transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] A competitive cyclist is killed under mysterious circumstances.

Speaker 2:
[00:08] There's a dead body laying in the ditch. It's got a dog collar around its neck.

Speaker 3:
[00:13] He had several small cuts, abrasions, but you don't have this obvious cause of death.

Speaker 1:
[00:20] The investigation provides a number of questionable leads.

Speaker 4:
[00:26] She said that he had had an affair.

Speaker 3:
[00:30] He had been charged with a domestic battery offense and also an invasion of privacy.

Speaker 4:
[00:36] Usually sex, drugs, or money is why someone gets murdered.

Speaker 5:
[00:40] He wouldn't let me call the police about the man that came to the door to threaten to kill him three or four times.

Speaker 4:
[00:47] We drew fluids. We went the extra step and took the stomach contents.

Speaker 1:
[00:52] But the truth turns out to be stranger than anyone could have imagined.

Speaker 4:
[00:58] We found a screenshot of the death cap mushroom. You eat it and you are dead.

Speaker 6:
[01:03] We have to take all these little pieces of a puzzle and put them together.

Speaker 4:
[01:07] It is almost the perfect murder. Almost.

Speaker 1:
[01:27] Noblesville, Indiana, is a quiet city, 25 miles north of Indianapolis.

Speaker 3:
[01:33] A southern half of this 400 square mile county is very suburban. We have some of the safest and, in many ways, wealthiest per capita-wise communities in the state, if not the whole country.

Speaker 1:
[01:51] But on April 24th, 2020, an urgent 9-1-1 call from a local resident serves as a reminder that the area isn't immune to violence.

Speaker 2:
[02:02] 9-1-1, what's the location of your emergency? Over North Road, there's a dead body laying in the ditch. I saw him walking down the street. It's a male. I'd say, I don't know, older, 30s, 40s, maybe 50s, and it's got a dog collar around his neck.

Speaker 1:
[02:24] Investigators are immediately dispatched to the scene.

Speaker 4:
[02:28] I found a white male. I estimated his age to be between 45 and 55. He had no shirt on, had a pair of sweats on, and a shirt was tied around his left wrist. You could physically see some red dots throughout the shirt, and you could assume it was blood. At that point, we secured the scene. It's on a country road. It's not very populated, but it is a traveled road.

Speaker 6:
[02:55] There is what they reported as a dog collar or a dog leash wrapped around his neck. I saw and immediately recognized as a rifle sling that you'd put on a rifle. You could tell from the amount of levitity and some insect activity that had been deceased for a couple of days.

Speaker 1:
[03:16] Unfortunately, there is little evidence indicating who the victim is or how he died.

Speaker 3:
[03:23] He had several small cuts, abrasions. Not sufficient to cause blood loss that would result in death. So you don't have this obvious cause of death.

Speaker 4:
[03:33] He has no ID on him, so we have no clue who he is. DNA would take months to identify him. So, our only real option was to do fingerprints. We obtained fingerprints from the deceased. We conducted an area canvas, and there were no vehicles found in the area. No neighbors have seen anything or heard anything.

Speaker 1:
[04:00] While awaiting the fingerprint results, investigators further assess the man's condition. And a theory surfaces.

Speaker 3:
[04:09] Not only was the shoe list in Sockless, but the bottoms of his feet and the tops of the feet weren't dirty. One could draw a conclusion there of not only had he not died in that position, but he likely had been dropped there.

Speaker 6:
[04:24] We're not too far away from a neighborhood we've had a lot of overdoses in. This is somebody that's overdosed and died, and their friends didn't know what to do, and so they dumped the body right over here. We kind of start to establish our next steps to figure out exactly what's going on.

Speaker 1:
[04:46] With nothing else to gain from the scene, investigators transport the body to the morgue for closer inspection.

Speaker 6:
[04:55] When I take photographs at the morgue, I do an overall of the entire body, and then I start to section the body off. As I got to the arms, I noticed around the wrists some adhesive, and that kind of seemed a little strange. As I continued, I got to the ankles, and I noticed the same basically demarcation you can see that it appeared a piece of tape had been wrapped around his ankles. So I'm thinking this is probably not just an overdose death, probably a homicide. We need to start digging into that aspect of who is this guy and what's going on here. Luckily, we were able to get some fingerprints that were on file with the state that matched.

Speaker 4:
[05:37] He was identified as David Michael Fouts of Pendleton.

