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Tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode of Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast. Join Francine L. Shaw, the savvy CEO of Savvy Food Safety, and Matthew Regusci, compliance connoisseur and founder of Fostering Compliance, as they serve up the latest in food safety with a side of laughter.
Explore the ins and outs of food systems, responsible food practices, and food safety regulations. Stay informed about food safety awareness and the not-so-occasional food recall. Delve deep into the complexities of the food supply chain with our dynamic duo, who blend expert insights with a pinch of food safety humor. Whether you're knee-deep in the food safety industry or just passionate about what's on your plate, this podcast promises a fresh take on staying safe while eating well.
Expect candid conversations, personal anecdotes, and occasional guest appearances that spice up the discussion. Shaw and Regusci bring their combined decades of experience to the table, making each episode as informative as it is entertaining. From industry trends to must-know food safety news and regulations, they've got your back (and your lunch).
In essence, Don't Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast is not just about imparting information; it's about fostering a culture of food safety. By shedding light on the intricacies of the food supply chain and the latest food safety news, it aims to promote awareness and encourage responsible food practices among consumers and industry professionals alike.
When it comes to food safety, knowledge is power, and a good laugh is the best seasoning. At the heart of every episode is one golden rule: Don't Eat Poop!
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Matt Regusci: [00:00:00] If she is now being linked, she's not charged yet. Linked with multiple other murders. Starting back from 2007. She probably was thinking she was gonna get away with this. She probably thought she was gonna get away with this. Why not? She's gotten away with the other murders.
Francine L Shaw: And think about this. She's a restaurateur.
How much has she potentially gotten away with in 20 years? That is scary. If she's willing to do this to her own children, who else might she be willing to do this to?
intro: Everybody's gotta eat and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows, keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans, Francine l Shaw and Matt Regusci for a deep [00:01:00] dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't. Eat poop. Don't eat. Poop.
Matt Regusci: Hello, hello, Francine.
Francine L Shaw: Hi Matt.
Matt Regusci: Hi. So maybe this should have been our Thanksgiving episode for later on, but it's.
Francine L Shaw: So what I was thinking is, you know, when we recorded our message of Don't Kill your family over the holidays?
Matt Regusci: Oh my gosh, yes.
Francine L Shaw: We said it in jest, we really are serious. We don't want anybody to kill their families over the holidays, or God forbid, make them sick or God forbid, kill them or we're dead serious.
Matt Regusci: I think the title of the holiday one was, don't accidentally Kill Your Family over the holidays.
Francine L Shaw: It was accidentally, yeah. What we.
Matt Regusci: Yes.
Francine L Shaw: Because being the parents we are, we would never think that somebody would do it intentionally. As a mother who loves her children like. More than life itself. [00:02:00]
Matt Regusci: Right?
Francine L Shaw: I mean, always wanted to be the best mother I possibly could.
I just, I love my children. I don't, would never want anything bad to happen to them. Never. I just can't fathom.
Matt Regusci: So you don't think about purposefully poisoning wine. For instance, let's just give an example. Purposely poisoning wine.
Francine L Shaw: My God, no!
Matt Regusci: On a Thanksgiving meal that you then put in front of two of your children, which you have two children and significant other of them.
Francine L Shaw: Or their spouses or.
Matt Regusci: Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: No.
Matt Regusci: Today's story is exactly that.
Mom, just recently Mother. Just a mother, just recently, and what we see just recently like this, these new articles were like three days ago. Which are probably gonna be, I don't know, two weeks from now, three weeks from now, that this episode airs successfully, I guess is what you would say, since it was what I'm guessing her intent [00:03:00] was killed one of her daughters and poisoned another daughter and her boyfriend on wine during Thanksgiving.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah.
Matt Regusci: And she is a restaurateur, restaurateur, restaurateur.
Francine L Shaw: Restaurateur. How?
Matt Regusci: Restaurateur. So I'm guessing this is not good for business since her restaurant is a bar in Asheville. It's a restaurant bar in Asheville. I'm assuming if you're willing to poison your family, you're probably willing to poison other people and we'll get into the fact that she literally, what does she feel like accused of two or three or four other murders in the past?
Francine L Shaw: If you're gonna poison your children or your spouse, you'll poison anybody, in my opinion.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. We need to do a recap episode on the Australian lady who tried to [00:04:00] kill her in-laws or ex in-laws family, because that case was settled middle of last year. When I say last year, I mean 2025. Finalized in July of 2025.
