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Australian mushroom poisoning case 1 Month, 2 Weeks ago
The woman at the centre of the Australian mushroom poisoning case that was in the news a while back is now on trial. She had served a beef wellington dish containing death cap mushrooms to her mother and father in law and aunt and uncle in law. All except the uncle in law died. She had invited her estranged husband, but he pulled out. She did not get ill and neither did her children, who didn't attend the dinner. The prosecution is saying that, according to the surviving uncle in law, she had eaten from a different coloured plate.
From the coverage before, it sounded very suspicious. She had claimed to have bought the mushrooms from an Asian grocery store, but was unable to say where it was. It was reported at the time that the chances of buying death cap mushrooms from a store were zero. It was also reported that her husband had previously been in intensive care over a mystery stomach illness (Erin Patterson’s husband suffered mystery illness a year before his family’s deaths in Leongatha).
Re:Australian mushroom poisoning case 1 Month, 2 Weeks ago
Who knows?
But it doesn't make sense to me in terms of motive trying to wipe out all your adult relatives. Usually, it will be either a heat of the moment against one, or financially motivated.
If she is guilty will this make her the first serial killer targetting any known adult relatives!? And how goes that motive arise?
In a written statement sent to cops on Friday, Ms Patterson — who denies any wrongdoing — gave her first account of what happened before and after the fatal lunch.
She said she served the meal and allowed the guests to choose their own plates — and she also ate a portion of the beef wellington herself.
The mushrooms were a mixture of button mushrooms from a major supermarket chain, and dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in Melbourne months before, she added.
There's no way I'd eat anything containing wild mushrooms foraged by someone [the prosecution and defence apparently agree that she foraged the deadly mushrooms], no matter how experienced they might be, especially after this story!
I think this woman must have wanted to harm her guests. The defence is apparently that it was all a terrible accident, but I can't see how someone can prepare a meal and accidentally add a lethal ingredient to four out of five servings. And it seems that it wasn't one big dish (logical if she wasn't poisoned herself) but individual beef wellingtons.
Re:Australian mushroom poisoning case 1 Week, 1 Day ago
I’ve been wondering if she intended to make the victims ill rather than kill them. Could the website she reportedly consulted, called iNaturalist, which shows the locations of death cap mushrooms she apparently visited, as well as identification information, have suggested eating the mushrooms would make someone ill rather than kill them? Apparently not. The website says “the death cap, is a deadly poisonous basidiomycete fungus and mushroom… the most poisonous of all known mushrooms. It is estimated that as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human. It is also the deadliest mushroom worldwide, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities every year.” inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/52135-Amanita-phalloides
Interesting analysis here, including suggested motive:
... Later, the girl said, Ms Patterson began complaining about feeling sick and went to the toilet about 10 times.
"She said she had diarrhoea and that her tummy was sore," the girl said. ...
Paramedic Eleyne Spencer, who transported Ms Patterson from the Leongatha Hospital to the Monash Medical Centre, said she had complained about having "extensive diarrhoea".
However, Ms Spencer said Ms Patterson did not need to go to the toilet once during a 90-minute trip to the Monash hospital.
"Ms Patterson was fairly calm and nonchalant. It was a fairly, I guess, uneventful journey," Ms Spencer said. ...
"She didn't look unwell like Ian and Heather," Leongatha hospital nurse Cindy Munro said of Ms Patterson.
"Erin was sitting up in the bed in the trolley and she didn't look unwell to me."
At the time, Ms Munro said, Ms Patterson was hesitant about receiving intravenous fluids and liver-protecting medication.
"Erin sort of stressed she didn't want any of this," Ms Munro said. ...
If just half a death cap mushroom can kill you (according to the website she consulted, see post above), it would be interesting to know what the chances are, after consuming death cap mushrooms, of one member of a five-person dinner party expelling them naturally and suffering only minor ill effects while three die and one is left seriously ill.
This woman seems to have been dishonest and deceptive, e.g. lying to her in-laws that she had ovarian cancer, lying to police that she'd disposed of a food dehydrator (which showed traces of death cap mushrooms), lying to police that she foraged for mushrooms (having visited a page on iNaturalist showing locations of death cap mushrooms and visited at least one of those locations), apparently disposing of her main mobile phone as police were unable to find it, setting her other phones to factory settings after they'd been taken away by police.
As for a motive, if she did poison her guests deliberately she must have been seriously disturbed or devoid of any conscience, so could have had a motive that no person in their right mind or person with a conscience would consider logical.
Re:Australian mushroom poisoning case 5 Days, 2 Hours ago
Green Man wrote: Aussie women are bonkers when they are unhinged. Look at Katherine Knight, a fucking lunatic and butt ugly with it.
I'd hope that Katherine Knight was an extreme outlier. What she did was unbelievably horrendous.
Another thing I've been wondering about in this case is why Erin Patterson went to hospital if she'd put death cap mushrooms in the beef wellington pasties accidentally, i.e. if she didn't know she'd foraged them or included them in the pasties. She seems to have been told that her guests had suspected death cap mushroom poisoning when she was in hospital. So if, as she claims, she ate little of her pastie, then after everyone left, gorged on a cake, felt nauseous and full and made herself sick, and had diarrhoea, why did she bother going to hospital? She is reported to have said it was to get fluids. But surely most people would assume the symptoms were due to overeating or a tummy bug and just drink lots of water, have a rest, etc. until things settled down. Plus, when she was in hospital she was reportedly (according to a nurse) reluctant to receive intravenous fluids or liver-protecting medication (the only guest who survived apparently had a liver transplant) in case she had been poisoned too, or have her children attend hospital in case they'd been poisoned.
I wonder if she went to hospital to register her alibi ("vomiting and diarrhoea") for not dying too.
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