Speaker 1:
[05:46] Indiana native David Fouts was born on May 23rd, 1969 and raised on the family farm. As an adult, David left his rural roots for a fast-paced career in technology.

Speaker 7:
[06:03] Dave was involved in the computers and technical side of things.

Speaker 4:
[06:08] David was manager at Salesforce based out of Indianapolis. He'd worked from home.

Speaker 7:
[06:14] He was a top-notch professional in the technology and computer field. He had a fairly high-profile job, and I know it got stressful at times.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] In addition to professional stresses, David struggled in love. By his mid-40s, he had been married and divorced.

Speaker 7:
[06:35] As far as when Dave separated from his first wife, I began to notice a change in his personality probably around 2013. He was not quite happy-go-lucky. He seemed to be more withdrawn.

Speaker 1:
[06:48] David found relief from the pressures of his career and personal life through his hobbies.

Speaker 4:
[06:57] David had a house on the east side of the county where he had greyhounds, and they were retired racing dogs.

Speaker 7:
[07:04] Also, he was heavily involved in cycling and road racing. He truly wanted to improve and get better. I would see him two or three times a week when he would attend my training classes. I found that Dave was always quick-witted, had a good joke ready for anybody who crossed his path. He was always concerned about the well-being of his fellow cyclists or his friends. I think he did that as a way to take the attention off himself. He would pour that compassion into his friends rather than draw them into any heartache he might have been experiencing.

Speaker 1:
[07:44] By 2016, 47-year-old David was committed to his work and pastimes and content to live life alone. Until 50-year-old Katrina Gentry walked into his life.

Speaker 4:
[08:00] Katrina is one of, I believe, three daughters of Glen Gentry, and he owned a roofing business in Richmond, Indiana. They had a very rough upbringing. She had children, I believe, fairly young, three children.

Speaker 1:
[08:16] Like David, Katrina had never been lucky in love. By 2016, she had a divorce and several failed relationships behind her. Her children were also adults with their own families. But Katrina didn't look or act like a typical grandmother.

Speaker 4:
[08:38] Katrina was very attractive, very outgoing.

Speaker 8:
[08:41] She liked going to concerts. She liked going to comedy clubs. She didn't like to be in a crowd, but if she were, she liked to be the center of attention.

Speaker 1:
[08:50] Katrina's outgoing nature balanced David's introverted personality. After three years of dating, the couple married in 2019. But their new family unit has been destroyed after David is found murdered on a rural stretch of road. Now investigators must apply forensic knowledge to make sense of this puzzling crime scene.

Speaker 3:
[09:20] It's clear that he hadn't died that day. We found fly eggs in his sweatpants, which suggests that he had been deceased at least for a day or two.

Speaker 4:
[09:33] There were no signs of trauma, none. So you would expect maybe some ligature marks on the neck, a gunshot wound, but there was nothing noticeable that would have caused his death.

Speaker 6:
[09:46] We start to lean towards we're going to need toxicology because we're thinking, you know, maybe some type of poisoning.

Speaker 4:
[09:52] We drew fluids, urine, blood, for examination for toxicology, but we found nothing physically that we could say killed him. So we went the extra step and took the stomach contents to see if maybe it was something that he had ingested. You couldn't tell what food he had had to eat last, except for it looked like there were bits of mushrooms that had been chewed up and swallowed. Purdue University is in Indiana, and we were able to get a hold of their mycology department. The doctor identified the mushrooms as L canadum, which is a poisonous mushroom that can kill you. Even if you're dead, it will metabolize out of your body. So there will be no signs of this poison, this toxin in your body within, I think, 72 hours, maybe less. And David had been dead for a few days.

Speaker 1:
[10:49] Detectives are left with a new conundrum. Had David eaten the mushrooms willingly, unaware they were deadly? Or is this indeed a murder, one unlike any seen before?

Speaker 4:
[11:04] There is so little known about mushrooms, and there was no case in the history of the world where they've been intentionally used to kill someone. This type of mushroom.

Speaker 1:
[11:18] Coming up, a grieving widow points the finger.

Speaker 9:
[11:22] David had had a tear behind my back for a number of months with her.

Speaker 1:
[11:27] Until suspicious Internet queries put a new suspect in the spotlight.

Speaker 3:
[11:34] That extraction revealed web searches for what it takes to get an arrest warrant for murder.

