Talking Dateline: The Mushroom Mystery

Summary

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Dateline NBC: Talking Dateline – The Mushroom Mystery

Episode Date: July 29, 2026
Hosts: Josh Mankiewicz & Blaine Alexander

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Main Theme & Purpose

This "Talking Dateline" episode explores the behind-the-scenes reporting and key issues in Blaine Alexander’s recent Dateline investigation, "The Mushroom Mystery." The story revolves around Katrina Foutz, who plotted to poison her husband David using wild mushrooms in Indiana. When the attempt failed, her friend Terry strangled David. The discussion digs into the region’s mushroom culture, the investigation’s turning points, the psychology of the participants, and emotional fallout for those involved—including exclusive insights from the killer’s ex-wife.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction & Context (01:02)

• Overview: The case centers on Katrina Foutz’s failed attempt to poison her husband David with mushrooms, leading her friend Terry to strangle him instead.
• Outcome: Terry confessed to the murder; Katrina was acquitted of murder but convicted of conspiracy.
• Streaming Info: The episode is available on Peacock, podcast feeds, and DVR.

2. Fungi vs. Fun Guy: Mushroom Pronunciation & Culture (02:02)

• Light Opening: Josh jokes about the "fun guy/fungi" pun, leading into a discussion about proper pronunciation from a scientific perspective.
• Blaine: “I always thought it was fungi, but I’ve not dedicated years of my life to studying mushrooms… I trust you.” (02:32)
• Cultural Context: Mushroom foraging is common in Indiana, making the poisoning plot plausible within its local context.

3. Mushroom Hunting in True Crime—and Real Life (04:03)

• Inspiration: The hosts discuss past mushroom poisoning cases, notably the infamous Australian case, but clarify that the Indiana story predated it.
• Local Habits: In rural Indiana, mushroom hunting is part of everyday life, increasing both opportunity and risk.
• Blaine: “As we were interviewing Dr. Aim… someone goes out looking for a specific mushroom and finds another, less dangerous but still dangerous, one. That’s not an uncommon mistake.” (05:19)

4. Victim Psychology: Love, Denial, and Loneliness (07:23)

• David's State of Mind: Friends said David was deeply infatuated with Katrina, unwilling to see her faults—even after mistreatment.
• Josh: “People… don't want to recognize the things that they clearly do see with their own two eyes… and they, for whatever reason, can’t stop.” (08:04)
• Blaine: “It speaks to the blinding nature of love or the illusion of love… [and] the fear that so many people have of being alone.” (08:30)

5. The Investigation’s Challenges (11:11)

• Body Discovery: David’s body was found near the road, suggesting minimal effort to conceal the crime.
• Physical Factors: Moving the body was likely difficult due to David’s athletic build.
• Josh: “This is where the phrase dead weight comes from. Moving a lifeless body is much harder than people think it’s gonna be.” (12:41)

6. Katrina’s Relationship With Investigators (12:51)

• Manipulation Attempts: Katrina tried to appear cooperative and shift suspicion.
• Investigators’ Reaction: Detectives saw through her attempts from the beginning. She “would not shut up,” giving them more to work with.
• Josh: “The thing that they love is somebody like Katrina who won't shut up… she’s telling them to look every single place except right at her.” (14:05)

7. Blaine & Josh Share Reporting Lessons (15:17)

• Lessons From the Field: Both recount early career mishaps and the wisdom of staying within “what you have confirmed and what you know.”

8. The Katrina-Terry Dynamic and Terry’s Transformation (19:15)

• Co-conspirator Psychology: The unique blend of Katrina’s manipulation and Terry’s vulnerability after a stroke made the crime possible.
• Blaine: “Terry was the perfect person… to be the kind of wing guy for this type of crime.” (19:15)
• Terry’s Decline: His ex-wife Deb describes his dramatic change post-stroke—from pillar of the community to murderer.

9. Emotional Fallout: Deb’s Story (21:52)

• Exclusive Interview: Deb recounts feeling powerless after Terry’s medical diagnosis:
  • Deb: “I asked the doctor what can we do… He said, ‘Nothing. There’s no surgery. There’s no therapy. There’s no medicine… More aggression.’” (21:52)
  • She describes the terror and sense of being punished by God, eventually feeling her divorce was a form of protection.
• Ripple Effect: The murder and arrest devastate Deb and the community, altering lives far removed from the direct victim.