That was a crazy one. That was a crazy case of the, of this lady going and finding mushroom, poison mushrooms and poisoning your beef Wellington and you and I thought that was crazy then. That was no murders justifiable ever. I hate it when I say something like that and then I say, but this is her ex's family though, that she tried to kill with the beef Wellington. This wasn't her own children.
Francine L Shaw: It wasn't her current husband, it was her ex's husband and his.
Matt Regusci: His family. And the ex-husband was, didn't show up for this meal. 'cause he probably was like, I divorced this lady 'cause he's crazy. I don't know why you're all going to this meal. Yeah. Okay.
Let's give some context of this. So this [00:05:00] just happened in. This late last Thanksgiving, and this lady who's German, so excuse me for totally mispronouncing her name because the only thing that is even remotely easy to pronounce in English is Casper, which is hyphenated. So I'm guessing that was her husband's name, something like that.
But it's uh, GU run, G-U-D-R-U, nrun Casper.
Francine L Shaw: Leinenkugel.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, we'll go with that. So for the rest of this article, we're just gonna call her Casper. I don't wanna totally.
Francine L Shaw: We don't wanna mess up her name too horribly.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. The rest of this podcast, we're just gonna call her Casper because I don't, we don't wanna keep mispronouncing this name over and over again.
Alright. She's a 52-year-old lady, she is German, she's born in Germany has lived in the United States for a very long time. Long time entrepreneur, [00:06:00] restaurateur. Used to own laundromats. I think she said in an article, a local article in West Ashton Food article on her in 2016 talking her restaurant up. Talking her up.
She's quoted saying that she started working when she was 13 years old, but she wasn't mowing lawns or delivering papers or babysitting. She owned a laundromat at the age of 13. I had to learn how to run businesses, fix machines, it was a great learning experience. And then since then, she has opened up six restaurants and bars across the country.
So she is. She's an entrepreneur, right? Decision making processes may not be the best when she gets angry or upset. We have no reason. We have no understanding or knowledge yet of why she tried poisoning her two daughters and her daughter's boyfriend on Thanksgiving. 'cause this is like hot off the presses.
But yeah, here's the article.
Francine L Shaw: Okay. Not only did she [00:07:00] poison them, but this poison is like horrible.
Matt Regusci: Yes. This whole podcast is terrible in pronunciation. She couldn't pick a poison that was easy to like pronounce like cyanide or something like that. No. She picked a poison.
Francine L Shaw: Well it turns into cyanide though.
Apparently it turns into that.
Matt Regusci: It turns into cyanide, but it's not cyanide. So it's you and I were trying to pronounce this new forehead.
Francine L Shaw: Acetonitrile. Acetoni tri trile or something, it turns into cyanide. What it does is it results in central nervous system effects such as headaches, numbness, tremors.
That's what's in front of me. What? You had something else in front of you though, didn't you, Matt? Didn't you?
Matt Regusci: Yeah, I did.
Francine L Shaw: Seizures.
Matt Regusci: Here's the thing. Well, I'm just gonna go through this article 'cause it's crazy. She was arrested on January 16th, so again, this was just like last week. Charged with two counts, each of [00:08:00] first degree murder.
So she did end up killing two of the two of the people. Yeah. An attempted murder and three counts of distribution of certain food and beverages prohibited. Okay. There's a, a lovely legally speak. Basically, she's also charged with poisoning people, pre counts of poisoning people. Casper allegedly held a 12 person Thanksgiving dinner on November, 2025.
Where she allegedly poisoned the wine that her daughter, Leela, and another daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend were drinking. So like I, I'm like, oh no. She like intentionally put this poisoned bottle in front of her two daughters and her boyfriend. But 12 people, yeah, all three drank from the same bottle, which was poisoned with acetonitrile.
Sorry. Terrible.
The Center of Disease Control Prevention and the US Environmental Protection Agency [00:09:00] said this poisoned or chemical is clear, colorless liquid, that has many uses including as a solvent for spinning fibers and lithium batteries. So I'm sure this chemical is fantastic in what it's intended to do, but it's not intended to be drink at a party.
That's, it's not meant for human consumption.
Francine L Shaw: Primarily found in the air from automobile exhaust and manufacturing facilities.
Matt Regusci: Yes. So people who get poisoned from this is usually inhalation exposure, like at gas stations or whatever when you're, when there's a whole bunch of cars or whatever. And long-term exposure results in central nervous system affects headaches, numbness, and tremors.
