Roxanne Doucette had always wanted to meet a celebrity. And there she was, at 64, receiving a string of flirty text messages from soap opera veteran Thorsten Kaye. He called her “honey” and sent her heart emojis. He said he missed her, that he needed her in his life.
Then the messages took a sinister turn, according to police records. The mysterious admirer told her that she needed to get rid of her husband.
Now, authorities are investigating whether the Townsend woman tried to comply with those demands — made not by the “Bold and Beautiful” star but by a scammer who tricked her out of thousands of dollars — by poisoning her husband with a bowl of homemade soup, according to police documents.
The alleged plot, which has gained national attention for its own soap opera-like elements, came to light on Dec. 3, two days after Doucette’s husband was hospitalized after eating a bowl of soup she had prepared for him, according to a police report.
Doucette’s daughter, Nicole Heath, was scrolling through her mother’s phone as they sat together in a Nashoba Valley Medical Center hospital room. Aware that her mother had recently given money to an individual who was posing as Kaye, Heath had reported the fraud to local police and was going through the text messages to take screenshots.
As she scrolled through, she came across some suspicious texts between the pair on Dec. 1, the day her father fell ill after eating the soup.
“You have to get rid of your husband honey. I need you so much,” the scammer told Doucette, who responded that she needed to do some thinking and would talk to him later. “Okay honey,” the scammer wrote back, according to the police report.
Shortly after 2:30 p.m., Doucette wrote that she was “making an amazing potion. Special potion. He will be hungry when he gets back. Just enough for him.” At 4:26 p.m., she wrote, “Hubby got back not feeling well. Maybe I can collect life insurance.”
“Honey when will that be?” the scammer asked. “Don’t know,” she said.
Less than an hour later, Doucette called 911 to report that her husband Paul, a 73-year-old with a cardiac history, was unresponsive but breathing, according to police documents. He was sitting in a chair, mumbling nonsensical things, she said.
After reading the messages, Heath “thought there was a strong possibility” that her mother had poisoned her father, according to the police report. When he regained consciousness, Heath asked him what had happened. He said her mom had made him some soup but it wasn’t very good — it had a bitter taste.
Heath called the police about her suspicions and an officer interviewed Roxanne Doucette in the hospital later that day.
Doucette said she believed “she was talking to a star and that she had always wanted to meet a star,” adding that her husband has health issues and that “she was afraid to be alone,” according to the police report. She said she hoped her daughter didn’t believe she had put him in the hospital.
When police tried to take her phone and tablet as evidence, Doucette refused to comply, according to Townsend police. The officer explained to Doucette that he “did not need a warrant” to seize her devices and that if she did not hand them over, she could be charged “due to the interference of a police investigation,” according to the report.
“She still refused. She also stated that we were done and that she was going to go back to her husband,” according to the police report. “Since we were still investigating a possible attempted murder, I was not going to let her go back to the potential victim’s room.”
The officer told Doucette to stop and called another officer over to help. Doucette continued to rebuff requests to hand over her phone and tablet. She fought the officers when they attempted to take her into custody, kicking one in the crotch before they were able to arrest her, the documents said.
Doucette was charged with witness intimidation, resisting arrest, and assault and battery on a police officer for the incident, according to court documents. She was placed on home confinement. Doucette has not been charged with allegedly poisoning her husband, but the investigation is ongoing, said Meghan Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
“The investigation is still open at this time so we are not able to comment on specific details,” she said. “That open investigation does include the scam component.”
A toxicology report on Paul Doucette came back negative, but Heath said that it “seemed to only test” for opioids, cocaine, and alcohol, according to police documents.
Doucette declined to comment on Wednesday, saying “I’d rather not answer any questions at this time.” Her lawyer could not be reached for comment.
But in an interview with WCVB-TV on Tuesday, Doucette denied wrongdoing.
“What they say is wrong. Because I’m a wonderful cook. My son’s gone to culinary school. I learned from the best — my mom,” she said. “And I did not try to poison my husband.”
In the interview, she suggested that he may have had a stroke.
Doucette told NBC Boston on Tuesday that she ended up wiring about $4,000 to the scammer. “He wanted money and he wanted to meet me,” she said. “It was my dream to meet a soap star.”
It was not clear how Doucette came to believe she was communicating with Kaye.
Doucette told NBC Boston that she loved her husband “very much.”
“I want you to come home,” Doucette said. “I did not hurt you.”
On Dec. 4, Paul Doucette filed a restraining order against his wife. She was charged on Dec. 12 for violating the order by writing her husband a letter asking him to drop the protective measurement because she missed him, according to court documents.
“That’s a long time to have you out of my life,” she wrote.
Due to a production error, a headline on an earlier version of this story misstated the charges against Roxanne Doucette. The Globe regrets the error.
Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.