Before they met, Mo Rocca was not sure what to make of Harvey Updyke.

Last summer, Rocca, a correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning," traveled to Texas to meet Updyke, the former state trooper and University of Alabama football fan better known for poisoning the Toomer’s Oaks at Auburn University in 2010. Up to that point, Updyke had never given any interviews since completing his six-month sentence for criminal damage of an agricultural facility at the Lee County Detention Facility in 2013.

Arriving at Updyke’s home, Rocca said he was surprised to find that Updyke could be very likeable.

"When I first met him, he was with his granddaughters and they adored him," Rocca said.

Updyke, the oaks and the football rivalry between Alabama and Auburn will be explored in an upcoming episode of Rocca’s podcast, "Mobituaries," which will be released Friday morning. The podcast, which is produced by CBS News and Simon & Schuster, explores notable deaths, from Sammy Davis Jr. to the Neanderthals. As of Wednesday, "Mobituaries" was ranked 31st on the iTunes Top Charts for podcasts.

Rocca first heard about Updyke years ago while coming across a story on a flight about Updyke and how he used Spike 80DF pesticide on the trees following the 2010 Iron Bowl, when Auburn beat Alabama 28-27. Months later, Updyke was arrested after calling into the "The Paul Finebaum Radio Network" to brag about what he had done. By April 2013, the trees were mostly dead and were cut down.

Rocca was both disturbed and intrigued by Updyke’s story.

"It really bothered me hearing about this, and I have to tell you, I even wrestled right away with my feelings about this because they weren’t people and they weren’t animals; they were trees, but something about the idea of a fan doing this I found disturbing," he said.

Rocca said what really drew him in was the need to explore where the line was between a fan and a fanatic.

"There are fanatics in sports who don’t go kill things, but in how many people is this potential instinct present," he said.

Over the course of several months, Rocca and his "Mobituaries" team researched the Updyke case. They talked with people associated with the case, as well as talking with people about the longtime rivalry between Alabama and Auburn.

"I wanted to know where this fervor and hatred out here came from," he said. "It predates their playing football."

Rocca said that there were several things he noticed about Updyke as he spent time with him. One was that Updyke could be both funny and likeable with his family. However, Rocca is quick to point out how Updyke could also scare him.

"He goes into a step-by-step description of how he kills the trees and when you’re hearing that, it’s like hearing someone who has been radicalized," he said.

One description Updyke gave Rocca was how he spent a month planning for the poisoning and that he used 500 times the lethal amount of pesticide to kill the trees.

"Every night I’d stay up all night long, and they used to have cameras on the trees, and I figured out when the slowest time, what day of the week and what out of the night was the slowest around those oak trees, so I could go in there at that time and not get caught," Updyke said on the podcast.

After his release from jail, Updyke was placed on probation for five years. He was barred from attending any college games and had a 7 p.m. curfew. However, the ultimate punishment for Updyke was being ordered to pay nearly $800,000 in restitution to Auburn University, covering lost revenue from the university as well as expenses involved with the removal of the old trees and the planting of the new trees.

During the last few years, Updyke has not kept up with his payments. As of this year, he had not paid more than a couple of thousand dollars to Auburn University. According to court records, Updyke’s last payment was made in August 2018.

While admitting that Updyke was something of an unreliable narrator during their interview, Rocca said he did get the sense that, to a degree, Updyke continues to wrestle with why Alabama football and the Alabama/Auburn rivalry means so much to him.

"This sounds so psychobabblely, but I think he gets that he doesn’t quite understand himself in certain ways," he said. "He’ll say things like ‘I don’t understand why I feel so strongly.’ "

Rocca is interested to see how people relate to Updyke’s story.

"I feel like he’s a rabid fan turned up to 11, but I’m curious how rabid sports fans, when they listen to this, if they see themselves in Harvey, if they look at someone like Harvey and say, ‘Whoa, that is me, just 10 percent more rabid,’ " he said. "That’s interesting where that line is."

Revisiting Harvey

Finebaum is one the many people Rocca interviewed for the podcast. He spoke with the ESPN personality in August.

"I just felt they were looking for a broad view of the event," Finebaum said during a Wednesday phone interview with The Tuscaloosa News. "I think they just wanted to try and understand it: the cultural aspect of it, the rivalry, certainly Updyke, what happened and why it happened."

For Finebaum, the best way to describe Updyke and people like him is to describe politics.

"It’s almost like in the era of Trump, where there are certain levels of the Republican Party who want nothing to do with him, but they won’t admit it and then you have the rank and file," he said. "Updyke, to me, was always very popular with the rank-and-file Alabama fan, but the more established Alabama person wanted nothing to do with him, didn’t want to be associated with him and they made clear that everyone knew that."

The last time Finebaum spent time with Updyke was the day before Updyke was released from jail in 2013. At the time, Finebaum was in the process of writing his memoir, "My Conference Can Beat Your Conference," and wanted to visit with Updyke one last time. In the book, Finebaum wrote about how to many of the inmates, Updyke was a celebrity who often traded autographs for Little Debbie Honey Buns. The day Finebaum came to visit, Updyke was wearing an orange jumpsuit with the words "Roll Damn Tide" on the front.

"He was still reveling in his 15 minutes (of fame)," Finebaum wrote. "It was weird, pathetic, but mostly it was sad."

Today, Finebaum still feels nothing has changed for Updyke.

"Based on what I’ve seen on Twitter on him, I think he’s the same person," Finebaum said. "He’s a little better-known and more famous, but I don’t feel he’s grown at all."

Nonetheless, Finebaum hopes "Mobituaries" does right by Alabama.

"I always hope that the people of Alabama are portrayed fairly," he said. "There was only one person who poisoned those trees. It wasn’t you or me or some student on McFarland Boulevard. It was Harvey Updyke."

Finebaum said Rocca will be a guest on his radio show Friday to talk about "Mobituaries" and Updyke.

Reach Drew Taylor at drew.taylor@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0204.