Did she poison them or was it a tragic accident?
 

Police investigating the mysterious deaths of three people following a family lunch believe a food dehydrator found at a nearby rubbish dump may help solve the case.

Homicide detectives in Victoria, Australia, sifted through rubbish and questioned workers at a tip on Wednesday, as they tried to determine whether a woman had “nefarious” intentions when she invited her in-laws to lunch.

Four guests at the lunch last week at Erin Patterson’s home in Leongatha, two hours southeast of Melbourne, fell ill soon afterwards.

Her in-laws, Gail Patterson and Don Patterson, both 70, died in hospital.

Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, also died, while her husband Reverend Ian Wilkinson, the pastor of Korumburra Baptist Church, is in a critical condition in a Melbourne hospital awaiting a liver transplant.

The host did not fall ill nor did her two children.

Investigators now hope a food dehydrator found discarded at the tip would yield answers for the “tight-knit” community mourning the loss of “well-respected” locals.

Symptoms experienced by the senior Pattersons and Wilkinsons have led doctors to suspect they had eaten death cap mushrooms.

One of the most dangerous varieties of mushrooms, death caps can cause liver and kidney failure. Just a teaspoon full is enough to kill an adult.

“We’re working to determine what has gone on, to see if there is any nefarious activity that has occurred or if it was accidental,” said Dean Thomas, Detective Inspector of the Victoria Police Homicide Squad.

Ms Patterson, 48, has said she does not know what happened to her guests and has steadfastly maintained she did not intend to hurt her relatives.

Ms Patterson told reporters she was “devastated” and added: “My own children have lost their grandmother. I can’t believe this has happened and I’m so sorry that they have lost their lives.”

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Ms Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, who she has remained amicable with, came close to death last year when he collapsed and required emergency surgery on his intestines.

Detectives are aware of the family’s medical history but have declined to comment on the circumstances. There was no suggestion the younger Mr Patterson’s health condition was suspicious.

Foraging dangers
Parishioners of the Baptist church in the Gippsland region where Mr Wilkinson is a “much-loved” pastor were praying for his recovery while the Patterson and Wilkinson families paid tribute to the “pillars of faith”.

Nathan Hersey, the mayor of the South Gippsland Shire, said: “Many people in our community are grieving the loss of three very important, much-loved, and very well-respected people.”

With foraging becoming an increasingly popular activity during the Australian winter, state governments had warned about the dangers of mistaking poisonous fungi for edible mushrooms.

The state of Victoria was rocked by a spate of mushroom poisonings in 2020 when one person died from eating death caps and seven others were hospitalised.

In 2012, a respected Chinese chef and his assistant died in Canberra after eating death cap mushrooms they had foraged in preparation for a New Year’s Eve dinner.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...4f1597d15&ei=7

Giving the children something different to eat is not abnormal, though she herself not eating the same meal as the one she served her guests is perhaps a little odd

Lucrezia Borgia teas

An Australian woman who cooked a toxic mushroom meal has told her murder trial she has long been a mushroom lover, but more recently developed a taste for wild fungi varieties that have "more flavour".
Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to the murder of three relatives, and the attempted murder of another, after serving them death cap mushrooms at her home in Victoria in July 2023.
Prosecutors say she deliberately put the poisonous mushrooms in the meal but her defence team says it was a "terrible accident".
Ms Patterson - during her second day on the witness stand - told the jury she began foraging for wild mushrooms during the Covid pandemic, years before the fatal meal.
Ms Patterson's in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, were all hospitalised after eating beef wellington at the lunch and died several days later.
Ian Wilkinson, the uncle of Ms Patterson's estranged husband, also fell seriously ill but survived after weeks of treatment.
After telling the court she accepted that death cap mushrooms were in the food she had served, Ms Patterson described foraging for mushrooms at various locations - botanic gardens, a rail trail near her house, and on her own property.
"I mainly picked field mushrooms," she told the court, explaining she sometimes foraged with her two children.
She recounted the first time she tried wild mushrooms, cutting off a small part before cooking it in butter.
"[It] tasted good and I didn't get sick," she told the jury.