Speaker 1:
[11:48] Detectives are nine hours into investigating the death of 51-year-old David Fouts. After finding evidence in David's stomach that might point to a unique murder method, investigators speak with his widow, Katrina.

Speaker 4:
[12:06] I informed her that David was dead and that we'd found him in a ditch in Hamilton County off of Overdorf Road. She grabbed her chest and she was crying.

Speaker 5:
[12:16] Are you sure it happened?

Speaker 4:
[12:19] We're almost certain that it is.

Speaker 5:
[12:21] Can I see what happened?

Speaker 4:
[12:24] We'll discuss that after the break. I'm not going to tell you no, but...

Speaker 5:
[12:30] I might be wrong.

Speaker 4:
[12:33] It's hard to explain how anybody is going to react to the notification that their loved one has been killed. It seemed over the top. It fell off.

Speaker 5:
[13:12] This can't be happening to me. We were going to try to make this marriage work.

Speaker 4:
[13:24] She told us, she started noticing in their bank statements that monies were being spent, and she could not account for them. So that was interesting.

Speaker 1:
[13:33] When Katrina looked into it, she found out David had given his lover money to purchase a vehicle.

Speaker 3:
[13:40] Katrina was spending most of her time at the country house in Noblesville, and he was living at the Pendleton house. They weren't necessarily seeing each other a lot at that time.

Speaker 4:
[13:51] We asked when the last time she had seen him was, and she told us that it had been on Tuesday, and this was on a now a Saturday morning. So we asked her, usually sex, drugs, or money is why someone gets murdered. Well, what would be the reason to kill David?

Speaker 3:
[14:10] Katrina said David had been involved with this other woman, and it was a love triangle. So David had been previously threatened by this other third party, this other leg in this love triangle.

Speaker 4:
[14:27] She described to us on several occasions that a male had come to the house, and that he had threatened David directly.

Speaker 5:
[14:37] He wouldn't let me call the police about the man that came to the door to threaten to kill him three or four times.

Speaker 4:
[14:44] She said it was very clean cut. And then she gave us a rough time frame of what she had been doing Tuesday through Friday.

Speaker 1:
[14:55] Detectives request access to Katrina's phone records to verify her alibi as well as the name of David's lover, which Katrina willingly provides.

Speaker 4:
[15:06] There was nothing to physically say or point to Katrina. So it was unclear whether she was a suspect at that point or not.

Speaker 1:
[15:18] To verify Katrina's claims, investigators track down David's lover. And she says Katrina was misinformed.

Speaker 4:
[15:28] We did an interview with her. She said that David had never met her ex-lovers. She cooperated fully and gave us everything that we asked for.

Speaker 1:
[15:38] Due to her easy cooperation, detectives dismiss David's lover as a potential person of interest.

Speaker 3:
[15:45] They also go and talk to any of the men that she's ultimately involved with.

Speaker 4:
[15:51] One was in prison, so he could immediately be ruled out. The other one lives in Florida, and we were able to make contact with him. He was able to provide an alibi, which we were able to follow up on and check out.

Speaker 3:
[16:02] There's just nothing there that corroborates that they would be involved in David's death.

Speaker 1:
[16:12] In search of further leads, detectives take a closer look at David's lifestyle.

Speaker 6:
[16:18] Who is David Fouts? What other connections may he have that could give us evidence of who maybe did this?

Speaker 4:
[16:25] Neighbors really didn't even have much to say about him. He just seems like he worked, and then he came home. I would describe David to be somewhat of a private person, especially with his personal life.

Speaker 7:
[16:36] He always gave a big smile and a hug when he would greet you. I found that Dave was a very engaging and a willing-to-help type of guy.

Speaker 6:
[16:47] There was nothing that we found that was like, aha, this is going to lead us somewhere.

Speaker 1:
[16:54] For a more thorough idea of his character, investigators run a background check on David Fouts. What they discover is surprising.

Speaker 3:
[17:05] In the public records, David had been charged with a domestic battery offense in September of 2019, and also an invasion of privacy.

Speaker 4:
[17:15] Katrina accused him of domestic battery, and he was arrested for that. David said it didn't happen, that he had never touched her.

Speaker 3:
[17:24] There was a no-contact order between them as a condition of David's bond.

Speaker 4:
[17:29] I spoke with his attorney, and they were going to fight the case in court. And that court date was coming up.

Speaker 1:
[17:38] To find out the truth about their relationship, detectives analyzed the couple's phone records.