10. Social Media Q&A (26:48)

• Dog Collar Mystery:
  • Donna McNair asks: Why was there a dog collar around David's neck?
  • Blaine: “It was a rifle sling… used to try and move him into the ditch but ended up looking like a dog collar.” (27:08)
• Cause of Death:
  • Barbara Weaver asks: Why didn't the autopsy confirm strangulation?
  • Blaine: “They were never able to conclusively determine the cause of death… the notion of asphyxiation was part of the theory.” (27:44)
• Staying With Dangerous Partners:
  • Charlene Kennedy Richard asks: How can you live with someone you fear might kill you?
  • Josh: “Should be the official Dateline motto... it happens all the time.” (28:12)
  • Blaine: “It's for the reasons we talked about—fear of being alone, not wanting to admit you’re wrong.” (28:32)
• Light Moment:
  • Esmeralda de Leon: Skips a party for Dateline; Blaine and Josh joke about excuses to stay in. (29:07)
• Compliment for Blaine:
  • My Brain Hurts a Lot [Instagram]: “I love love love love... the new reporter. She could take over the Keith Morrison ASMR type vibe.”
  • Blaine: “That's the kindest compliment I’ve received in some time.” (31:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Love and Denial:
  • “People... can't stop, even when they're being treated horribly.” (Josh, 08:04)
  • “It speaks to... the illusion of love... and the fear of being alone.” (Blaine, 08:30)
• On Katrina’s Interrogation Style:
  • “They love somebody like Katrina who won’t shut up... telling them to look every single place except right at her.” (Josh, 14:05)
• On Grief and Fate:
  • “At first I was a little angry with God... Then the divorce happened and four months later, the murder happened. And then I realized, no, God wasn’t punishing me. He was protecting me.” (Deb, 22:56)
• On Compliments:
  • “She could take over the Keith Morrison ASMR type vibe... That’s a very high honor.” (Blaine, 31:03)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:02 – Episode and case overview
• 02:02 – Mushroom humor and pronunciation
• 04:03 – Comparison to famous poisoning cases and 'mushroom culture'
• 07:23 – Victim’s psychology and relationships
• 11:11 – Details about body discovery and physical evidence
• 12:51 – Katrina’s manipulations with investigators
• 15:17 – Reporting lessons and live TV mishaps
• 19:15 – Dynamics between Katrina and Terry, and Terry’s transformation
• 21:52 – Extended interview with Terry’s ex-wife Deb
• 26:48 – Social media Q&A: evidence issues, cause of death, relationship dynamics
• 29:07 – Lighthearted exchange about making excuses for watching Dateline
• 31:03 – Listener praise and show close

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Tone & Style

The conversation moves fluidly from light, relatable banter—punny mushroom jokes, anecdotes about reporting—to sobering reflections on psychological manipulation, trauma, and love gone wrong. Both hosts remain empathetic, insightful, and sometimes wry, creating an informative yet engaging dialogue that illuminates both the details of the crime and its broader social context.

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For Listeners:

If you haven’t watched or listened to "The Mushroom Mystery," this episode provides a comprehensive background, deeper insights from Blaine’s reporting and exclusive interviews, and relatable analogies that bring the human elements of the story into sharp focus. The hosts’ candid discussion and listener questions help unpack the complexities behind the headline.

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Transcript

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[Josh Mankiewicz]

Hi, everybody, I'm Josh Mankiewicz. We're talking Dateline today with Blaine Alexander. Hello.

[Blaine Alexander]

Hello.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

So we're here to talk about Blaine's episode, the Mushroom Mystery. Now, that's a story about a woman named Katrina Foutz 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, going to have an extra clip from Blaine's interview with the killer, Terry's ex wife. But first, let's talk dateline.

[Blaine Alexander]

Let's talk dateline.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yeah. I mean, that wrecks that joke, but

[Blaine Alexander]

okay, keep telling it, because most people don't know the actual pronunciation. You're fine.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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 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 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. They got the idea from this.

[Blaine Alexander]

You know what? It's. It's possible, but one thing that we learned in the course of this is that Katrina, the. The woman who has been convicted of this, she really enjoys true crime shows. I mean, that's something that she does. She watches, you 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 they might, 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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, but they found One that. Is that.

[Blaine Alexander]

That dangerous enough?

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Did some significant damage.

[Commercial Narrator]

Yeah.

[Blaine Alexander]

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 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. I just. I'm not a mushroom girl. And I think that it started, you know, in my mind from there. But. But to your point. Yes. I mean, you know, as we were interviewing Dr. Aim, 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Similar.

[Blaine Alexander]

Yeah, and very similar. That's not an uncommon mistake. If you're out there, even if you're, you know, 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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

[Blaine Alexander]

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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Okay, 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 made, like take out

[Blaine Alexander]

or something like that. Yeah, just kind of put it on there, but obviously enough for him to eat it.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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.