Yeah. And if you drink it. Like we had to do research on this 'cause I didn't even know this chemical existed. Francine didn't know this chemical existed. Toxicity from inhalation ingestion and skin absorption. So shouldn't even be on your skin, [00:10:00] let alone in the air you breathe or the.
Francine L Shaw: Let alone in your mouth.
Matt Regusci: Symptoms and exposure. Irritation and nose and throat, nausea, vomiting, headaches, numbness, tremors, weakness. Severe cases of getting exposed to this can have convulsions, coma and or respiratory failure, organ damage. Uh, this is pretty bad. It can affect the respiratory, so your lungs, cardiovascular, your heart and central nervous systems, and your liver and kidneys.
Can you imagine? Drinking this and dying of this, like I'm guessing you're burning everywhere and then you had kidney and liver failure, like not good.
Francine L Shaw: It, it damages your entire system as it's working its way through your body. I mean.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Yeah. People listening to this cannot see the look on my face right now, but it is a pure like disgust.
Handling this chemical. There's some [00:11:00] recommendations on handling this chemical. One of 'em is you do not handle this chemical alone, so have witnesses to your death as you play around with this chemical. It requires proper training and safety procedures. This woman was like playing around with this chemical, like a mad scientist in her household.
Was she wearing gloves and a mask when she was pouring this in the bottle of wine?
Francine L Shaw: I'm gonna guess those procedures don't involve pouring it into a wine glass and drinking it.
Matt Regusci: But I'm wondering for her own safety, like did she take her own safety in account and have proper PPE when she was messing around with this chemical?
Francine L Shaw: You could see her in the kitchen pouring it into the wine bottle with her glasses and her.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mom, are you gonna cook the turkey? Yeah, just a bit. I'm preparing the wine. Oh. Oh man. Yeah. Okay.
So this story gets crazier. Okay. Because. When they arrested her, I'm guessing they grabbed her [00:12:00] laptop or whatever and looked at her search history and she searched.
What happens like in Google? What happens if I accidentally ingest, acetone nitrile? I'm wondering if she just had this like in her garage, you know, like some old houses and barns, like I would see this all the time doing like farm audits. And we'd walk in and we'd be like, why is this chemical labeled DEP.
How long has this been sitting here? Did she just have in her garage this chemical? Like how did she get this? And then she looked at the label and she was like, oh, I gotta Google this. This might be a good addition to the wine I'm providing.
Francine L Shaw: When we bought our property, we found some interesting old bottles and things in the barn.
Thankfully, my husband didn't determine that it might be a good thing to put him in anything I was drinking.
Matt Regusci: Oh man, it's so bad. Okay, so the Henderson County's sheriff [00:13:00] office and said deputies also found evidence linking Casper to Michael Schmidt, who died in a house fire in 2007. So I don't know what they found when they arrested her, but.
She's linked to this potential murder and potentially linked to this murder house fire in 2007? Yes. Okay. And then during the hearing it was also revealed that Casper is tied to additional deaths that are currently under investigation.
Francine L Shaw: I wonder if they're in her restaurant. I wonder. Talk about food defense.
Not only did she poison her children. But this is inhumane.
Matt Regusci: Oh yeah. That is the understatement of the year. And it's only January.
Francine L Shaw: I just can't fathom. My husband, my children. I just can't. I cannot imagine. My [00:14:00] mind just doesn't even go there.
Matt Regusci: No, no. 'cause you're a normal person, Francine.
Francine L Shaw: I dunno.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Normal people.
Even crazy people. Even crazy people. Don't do this. This was a lot of thought going into it, and it could have been as simple as, oh, here's this chemical. I am going to put this in this bottle of wine and I'm going to strategically place it in front of my two daughters and their boyfriend at some point in time during the meal.
Or I'm gonna have them sit at.
Francine L Shaw: No one else touches it that it's at the table. Just these three are gonna consume this beverage. Nobody else. Yeah. And then let's just sit back and see what happens.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, let's just see what happens. Like an experiment. Oh, man. Okay. So I just find it fascinating that because of this, now she's linked to multiple murders.
Francine L Shaw: So it's a solvent for spinning fibers and in lithium batteries, you can't take freaking lithium batteries on an airplane [00:15:00] anymore.
Matt Regusci: You're not supposed to, at least.
Francine L Shaw: You can't put them right, but we're gonna feed whatever's in them to our children.