Speaker 3:
[17:45] Katrina talks about seeing David on the 21st, and in her phone calls, in the, I think, three, four weeks up to that, there were a lot of phone contacts between their two phones. What is interesting is, after two, three o'clock in the afternoon on the 22nd, there is no more contact between Katrina's phone and David's phone.

Speaker 4:
[18:10] Why does that suddenly stop? She never tried to contact him after the 22nd. We found him dead on Friday the 24th.

Speaker 1:
[18:20] Katrina's photos and web history are even more incriminating.

Speaker 3:
[18:26] That extraction revealed web searches for interesting things like crimes of passion in Indiana, what it takes to get an arrest warrant for murder in Indiana. Very concerning and questionable things.

Speaker 4:
[18:41] Within that, in her pictures, we found a screenshot of the death cap mushroom. Deadly ones like the death cap. You eat it and you are dead.

Speaker 1:
[18:54] For investigators, it all points to one theory.

Speaker 4:
[18:59] We strongly believe that these mushrooms played a huge part and likely killed David. And the death cap mushroom is the one that was on her phone.

Speaker 3:
[19:08] From the cell site location information, David's phone never left Pendleton. And Katrina had not tried calling him again, which suggests she knows exactly what has happened to David. He's already gone.

Speaker 1:
[19:27] Now that investigators have zeroed in on Katrina being involved in David's death, the question is whether she acted alone.

Speaker 3:
[19:36] An additional review of the phone records reveals that Katrina has a very close friend, a lot of contact with Terry Hopkins. Terry Hopkins cares for Katrina's dad, Glenn.

Speaker 6:
[19:49] Deputies are trying to figure out exactly what their relationship is. Sometimes it almost seems like a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, and sometimes it seems like a father-daughter relationship. So we're thinking, is Terry involved?

Speaker 1:
[20:03] There is no doubt that Terry cares for Katrina, and messages between the two make his feelings about David clear.

Speaker 4:
[20:12] David and Terry did not get along. They hated each other.

Speaker 1:
[20:25] After phone records reveal Terry Hopkins' close relationship with Katrina Fouts and his intense hatred for her husband, Indiana Detectives must investigate whether one or both could be responsible for David Fouts' murder.

Speaker 6:
[20:43] We looked into Terry Hopkins, and we find out that he was a former Richmond police officer and that he'd been retired.

Speaker 1:
[20:55] On April 26th, two days after David's body was found, Detectives request that Katrina come to the station.

Speaker 4:
[21:04] We asked if she and Terry had ever been romantic. She kind of laughed and said no. She described Terry as father from another mother, a dear family friend, as well as a caretaker for her father. They lived in Richmond, and they'd been friends for some time.

Speaker 10:
[21:22] He got to know her father through an organization in the community, and they formed a friendship. And her father slowly started showing signs of dementia. So Terry assisted him in day-to-day living tasks.

Speaker 4:
[21:38] Terry was known to have, according to Katrina, some health issues as well. He was diabetic. He had congestive heart failure.

Speaker 3:
[21:49] They talked to her about when they would have been together last, and she indicated that on the night of the 21st, that there had been plans for Katrina, Terry, and Katrina's dad, Glenn.

Speaker 4:
[22:03] Glenn decided he did not want to come. So Terry met her at a close-by convenience store, and then they went and picked up food, and went to the country house.

Speaker 3:
[22:14] It got late, they fell asleep, and when one of them finally roused, it was like three in the morning. They split and went back to their homes.

Speaker 4:
[22:24] Thursday, Terry had come back up, and was nice enough to bring her this hydraulic lift cart to help her move articles around the country house. And that was pretty much the summation of what she said that they had done.

Speaker 1:
[22:42] Rather than take Katrina's story at face value, investigators used cell data to track her and Terry's locations, leading up to the time David was killed.

Speaker 4:
[22:55] We learned Terry came up to meet with Katrina around 6 o'clock in the evening. We have video surveillance from a bank of them going toward the country house. Their GPS services put them at the country house for an extended period of time. At some point in the wee hours of the 22nd, both their phones are shut off for GPS and or powered down. So we do not know where they're at at that point. The services were turned on again around 11 in the morning, and Katrina pretty much will stay at home for that day. That was a pretty big flag. So it is our belief that Katrina and Terry shut off their cell phone devices, so they couldn't be located. Based upon a totality of the circumstances, that gave us enough probable cause to actually get search warrants. On the 29th of April, we executed three search warrants. One in Richmond at Terry and Glenn Gentry's house, the other at the Pendleton House, and then the last one was at the Country House. Nothing of substance was really located at the Pendleton House, but there was a walkie-talkie found in the glove box of Katrina's vehicle.