The court also heard she had bought a food dehydrator in April 2023, in part because wild mushrooms had such a "small season" and she wanted to preserve them for later use.
Asked where the mushrooms for the lunch at the centre of the case came from, Ms Patterson said "the vast majority" were purchased from a supermarket in Leongatha while some had been bought a few months earlier from an Asian grocery store in Melbourne.
She couldn't remember "the specific purchase", but had previously bought a variety of mushrooms - shitake, porcini, enoki - from similar stores, she said. Other times, she'd purchased "wild mushroom mix" or "forest mushrooms" which didn't specify exact contents.
These store-bought mushrooms were often put in the same container as ones she had foraged and dehydrated herself - including in the months before the lunch - she said.
Earlier Ms Patterson had stepped through changes in her dynamic with Simon Patterson and her in-laws following the couple's separation in 2015.
"In the immediate aftermath it was difficult... but that only lasted a couple of weeks... we went back to being really good friends."
Her relationship with her in-laws Don and Gail "never changed", she said.
"I was just their daughter-in-law - they just continued to love me."
However, she told the court her relationship with Simon turned tense amid conflict over finances from October 2022 onwards, and she had tried to get her in-laws to mediate.
The court was shown expletive-laden Facebook messages that Ms Patterson sent to a private group chat, which were critical of the Simon, Don and Gail.
"I needed to vent... to get my frustration off my chest," she said, and her choice was either to tell the sheep in her paddock, or speak to what she called her "cheer squad".
Becoming emotional, she repeatedly told the court how much she cared for Don and Gail and how she wished she "had never said that".
She also testified about a deep mistrust of the health system, developed after medical concerns she raised about her two children were initially dismissed by clinicians.
These experiences led to her decision to discharge herself early from the hospital after the toxic lunch in 2023, despite doctor's advice, she said.
She also experienced health anxiety and did a lot of Dr Googling - searching the web about symptoms - which at different points in time lead her to falsely suspect she had a brain tumour, MS (multiple sclerosis) and ovarian cancer.
Ms Patterson admitted that she had never been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, despite allegedly asking the lunch guests to her house to discuss the diagnosis, but said her family had a history of it.
Ms Patterson is expected to continue giving evidence on Wednesday morning, local time, when the court reopens.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce82lj7g1g7o

I'm inclined to believe she murdered them, eating from a small different coloured plate is the giveaway plus she gave her children something else to eat

When you posted this originally you said the Police had found a dehydrator in a nearby dump, was that proven to be hers?

There has been no mention of it so far in the trial

That would be an interesting detail to know. If she threw that out afterwards, it makes her look very guilty imo, not like it was an accident and she had no idea it was the Mushrooms that killed them

Actually yes it was hers but she says she panicked and threw it away, she also initially lied and said that she never foraged for mushrooms, and also her estranged husband had been invited to lunch that day but did not attend, she is guilty as sin :laugh:

this is a good link @Niamh.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...f63f479fc&ei=9

…from another article…


‘The court has been shown footage of Patterson dumping the dehydrator at a local tip three days before her police interview. It was later found with her fingerprints on it and with traces of death cap mushrooms, the prosecution told the court.’

The prosecution argues the evidence in the case proves Patterson did not consume death cap mushrooms at the lunch and pretended she was suffering the same type of illness as the lunch guests “to cover that up”, which also explained her “reluctance” to receive medical treatment.

It is also alleged Patterson lied about getting death cap mushrooms from an Asian grocer, and disposed of the dehydrator “to conceal what she had done”.


…full article…

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...%20the%20court.

I mean, obviously murder surely

…I think that the prosecution have yet to question her and atm it’s mainly the defence that’s been presented in court…

eeek. Yeah she's guilty as sin

…there’s a news video in this link and interestingly, Erin had also invited her estranged husband to the meal but he didn’t attend…

https://news.sky.com/story/mum-in-co...-know-13363700

Isn't he lucky.......... :shocked:

…lucky or just very, very sceptical of being asked as it’s stated that their relationship since the separation had completely deteriorated…sadly his parents and aunt and uncle did decide to go as Erin had told them that she had ovarian cancer, which wasn’t true…

Well, that's not going to help her defense much, awful, sounds like a very painful way to die too, horrible

…this is an interesting video, it’s worth a watch…it’s not from the court case, it’s from earlier just after the deaths when Erin was first arrested…apparently it was discovered that she had (allegedly…) made three other attempts to kill her estranged husband and 18 months before the fatal mushroom meal, he had been very ill also and hospitalised…this is explaining why he didn’t attend the meal but were his parents and aunt and uncle aware of all of this and that there was attempts to kill him through poisoning…?…the charges are also 5 counts of attempted murder…

..although this article says that Erin was no longer accused of attempting to kill her husband so I’m not sure…it’s all as clear as mushrooms in the dark…

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...stralia-ntwnfb

Jesus, and imagine she was an air traffic controller and that unhinged :worry: That clip of her crying looked very fake to me

Evil Murder

…and the body language person says…



…Inspector Niamh…:pipe:…