David Fouts' body was found in Noblesville, Indiana back in April but it took months for investigators to work out how he died and connect the crime to his wife, Katrina Fouts.
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If you and the missus have not been getting along lately it might be best to pass the next time she cooks you that delicious looking mushroom risotto.
Five months after a successful tech executive was found deceased in mysterious circumstances, police have finally managed to figure out that he was done in with deadly mushrooms.
Authorities have accused the Indiana man’s wife of feeding him the toxic funghi.
Katrina Fouts, 54, and Terry Hopkins, 65, were charged with the murder of Fouts’ husband, 50-year-old David Fouts, whose body was discovered off a rural road April 24 in Noblesville, news station KOKI reported.
Police said David, who was employed by American tech giant Salesforce, had not been heard from for at least five days before a woman walking her dog came across his decomposing body in a ditch.
There were cuts on his hands and residue from duct tape on his wrists and ankles, but no other obvious signs of foul play, the outlet reported.
An autopsy revealed that David’s body had been moved after he died, but didn’t provide any answers about his cause of death.
“It’s a real head-scratcher,” Hamilton County Coroner John Chaflin told the Indianapolis Star at the time of his death.
However, officials later learned that there were 14 “fairly intact” chunks of mushroom in his stomach, the outlet reported.
Chaflin sent samples of the mushroom to Purdue University botany expert Dr. M. Catherine Aime, who was able to identify the substance as a white domecap mushroom known as Lyophyllum connatum.
Ingesting the mushroom is known to cause life-threatening symptoms that include heart failure and respiratory distress, Aime said.
She explained that the mushroom wouldn’t show up in an autopsy report because the fungus typically deteriorates within hours.
“She noted that muscarine has a half-life of about eight hours and is usually undetectable by 72 hours, meaning any muscarine present would likely have deteriorated by the time the body of David Fouts was found and urine samples were obtained,” the investigator wrote, KOKI reported.
Phone records revealed that Katrina Fouts had searched for another poisonous mushroom, which is similar to the one found in his system and described as “among the deadliest plants known to mankind,” the outlet reported.
She also failed to text or call her husband after he vanished despite claiming that she didn’t know where he was until his body was found, police said.
Hopkins, a longtime family friend, was linked to the death after DNA evidence was found on David Fouts’ shirt when his body was found, the outlet reported. He also allegedly purchased several suspicious items, including duct tape.
After months of investigation, Katrina Fouts and Hopkins were taken into custody Sept. 18 in her husband’s death.
In addition to murder, they both face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and failure to report a corpse, the outlet reported.
Fouts faces an additional charge of false informing for allegedly lying to police.
No motive has been revealed in the crime.
Fouts and Hopkins both remain jailed and are due to return to court next week, according to court records.
Tragically, David Fouts was cut down in what seemed to be the prime of his life.
He had a good job with Salesforce, was an avid cyclist and adopted dogs, according to the Indianapolis Star.
He was handy around the house and could even whip up a decent meal now and again, the paper added.
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