Speaker 6:
[24:22] It just kind of seemed out of place, because why would this middle-aged lady have a walkie-talkie in her vehicle?

Speaker 1:
[24:31] The Country House also provides some interesting discoveries.

Speaker 3:
[24:36] They find rifle sling that is the same brand as the rifle sling that was found around David's body.

Speaker 6:
[24:45] To our knowledge, David didn't own rifles. Katrina's dad owned rifles, but David really wasn't there using the rifles, the rifle slings.

Speaker 1:
[24:55] In the garage, detectives find the hydraulic cart Katrina told them Terry had brought when they last saw each other.

Speaker 6:
[25:04] On top of the cart is a piece of cardboard that has a footprint on it, or a footwear impression of a shoe. There's another piece that has tire tread impressions, so we take all those things. In all this moving, we do move a mat that's right inside the door from the garage to the house, and there is what appears to be a little bit of blood on the floor under this mat.

Speaker 1:
[25:31] Samples of the blood are taken for testing. If it's David's, this is likely the true crime scene.

Speaker 6:
[25:40] The rifle sling on his body and the rifle sling found in the house, it just kind of was consistent that, hey, we need some kind of leather strap or some kind of way to hoist this body. Let's use that. And they have to figure out, okay, now he's in the garage, how do we use this cart to load him into the car and move him from here over and dump him?

Speaker 1:
[26:07] The final search warrant executed at Terry's home only heightens their suspicions.

Speaker 4:
[26:14] In the back of Terry's car, we found a box of miscellaneous articles, a box cutter. There was a roll of duct tape. There was what's called a dead blow hammer, which is like a plastic hammer that's filled with sand.

Speaker 1:
[26:28] Investigators also tracked down receipts and surveillance from a local hardware store where Terry purchased the items.

Speaker 6:
[26:36] Not only did they buy this big cart, but a couple of different knives, duct tape, zip ties, rubber gloves, tarp, some rope, things that you may want to get if you are involved in a homicide. We also search Terry's F-150 pickup truck. I find an on walkie-talkie that matches exactly to the one that I found in Katrina's vehicle.

Speaker 4:
[27:03] They were both set to channel 10, sub-channel 11. It is our belief that Katrina and Terry, when they shut off their cell phone devices, that they used these walkie-talkies to communicate.

Speaker 1:
[27:25] While this evidence alone doesn't justify an arrest warrant, it does lead law enforcement to a likely conclusion.

Speaker 6:
[27:33] There is no smoking gun, if you will, in this case. We have to take all these little pieces of a puzzle and put them together. This picture is, you know, that Terry and Katrina were in cahoots to get rid of David.

Speaker 1:
[27:52] Coming up, detectives uncover a chilling pattern of behavior.

Speaker 8:
[27:57] She would have blown up my house, cashed that check, and she would have been gone.

Speaker 1:
[28:03] But will it be enough to bring a suspected killer to justice?

Speaker 10:
[28:08] I think she saw the slow decline in logical thinking and she used it to her advantage.

Speaker 1:
[28:22] Five days into the murder investigation of David Fouts, a mountain of circumstantial evidence has been gathered incriminating his widow Katrina and her friend Terry Hopkins. When investigators ask Katrina to explain the evidence they've found, she answers with a lawyer. So instead, they bring Terry in for questioning.

Speaker 3:
[28:50] Here we are about four or five days after David's body was found, and we see there's massive bruising on Terry's chest. There's all these abrasions on Terry's hands. It looked like he'd had a rough go at some point.

Speaker 4:
[29:07] I thought we are definitely onto something here, that he is involved.

Speaker 11:
[29:12] With those rights in mind, 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. I said I do what you want, in all sincerity. If you change your mind, you want to talk to us?

Speaker 4:
[29:33] Step two.

Speaker 11:
[29:33] I have her number, okay?

Speaker 1:
[29:37] With Terry exercising his right to an attorney, investigators pivot their focus back to Katrina. A deeper look into her past provides some revealing information.

Speaker 3:
[29:49] She had a conviction for false informing, rising out of a rape investigation.