Matt Regusci: Yes, that's exactly what happened. I'm gonna Google exactly what she Googled and see what it pops up with. What happens if I accidentally ingest? I liked how she put accidentally in there too.
Francine L Shaw: That even makes it worse because she knew the kind of trauma and the horrible death that they were gonna have from drinking this.
Matt Regusci: So Google AI pops up every single time you search something, so I'm gonna read exactly what that says. Accidental ingestion of acetonitrile is a medical emergency that can be fatal as the body metabolizes it into cyanide.
Symptoms are often delayed by two to 12 plus hours, including [00:16:00] nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, headache, dizziness, rapid breath seizures, coma, and potential death. Seek immediate emergency, medical attention, immediate actions and symptoms, delayed toxicity. Symptoms may not appear immediately leading to the false sense of safety.
So this might be the reason why she chose this instead of just cyanide or something like that. I don't know. Maybe she wanted the delayed effect. Maybe she thought she was gonna get away with this.
Francine L Shaw: It has to metabolize into cyanide before it starts to. Right.
Matt Regusci: That's the case. That's what she was thinking that she was gonna get away with.
This is 100% pre like premeditated. Symptoms: early signs include throat irritation. Yeah. 'cause you're drinking it. Vomiting, dizziness, progressing to respiratory depression, convulsions, and cardiovascular failure If swallowed, rinse mouth, drink water and do not induce some vomiting because if you induce vomiting right, it's coming back [00:17:00] up and it's does more damage.
Medical care treatment often involves cyanide antidote kits in a hospital setting. So if they had gone directly to the hospital. Probably would've survived those two.
Francine L Shaw: Only. But only if they knew what an anecdote was. They would have to know what they consent. Oh, okay. Right. So she's not gonna be like, oh, I accidentally gave them the equivalent of cyanide.
Let's treat this. I was trying to kill them. I changed my mind. That's not gonna happen. Yeah. So they would have to diagnose it, and that's not what they're looking for. So in the meantime, it's still metabolizing.
Matt Regusci: If she is now being linked, she's not charged yet. Linked with multiple other murders. Starting back from 2007.
She probably was thinking she was gonna get away with this. She probably thought she was gonna get away with this. Why not? She's gotten away with the other murders.
Francine L Shaw: And think about this. She's a restaurateur. [00:18:00] How much has she potentially gotten away with in 20 years? That is scary. If she's willing to do this to her own children, who else might she be willing to do this to potentially? And if it's a delayed reaction, no. Autopsy. Autopsy, what are they looking for? What are they not looking for? They ate in a restaurant. It's not food poisoning. Is it gonna show up or not show up? I watch a lot of late night.
Matt Regusci: Yes. Yeah. Murder. Murder mysteries are your thing.
Francine L Shaw: All the time.
I'm like, I need to relax. I gotta, I need to go to bed and watch somebody get murdered.
Matt Regusci: Wow.
Literally she was like, alright. We haven't done anything on somebody killing somebody in food for a long time, like [00:19:00] intentionally. Let's go research that. It's been, this popped up just like a couple days ago, so yeah, that is your thing.
Mine is more learning about people that have gotten killed, like 1600s. Like I will go to sleep listening to history of whatever it is.
Francine L Shaw: I mean, I can watch, what is it? Mystery in the Museum. They're always killing somebody there too, in the late 15, 16 hundreds.
Matt Regusci: I can't wait to learn more about why.
Francine L Shaw: You will never know the why.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. But there are a lot of crazy people in both of our families that we do not do Thanksgiving with. And I think this article. Justifies our decision not to hang out with our crazy family members.
Francine L Shaw: They might say we're the crazy people in the family just saying.
Matt Regusci: Which is fine.
I will 100% own that. I'm the crazy one.
Francine L Shaw: I'm not gonna argue with that.
Matt Regusci: No, that's fine. My, my family could be the crazy ones. That's cool. I still don't wanna go to your house for Thanksgiving.
Francine L Shaw: No, I'm not gonna let you feed me.
Matt Regusci: No. And [00:20:00] in fact, I don't want you come to my house 'cause. Lord knows what type of wine or whatever you're gonna be bringing over to kill us.
This is insane.
If someone died in one of our houses for a food born illness, they would just assume it was premeditated. We know like. We know a lot of ways that somebody could die from food. I never thought of this particular chemical 'cause I didn't even know this chemical existed. Man, that is crazy.
Alright, so. We have to update people on this when more information comes out.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah, we're gonna have to, I don't know, follow this or something.
