Talking Dateline, for me to talk about when I was a young reporter, which was when TV was still powered by steam, or we would shovel coal into the back of the set. But this was 1980. And I was a reporter for Channel 7 in Washington, D.C. And then I was going to do a live shot for the 11 o'clock news. But I have my little notebook. Book, add the spiral up top one, which is actually important to the story. So, so let's do this like this. So I wrote down here, I wrote down the, uh, the thing I was going to say first, right? My open. And I get through that, but I'm not good at that, right? This is my first ever live show. I could feel my heart like, like doing this, right? And then, but now I realize I'm more than halfway through because my story runs. I can hear it in my ear. The story's running on the air. And so I flipped to the end. I'd written the open on one page and then I'd written the close on the next page.

But I didn't look down because I thought I knew that, right? I thought I felt kind of loose now, like I was on top of the world. And I apparently I had turned two pages instead of just one. Right. And when I looked down, right when I went back on, I had turned to the list of things that I was buying my mom for Christmas. And so instead of the pithy thing that I had written for the end of my story, it said, "Omelet pan." And I thought, "Well, that's not right." And then I started like looking for it, but I started going the wrong way. Right?

Oh no.

And what felt like about 45 minutes passed. Right? And I think the anchor, the anchor said, Josh, like, like, all this is live on TV, live on television. And by the way, I would point out this was when there was no internet, basically no cable, uh, no streaming. Like, there were a lot of people watching. Like, a third of the televisions in Washington, DC were watching me. This would be probably hundreds of thousands of people saw this. But the good news No YouTube then either. So there is no record of this anywhere.

No record of this.

And so I finally, I sort of like figured out what my tag was and then I said it.

I'm glad that you didn't start reading omelet pans, like, you know, gift cards on there.

So good.

I'm Ron Burgundy. You didn't do that.

No, no, I did not do that. So let's go back over for a minute. The story of this is sort of Katrina's like, like weird relationship with Terry, and then also the one she sort of cultivated with the cops.

Katrina was a mighty interesting woman. There were obviously many layers and many lives to Katrina. And you got that in the conversations that she had with the investigator. You got that in the recorded interviews that she had with the detectives that first night. Then also, you got that in the fact that a relationship between Katrina and Terry even existed. Right? And this is something that I asked Terry's ex-wife, Deb. Um, did she think that something like this, that a murder of David Fouts would've happened had it not been for Katrina and Terry joining forces? Like, Terry was the perfect person, essentially, to be the kind of wing guy for this type of crime. Had they not found each other, would this have happened? And you don't know, but there was certainly something in her that recognized, "Okay, this is the type of person that I can—" get to go along with this.

One of the things that really kind of fascinated me was the story of how Terry changed after his stroke, the story told in that great interview you did with his ex. I mean, obviously, I've seen people change their personalities because of medical situations, because they've been ill and their health is compromised in some way. But good guy to furious, angry, lawless, and then murderer, that's something I haven't seen.

I can't say enough about Deb and her sitting down with us because she— it's clear that she is still very much in pain over everything that happened between, you know, the medical condition that befell her husband, the divorce, the fact that he cheated on her, the fact that he just changed into this person. Watching this person that she had loved for decades suddenly become somebody else. I can't imagine what that is like. Um, and then to come to find out that this man is then involved in a murder, um, I can't even imagine kind of how she grapples with all that in her mind. The other thing, though, that she did say at the end of— toward the end of our interview is that she also wanted to speak about Terry because she didn't want his entire life to be reduced to that portion of it. She wanted to talk about the person that he was beforehand. She wanted to talk about his goodness before, you know, the medical condition and everything else.

Befell him. Today on Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip of that interview that you did with Deb that did not air on the TV broadcast. So let's listen to that now. It's your conversation with her about Terry's diagnosis and sort of how that changed everything.

And I asked the doctor, I said, "What can we do about this?" He said, "Nothing." He said the word, "Nothing." He said, "There's nothing you can do. There's no surgery. There's no therapy. There's no medicine." I said, "What should I expect?" "More aggression." More aggression.

And here you are sitting next to your husband, your life partner. You've been together for decades. Right. I can't imagine how— It's terrifying.

It's absolutely terrifying 'cause there was anything like his diabetes or his heart heart, or— because he did have heart problems. There was always something I could do to help. I couldn't do a thing. You know, at first, I was a little angry with God, saying, "Why are you punishing me like this? I've been a good wife. He's been a good husband. Why? What did I do? Why are you punishing me?" Then the divorce happened. And 4 months later, the murder happened. That quickly? That quickly. And then I realized, no, God wasn't punishing me. He was protecting me.

Okay, so this is what, you know, we talk about sometimes, which is the ripple effect of murder. You know, I mean, you know, she was not a member of Dave's family, right? But like, her life is inexorably irretrievably changed because of this. Absolutely.