Speaker 4:
[29:55] I think it was a rough timeframe of 2009 to 2011. She had engaged in sexual act with someone, and then had said that she had been raped.

Speaker 1:
[30:07] The accused insisted the sex was consensual, and an official police investigation determined the allegations were false. As a result, Katrina was formally charged with false informing.

Speaker 4:
[30:21] Katrina was subsequently forced to pay for the state police SWAT team, all their fuel, all their overtime, and everything.

Speaker 1:
[30:32] When investigators speak to Katrina's ex-boyfriend, Joe O'Brien, he says lying came naturally to her.

Speaker 8:
[30:41] I met her through her first husband. The marriage ended in 2013. She shows up and tells me that she's back in town, but she doesn't have a place to stay. So I let her stay at my place. Katrina is a person who one-on-one, she will try to best you. She has to be the focus of everybody in the room. And if you listen to some of her stories, you'll know right off the bat that they're lies.

Speaker 1:
[31:16] According to Joe, Katrina only cared about one thing, money.

Speaker 8:
[31:22] If that person is giving her money, she's happy. But the moment that person says, you're not getting another dime from me, she's going to the next person.

Speaker 1:
[31:33] Joe says Katrina's behavior became even more alarming right before their breakup.

Speaker 8:
[31:40] I had been in a car accident, and the first words out of her mouth were, oh my God, we need to get life insurance. What's going to happen to me if you were to get killed? She just kept pressuring me every day, have you looked into getting life insurance? And I finally broke down. I looked into it, gave her a price of half a million dollars. One day in the basement, I found a basket that is not supposed to be there. And in that basket, I found five grenades. They were right underneath my chair that I sat in, on the floor above that. I think she was going to kill me. She would have blown up my house, cashed that check, and she would have been gone.

Speaker 1:
[32:32] Although Katrina was never charged with anything regarding Joe, to investigators, the pattern of behavior suggests she'd be capable of doing something similar with David. To find out if Terry was the kind of man who'd be a willing accomplice, detectives talked to his ex-wife, Deb Hopkins.

Speaker 10:
[33:00] I was interviewed by the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department. They wanted to get to know Terry's character. We were high school sweethearts. I just fell in love with his personality. He was fun-loving, honoree, gentle, kind, everything that I always enjoyed in a person.

Speaker 1:
[33:21] Deb tells investigators Terry began his career in law enforcement right after they were married.

Speaker 10:
[33:28] He started out obviously as a patrolman. When he retired, he was the captain over internal affairs.

Speaker 1:
[33:38] But in 2014, a year after his retirement, Terry's health took a turn for the worse.

Speaker 10:
[33:46] He had a frontal lobe stroke. We don't know what brought it on, but I noticed a change in his personality.

Speaker 1:
[34:12] Deb filed for divorce in 2019, after 45 years of marriage. That's when Katrina stepped in, asking Terry to move in with her father.

Speaker 10:
[34:25] Team Katrina's dad were friends for approximately 10 years. Terry just moved in with him to help him.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] Deb says Katrina used the situation to turn Terry against her husband David.

Speaker 10:
[34:44] Terry liked David, and as the marriage went on, he started getting the, oh, he's abusing me. The hatred of David was very evident. I mean, you could see physically, see tense muscles, clenched jaw, whenever he would talk about David. I think she saw the slow decline in logical thinking and thought processes and judgment, and I think she used it to her advantage. If you start shooting, then harm's way, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[35:27] What detectives still need, however, is physical evidence linking Terry and Katrina to David's murder. They hope science will provide it.

Speaker 4:
[35:39] The shirt that was wrapped around David's left wrist was sent for DNA analysis, and we learned it contained David's DNA, but a lot of blood on it belonged to Terry Hopkins. I can't justify why Terry's blood would be on David's shirt. When did they come in into contact?

Speaker 3:
[35:59] Also, Terry and Katrina's DNA was on the cardboard box for the lift cart. Terry's DNA was on the lift cart itself, and David's DNA was on the rubber mat that would have been on top of the lift cart. And that was all very significant forensic evidence. The concept that we have is that he had been in some way incapacitated at the Pendleton House. From there was killed, loaded in the car, because there's no clear explanation, nor really is there a reasonable one that says that Terry's and Katrina's DNA are involved in the box and the cart, and David's on the mat. That doesn't involve Katrina and Terry being directly involved with the transportation of David's body.

Speaker 1:
[36:50] But even with the DNA evidence, investigators still have big questions.

