Woman admits to adding Roundup to husband’s Mountain Dew, deputies say

LEBANON, Mo. (Court TV) — A Missouri woman is facing charges after police say she tried to poison her husband by lacing his Mountain Dew with Roundup weed killer.

Michelle Peters is charged with assault for allegedly adding Roundup to her husband’s Mountain Dew. (Laclede County Sheriff’s Office)

Michelle Yevonne Peters, 47, is facing charges of first-degree felony assault and felony armed criminal action for allegedly putting poison in her husband’s sodas for more than a month.

The victim, whose name was not released, went to the Laclede County Sheriff’s Office on Monday to say that he believed his wife was trying to kill him. He told deputies that he has a refrigerator in the garage where he stores two two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew. At the beginning of May, the victim said that he “noticed that his Mountain Dew had an odd taste and got sick shortly after.”

After suffering from a sore throat and stomach issues, the victim thought to look at surveillance footage from the garage, which allegedly showed his wife taking the soda out of the refrigerator and grabbing the Roundup off of a shelf before going into the house. She later returned the soda to the refrigerator and the Roundup to the shelf, detectives said.

The victim stopped drinking the soda but told officers “he had become afraid for his life” after adding another camera to the house and watching his wife on a live feed appear to add insecticide to another bottle of Mountain Dew.

When the victim told his wife that he was feeling ill, she allegedly told him he probably had Covid and should stay away from the grandkids. Speaking to detectives, the victim “said he is not sure if Michelle is having an affair or is trying to collect his $500,000 life insurance policy,” but did note that while “he does not suspect infidelity but noticed that Michelle has drastically reduced the amount of money she has been placing in their joint account from their business account.”

Peters willingly spoke with detectives when they went to speak with her, and admitted to adding Roundup to the soda bottles but denied she was trying to hurt her husband. “Michelle said that she was not putting the Roundup in the bottle, but was mixing Mountain Dew and Roundup to use as a weed killer that she saw on Pinterest.” Her story then changed when pushed by police, eventually admitting to putting insecticide into her husband’s Mountain Dew once because “she had thrown him a 50th birthday party and he was not appreciative. Michelle said she believed the chemical in the basement was Roundup when she put it in the Mountain Dew bottle and did so to be ‘mean’ to [the victim].”

If convicted, Peters faces up to 15 years in prison for each charge.