You know, I mean, I think a couple of things there. One, she talks about the fact that it was devastating to her for all of the people who were in their lives to find out about Terry's arrest and everything that had happened, right? Because again, he'd been known as kind of this pillar of the community, this officer who was really, I mean, dedicated his life to law enforcement. And then suddenly his mugshot is flashed all over the news or in the newspaper. So that was just personally devastating for her and for the love that she still had for her ex-husband, Despite the ways that he had changed and the ways that he had hurt her. And then the other part of it is, yes, she feels— I don't know if guilty is the word because obviously she didn't play any role in David Faust's death, but she feels so terribly for his family and for the people who loved him because of the role that Terry played in what happened to him. And so, there are a lot of emotions in her that she, you know, will have to work very hard to, reconcile.

Yeah, and she didn't do anything wrong, but it's, it's a huge thing to get over. She doesn't know Dave's family, right? Correct, she doesn't.

She doesn't. And at one point she spoke. I mean, you know, I asked, is there anything that you want to say to them that you would like to say to them? And she just really spoke about how terribly she feels, um, for everything that, that happened to him.

Okay, all right, when we come back, we're going to take your questions from social media. Let's do it. Time for some social media questions. Donna McNair on Facebook asks us, did they ever explain the dog collar around his neck? Which is a very good question. I mean, what is that? Is that part of strangling him or an attempt to throw off investigators by suggesting some kind of S&M angle?

Well, Donna, that was a fantastic question. And the answer is, it was not, in fact, a dog collar. It was a rifle sling. And so, it was what looked like a dog collar. That's what the 911 caller said at first. But it was actually the rifle sling that they had put around his body to kind of try and use to get him into the ditch. But once it got all, you know, twisted around and everything, it looked like a dog collar to the 911— the person who called 911.

Barbara Weaver on Facebook asks, "If they're saying he was asphyxiated by Terry, why didn't the autopsy reveal that?" Barbara, that's a very good question.

At the end of the day, they were never actually able to definitively determine the cause of death. That ex— the notion of asphyxiation was part of the theory, basically saying that he was so weakened that they were able to strangle him and ultimately kill him. But it didn't have, I mean, None of the telltale signs were there. And that kind of is what points to the difficulty that prosecutors had because they were never able to, you know, give a conclusive cause of death.

Yeah, which makes their job a little tougher. Charlene Kennedy Richard on Facebook asks, "How can you love and live with someone you're convinced may kill you?" That should be the official Dateline motto. And I don't know the answer, but Charlene, it happens all the time.

It's something that we see constantly over and over again. And I mean, it's for the reasons that you and I talked about earlier, Josh, right? People don't want to be alone. People don't want to, you know, and a lot of times people don't want to admit that they're wrong, that they've been so wrong about somebody, that this person that they've decided to join their life with—

and wasted so many years. Yes. Yes.

And so it is easier to, in the, you know, haze of love or, you know, presumed love, right? The illusion of love to think maybe I'm not seeing what I'm seeing, or maybe I'm not feeling what I'm feeling.

Esmeralda de León on Facebook says, I'm about to miss this party just so I can stay home and watch Dateline. I need to make up a good excuse.

A wise choice, Esmeralda. Thank you.

What excuses have you used to miss parties?

Or to get out of doing something. It's especially on a Friday night. You have a built-in excuse. It's been a long week. You can always throw— it's been a really long week. I just need to sit. I need to sit at home. I, you know, I'm— I have two young children at this point. So that's always going to be an excuse. That's the excuse. And oftentimes that's real.

Yeah, that's the excuse that just keeps on giving.

That's the excuse. Yeah.

For 18 years. Yeah. I just can't. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have that. I don't. I I don't have good excuses. And people know that. They're like, you don't have any kids. Like, you know, and for like, you know, I've only been married 10 years. For a long time, they knew I was home alone and they were like, yeah, no, no, you got no reason to get in your car. Let's go.

So you could not be an introvert, basically. No, no. You were forced to be outside.

I have to work is about the only thing that— and that's not going to— that's usually not going to go at 10:00 on a Friday night. Yeah.

I would say for Esmeralda, who is skipping this party to stay home and watch Dateline, number one, that's a fantastic choice and we appreciate you. Very well. But number two, You can just say that you're choosing to spend some quality time with some of your besties. And you don't have to mention that your besties are in fact us on Dateline.

A person who, from Instagram, whose handle is @mybrainhurtsalot, which was, which is gonna be the title of my autobiography, writes in and says, I love, love, love, love. That's 4 loves. The new reporter. She's so authentic and I love the sound of her voice. She could take over the Keith Morrison ASMR type of vibe. Way to go, Brian. 100%. I agree, I agree.

That's, that's the kindest compliment I've received in some time. Thank you so much, @mybrainhurtsalot. I really appreciate that. And to be compared to Keith's voice, that's, uh, that's, that's a highest— that's a very high honor. So thank you. Thank you. And also, I love your Instagram handle, by the way. You seem like a fun person, so I appreciate you. Blaine, thank you. Thank you, friend. This was lovely as always.

As always. That's it for Talking Dateline for this week. Now remember, if you have any questions about our stories or anything else, you can DM us your audio or video on our socials, which is @DatelineNBC, or you can leave us a voicemail at this number. 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured right here. And you can watch the video version of Talking Dateline on Peacock or YouTube, or you can subscribe to the NBC News app. We'll see you Friday for an all-new Dateline on NBC.