Speaker 3:
[36:57] At the end of the day, we couldn't prove that the mushroom was killed.

Speaker 4:
[37:02] Any samples we had from David did not test positive for the muscarin toxin, which is the toxin again, that could kill you. We didn't know how he died. It is almost the perfect murder. I don't think there was a point where we thought we wouldn't be able to solve it, but will the prosecutor accept charges? That was the issue.

Speaker 1:
[37:33] After a five-month investigation, Indiana Detectives take their findings to the District Attorney's Office, looking for arrest warrants for Katrina Fouts and Terry Hopkins.

Speaker 4:
[37:46] The weirdest thing about this case is the mushrooms. The murder was almost perfect, but there's certain things that you can't get away from. They overthought it. They did stupid stuff in the end.

Speaker 1:
[38:03] The DA agrees the evidence is compelling. On September 17th, 2020, the arrests are made.

Speaker 4:
[38:12] Terry had a lot of guns. He was living in a house which he and his ex-wife were supposed to be selling. We surrounded his house, used a SWAT team to call him out. There was a point where I was worried. I thought he was just gonna commit suicide, but he finally came out.

Speaker 3:
[38:32] Katrina was arrested through a traffic stop. She has two phones with her. One is a burner phone, and she also has $40,000 in cash.

Speaker 1:
[38:42] If Katrina was planning to flee, it's too late now.

Speaker 4:
[38:49] Katrina had made me promise her that I would let her see the killer. So I walked into her jail cell, and I had a clipboard with a mirror on it, and I made her look at me and said, here she is. You did it. And she looked back down and said, he doesn't even like mushrooms. That was all she said. And I walked out.

Speaker 1:
[39:18] Detectives find Terry more willing to cooperate now that he's free of Katrina's influence.

Speaker 4:
[39:26] He told us that Katrina had devised a plan to feed David mushrooms. At that night, they did indeed meet on the 21st. They came back to the Pendleton House. Katrina walked in and said, to the effect of, honey, did you eat those mushrooms I made for you? And David said yes, said he didn't feel good and was having trouble with breathing. At that point, Terry walked in, and there was an altercation of some sort. Terry said he put his arm around David's neck and just kind of squeezed him, and David stopped moving. So we asked, well, how did you get David into a car? Was he dead or alive when you got him in a car? I don't really remember. He couldn't keep his story straight because of illness at that point.

Speaker 1:
[40:15] Due to Terry's quickly declining health, he never makes it to court.

Speaker 3:
[40:21] His health just continued to deteriorate. His heart was failing him. And ultimately, before he could be brought to trial, he passed away.

Speaker 1:
[40:34] In 2022, Katrina's murder trial begins. Without Terry's confession, the case is largely circumstantial.

Speaker 6:
[40:44] What we had was physical evidence that had DNA and microanalysis that kind of matched everybody together, either alive or dead.

Speaker 4:
[40:53] David was transported to the country house, and his body was stored there for two days.

Speaker 6:
[40:58] David was around 200 pounds. The rifle sling was something they could just grab when they're trying to figure out how are we going to move this body. Then using this hydraulic cart, they could jack the body up off the ground and push it into wherever they needed to.

Speaker 3:
[41:13] The night of the 23rd and the 24th, they used the walkie-talkies to coordinate between the two cars and dump the body.

Speaker 1:
[41:24] The defense argues the state's theory is just that, a theory. There's no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt Katrina was involved. The jury agrees, in part.

Speaker 4:
[41:38] She was not found guilty of murder.

Speaker 3:
[41:40] The jury just couldn't be sure that she killed him, but they knew that she had made an agreement to kill David that certain overnights had been taken.

Speaker 1:
[41:51] Instead, they find Katrina guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and failure to report human remains.

Speaker 4:
[42:01] Katrina was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

Speaker 10:
[42:04] I felt she should have got life. She took a life. I think she should have been in there for life. But in the end, it's different.

Speaker 8:
[42:12] She's in the best place she could be right now. I just feel that whoever is her friend in prison, think twice.

Speaker 4:
[42:25] David finally had a family and grandkids. He loved them conditionally. And Katrina's daughter, I know that they loved him. He didn't deserve to die the way he did. It's terrible. Absolutely terrible.

Speaker 7:
[42:42] If nothing else, Dave's Murder shows us all that we can do a better job of being more interactive on a human level with our friends and loved ones and get the support that you and we all deserve.