She Wanted To Whip Up Killer Mashed Potatoes Authorities Foil Woman’S Plot To Poison Her Husband’S Spuds

“The Jerry Springer Show” - live from the Bucks County Courthouse.

Yesterday’s episode: “Women who want to kill their husbands with poisoned mashed potatoes, and the men who love them.”

And, “Wives who have affairs with other women while planning to kill their husbands with … poisoned mashed potatoes.”

And, “Suburban lesbian sorcerers who turn their girlfriends over to the cops.”

All this daytime drama was played out in a Doylestown courtroom as Heather and Kevin Miller explained to a jury how their volatile, abusive marriage inspired Heather to plan her husband’s murder-by-spuds.

Despite the accusation, the Millers are still together.

In fact, they’re all over each other.

During breaks in the trial, Kevin Miller grabbed his wife, holding her in a full-body hug to protect her from the press. They held hands and snuggled.

Heather Miller, 26, of Richlandtown, is charged with attempting to kill her husband with mashed potatoes laced with the potentially toxic herb belladonna. She had planned to pack the toxic taters, atop a dish of shepherd’s pie, for her husband’s lunch.

The plot failed, the Bucks County District Attorney’s office contends, because Pennsylvania State Police arrested the woman before she had a chance to concoct the deadly side dish.

Miller said she never intended to carry out the plan because she changed her mind.

“I bought the belladonna because I was told to do it,” Heather Miller said while testifying in her own defense Monday. “When I bought it I was following through with something me and my best friend did that had gone too far.”

She put an end to the plot, she said, because she “wasn’t going to take that man, no matter how horrible he is to me, away from his children.”

The Millers have four kids.

Police were acting on tips from two neighbors, one of whom was Heather Miller’s best friend and lover, when they arrested Miller in April. The friend, Mindi Robbins, wore a wire attached to her thigh to secretly record the murder plot.

The plan to spike the spuds with belladonna, an herb commonly used in small doses to treat headaches, was all Robbins’ idea, Miller testified. Robbins had heard about the deadly use of the herb while watching the movie “Practical Magic,” starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

The idea was to crush the belladonna tablets Miller bought from a health food store, put them into the potatoes and then, later that April night, call her husband at work. If he didn’t answer, Miller said, she planned to go to his office to see if he was dead.

To aid with getting rid of her husband, Miller said, she bought a couple of “spell kits” from Gypsy Heaven, a New Hope store.

Miller said Robbins told her about spells to make people fall in and out of love, spells for protection and “banishing spells.” This was the kind of witchcraft, she said, that people practice “in secluded places, dressed in black.”

As backups to the poisoned potatoes, Miller also talked to Robbins about rigging the brakes on her husband’s car and putting a hit on him.

To Miller, this was all just girl talk.

“I wasn’t going to do it,” she said. “I was just venting my frustration.”

That didn’t change Kevin Miller’s feelings.

“I love my wife,” he testified.

When asked by Bucks County Senior Deputy District Attorney Michelle Henry if Miller returned that feeling, she would only say:

“We’re working our problems out.”

Miller did, however, show a flicker of affection toward her husband. After she killed him, she said, she planned to use part of his life insurance for a military funeral for the fallen ex-Marine.