Authorities in Missouri accuse a 47-year-old woman of poisoning her husband’s soda with weed killer because he allegedly refused to thank her for the surprise party she organized for his 50th birthday.
Michelle Y. Peters, of Lebanon, was arrested June 24, and has since pleaded not guilty to felony charges of first-degree domestic assault and armed criminal action, according to court papers.
She remains held without bond, with her next hearing scheduled for July 2.
During her interrogation, the esthetician for Bodyworks Unlimited in Lebanon claimed her husband was “not appreciative” of her efforts to please him. Police said she admitted that she did something “mean” to him.
Peters’ husband, whose name was redacted from a probable cause affidavit, informed the Laclede County Sheriff’s Office that he suspected his wife was trying to kill him.
The victim said he first noticed a strange taste when he took a gulp of his Diet Mountain Dew back in May.
He kept the two-liter soft drink bottle in his garage refrigerator.
At first, he disregarded the unusual taste and kept drinking the soda. But after a few weeks, he began experiencing a series of ailments, including a sore throat, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which didn’t make sense to the normally healthy man.
Growing suspicious, the husband reviewed security camera footage from inside the garage and allegedly saw Peters taking the Diet Mountain Dew from the fridge and a bottle of Roundup weed killer into the house.
Moments later, she reemerged and put both items back as if she had never touched them.
The man told police he tried to outsmart his wife by placing untampered bottles in the fridge. However, Peters allegedly poured weed killer in those, too.
Authorities said she added so much Roundup in the soda bottles that the tubby weed killer container was nearly empty after a few weeks, and that’s when a new container of poison appeared inexplicably.
When her husband mentioned feeling sick, Peters allegedly played it off smoothly, telling him he “probably had COVID” and to “stay away from the grandkids,” according to the arrest warrant.
Peters’ husband expressed uncertainty about whether his wife might be having an affair or if she was trying to cash in on a $500,000 life insurance policy after she had stopped putting money in their shared bank account.
Additional camera footage allegedly shows Peters on June 24 put insecticide in her husband’s soda.
Becoming increasingly afraid for his life, the man finally called police and provided a copy of one of the recordings to a friend and a bottle of contaminated Mountain Dew. Detectives came to the couple’s home and collected evidence, including two bottles of Roundup, a two-liter soda, and a bottle of insecticide.
After a couple of days, police brought Peters in for questioning, where she quickly claimed she had mixed Roundup in the Mountain Dew to mimic a weed killer concoction she discovered on Pinterest, court papers said.
But when they confronted Peters with video evidence, she changed her story, saying she “should have just divorced” her husband, calling him a “selfish” man.