[Blaine Alexander]

I think that it speaks to two things. I think it speaks to one, the blinding nature of love or the illusion of love.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Right.

[Blaine Alexander]

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 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, 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 kind of, like, magnetic, like, draw that she had on him.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Blaine Alexander]

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[Josh Mankiewicz]

Let's just talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the investigation. So, you know. You know, the body's 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, who knows how long it would have been 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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, it was actually right there. Like, I mean, it was. 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. This. I mean, this is a very physically fit man.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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

[Blaine Alexander]

Yes, exactly.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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. 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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.

[Deb (Terry's ex-wife)]

Yes.

[Blaine Alexander]

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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You're still a young reporter.

[Blaine Alexander]

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. I don't know what. I'm not middle aged. I'm not claiming that, but I'm not young anymore.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That sounded ferociously young to me. Yeah.

[Blaine Alexander]

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, 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. 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 going to be something that comes out that could be useful to us in building a case.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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 gonna do a live shot for the 11 o' clock news. But I have my little notebook. 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 thing I was gonna say first, right? My open. And I get through that. But I'm not good at that, right? This is my first ever live shot. I could feel my heart, 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. My 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. 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 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. 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

Oh, no.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

What felt like about 45 minutes passed. Right. And I think the anchor said, josh,

[Blaine Alexander]

like, all this is live on tv, by the way.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Live on television. And by the way, I would point out, this was when there was no Internet, basically no cable, no streaming. Like, there were a lot of people watching. Like, a third of the televisions in Washington, D.C. 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

No record of this.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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

[Blaine Alexander]

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

[Josh Mankiewicz]

So good.

[Blaine Alexander]

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

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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, did she think that something like this. That. That a murder of David Fouts would have 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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

[Blaine Alexander]

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. 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. And then to come to find out that this man is then involved in a murder, I can't even imagine kind of how she grapples with all 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Today on talking Dateline, we have an extra clip of that interview that you did with with Deb that did not air on our. 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.

[Deb (Terry's ex-wife)]

And I asked the doctor, I said, what can we do about this? He said, nothing. Well, 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

More aggression. And here you are sitting next to your husband, your life partner. You've been together for decades, right?

[Deb (Terry's ex-wife)]

I can't imagine how it's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. Because there was anything like his diabetes or his heart, 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 four months later, the murder happened.

[Blaine Alexander]

That quickly?

[Deb (Terry's ex-wife)]

That quickly. And then I realized, no, God wasn't punishing me. He was protecting me.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Okay, so this is what, you know, we talk about sometimes, which is the. 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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 mug shot 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, in David Faust, 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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?

[Blaine Alexander]

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 for everything that that happened to him.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Okay. All right. When we come back, we're going to take your questions from social media.

[Blaine Alexander]

Let's do it.

[Sponsor Narrator]

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[Blaine Alexander]

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[Commercial Narrator]

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[Blaine Alexander]

Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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?

[Blaine Alexander]

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 91 1, Barbara

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Weaver on Facebook asks if they're saying he was asphyxiated by Terry, why didn't the autopsy reveal that?

[Blaine Alexander]

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 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 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yeah, that which 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 is should be the official DATELINE motto. And I don't know the answer, but CHARLENE it happens all the time.

[Blaine Alexander]

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

[Josh Mankiewicz]

life with wasted so many years.

[Blaine Alexander]

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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Esmeralda de Leon 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

A wise choice, Esmeralda. Thank you.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

What excuses have you used to miss parties or to get out of doing something,

[Blaine Alexander]

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 have two young children at this point. That's always gonna be an excuse.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That's the excuse.

[Blaine Alexander]

And oftentimes that's real.

[Sponsor Narrator]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That's the excuse that just keeps on giving. Yeah. For 18 years. Yeah.

[Blaine Alexander]

I just can't. Yes.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Yeah, yeah. I don't have that. I don't, I, I don't have good excuses. And people know that. They're like, 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

So you could not be an introvert. Basically you were forced to be outside.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I have to work is about the only thing that, and that's not gonna, that's usually not going to go at 10 o' clock on a Friday night.

[Sponsor Narrator]

Yeah.

[Blaine Alexander]

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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

A person who, from Instagram, whose handle is My Brain Hurts a Lot, which was, which is giving me the title of my autobiography, writes in and says, I love, love, love, love. That's four. 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. 100%. I agree. I agree.

[Blaine Alexander]

That's the kindest compliment I've received in some time. Thank you so much. Y brain hurts a lot. I really appreciate that. And to be compared to Keith's voice, that's, 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.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Thank you.

[Blaine Alexander]

Thank you, friend. This was lovely as always.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

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 DATELINE NBC. 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.

[Blaine Alexander]

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