Matt Regusci: I think we should really do it. Then.
Francine L Shaw: Google notification for her name is what we should do a Google notification Yes. For her name. That way we know what happens,
Matt Regusci: Francine, since you are the murder mystery person of this team, why don't you keep me up to date on this and then. I think the follow up episode on this should include the follow up on the [00:21:00] Australian lady.
Francine L Shaw: I dunno if I remember all this Matt.
Matt Regusci: I will remember that one because when we do a follow up on this case, all I could think about when we were looking at this, all I could think about was the Australian mushroom beef Wellington.
Francine L Shaw: It's a shame that Bill doesn't do these kind of trials because ooh, that would be.
Matt Regusci: I don't know why I am so shocked at what people would do to their family members. 'cause I've seen you and I both lived in like crazy households and had crazy things happen to us, and I've seen it throughout the foster care system.
But like to put this chemical in wine and give it to your children and one of their children's boyfriends at a Thanksgiving dinner. That is a whole new level of evil to me.
Francine L Shaw: Oh, it's just beyond evil.
Matt Regusci: I would find it fascinating to know what goes through [00:22:00] somebody like this's head. Like what? Like I would not want to be in that head.
'cause I think it would make me insane to like see real by real what goes into a brain like this, the psychologists and Yeah, the psychologists that specialize in dealing with people like this. How they do not themselves become, I don't know, crazy. I do not know.
Francine L Shaw: Some of them probably are. My mom used to grab us by the hair.
I have a bald spotlight on the top of my head. I swear it's from her. But she would grab us by the hair and just, I saw a picture on Facebook one time and this mother that was like taking water in the bathtub and it was like I sent it to my sister. I said, mind you of anything. Yeah, it was not good, but she never poisoned us with water.
Matt Regusci: The other thing I don't understand is like, okay, what I also don't understand is someone who has six restaurants and has restaurant bars or whatever and has [00:23:00] been an entrepreneur for a long time. In order to do that over a long period of time, you could start six restaurants and fail miserably with a crazy brain, right?
Yeah. But having six restaurants that are successful, that takes a lot of decisive, consistently good decisions.
Francine L Shaw: It takes a lot of, in order to do that takes capacity to run six restaurants. It takes a lot of organization. There's organization, there's a lot of decision making capability that you have to have.
There's just, there's a lot that goes into operating one, let alone six.
Matt Regusci: Yes, yes. Yeah. And in, in order to do six successfully, that means you have to have a.
Francine L Shaw: There's also a lot of strategy involved.
Matt Regusci: Yeah, you have to have a management team. You have to have like systems and all this different type of stuff. One, you could be crazy and you're just doing it yourself, and you just churn through a whole bunch of employees over a period of time.
And the ones that are like submissive and like to be treated poorly, like you [00:24:00] could have one successful restaurant, quote unquote successful. In terms of what the public sees, but in the backend could be a total, total mess.
Francine L Shaw: But if you've got six, they're probably in different areas, which mean they're different demographics, which mean they all need to man be managed differently.
Matt Regusci: Yes. How does someone like that?
Francine L Shaw: If you have two restaurants, even three restaurants that are all like 10, 15, 30 miles apart? Even two in the same town that are on the opposite side of towns can be in different demographics and have to be managed differently. So it requires a huge skillset to do that.
Like it's not something everybody can do successfully.
Matt Regusci: And I bet I. Okay. If she thought she was getting away with this, I bet she thought she was absolutely genius in how she set everything up in order to kill her kiddos.
Francine L Shaw: She probably thought that it wasn't gonna be traceable, but [00:25:00] Okay. So biggest mistake, three of them.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Her biggest mistake was creating a systemic issue. Not killing her family? No, no, no, no. Making it traceable because she tried to kill too many at one time. Yeah, okay. You, I, it would be interesting too. I wonder if she like went to the hospital and was like doting on them. It was trying to, 'cause you could see that, right?
Like her trying to make it look like it wasn't her. And oh my gosh, I'm here for you. And if she's successful, she probably has money. And she's like, oh, I'll pick up the medical bills or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And oh, and being really, really sad. And then to find out she's the one. Yeah.
Francine L Shaw: Mugshot doesn't look like she was sad.
Matt Regusci: Because she got caught.
Okay. I think we beat this one to death.
Francine L Shaw: Yeah. With that, don't poison your children.
Matt Regusci: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. With that, I guess don't eat [00:26:00] poop.