Authorities in Missouri have charged a lady with many felonies for allegedly routinely tampering her husband’s Mountain Dew drink with Roundup weed killer and pesticide in an attempt to be “mean” to him.
The 47-year-old Michelle Y. Peters of Lebanon is charged with surreptitiously adding Roundup to the 2-liter Mountain Dew bottles her spouse kept in a garage refrigerator in May and June.
According to the Laclede County Sheriff’s Office and a redacted probable cause statement of facts filed this week, she is also accused of adding insecticide to the beverage on Sunday.
According to court filings, Peters was detained on Monday and is now formally charged by county prosecutors with first-degree assault and armed criminal conduct, both of which are felonies.
According to a jail official, she was being held at the Laclede County Detention Center on Friday afternoon without bond.
If Peters was represented by counsel was not immediately apparent.
According to the probable cause statement, Peters told police the day she was arrested, “She was mad… because she had thrown him a 50th birthday party and he was not appreciative.” “Michelle stated that she put the chemical in the basement, thinking it was Roundup, in the Mountain Dew bottle out of’meanness.'”
According to the probable cause statement, Peters first told the investigator that she was combining Mountain Dew with Roundup to use as weed killer—a concept she had seen on Pinterest.
However, the probable cause statement stated that she afterwards acknowledged adding pesticide to a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew that she had put in the garage refrigerator.
According to the sheriff’s office, there is video proof that Peters tampered with the Mountain Dew bottles.
“The victim began suspecting the soda was being tampered with after feeling ill,” the sheriff’s office stated. “The victim provided video surveillance to the sheriff’s office.”
The husband of Peters, whose name was withheld from the probable cause statement, informed the detective from the sheriff’s office that on May 1, he noticed that Mountain Dew tasted strange, but he still drank it.
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A few weeks later, according to court documents, he started feeling ill. Symptoms included a sore throat, coughing up brown and yellow mucus, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting.
According to the probable cause statement, which referenced WebMD, eating roundup can result in “increased saliva burns, and pain in the mouth and throat, along with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea” due to the presence of glyphosate. According to court documents, the chemical consumption resulted in death.
The detective was also informed by Peters’ spouse that while he had a little bottle of Mountain Dew on June 11 or 12, it tasted different when he drank it from his home refrigerator.
According to the probable cause statement, Peters’ husband watched camera footage from his garage on June 12 that showed his wife bringing a bottle of Roundup into the home and a 2-liter Diet Mountain Dew out of the refrigerator.
According to the probable cause statement, Michelle Peters then put the Coke back in the refrigerator and put the Roundup back on the garage shelf.
According to court documents, when Peters’ spouse informed her that he was ill, she speculated that he might have Covid.
According to the probable cause statement, Peters’ husband told the investigator he didn’t know if his wife was having an affair or was “trying to collect his $500,000 life insurance policy.”
According to the probable cause statement, Peters’ spouse claimed he had no suspicions of infidelity, but his wife had been transferring less money from their business account into their joint account.
Investigators also Michelle Peters reported that there were problems in their marriage.
