Australia - 3 dead after eating wild mushrooms, Leongatha, Victoria, Aug 2023 #3

[jepop]

.just saving what Simon said about his illness (from a decent source.) Please pay attention, the neighbors defined the family as very private.

Man whose parents were killed after lunch with his ex ‘suspects’ she had tried to poison him

Simon Patterson had previously suffered a mystery gut illness last spring after eating food his ex-wife served, and was in an induced coma for 16 days, a report said.

nypost.com

I don't see see anything new here. This is just the NY Post (dated 10th Aug) reporting directly on what the Herald sun reported. Sources remain anonymous/unverified Imo. Has been re-reported multiple times with unverified sources variously referred to as ' a close source' , 'a friend' and Simon's friend'. The private comment reportedly came from "a neighbour", not neighbours. I consider the info as rumour at this point. Moo

 

[Soulmagent]

I’m having a harder and harder time believing most of what EP said to reporters and in the statement she gave her lawyer.

She claimed to have fed her kids the lunch leftovers the next day after scraping off the mushrooms.

By then she was aware that the four ex relatives had gone to hospital with gastric distress which doctors initially attributed to possible food poisoning. I think even EP went to the hospital with gastric distress then returned home.

So while doctors *only* suspected food poisoning EP decided to feed her kids leftovers from the very meal in question. Who the heck does that?

The thing is ,if they are saying she did it on purpose and can prove that then she also delibaretly fed poisoned food to her children and that makes her a danger to them ,in real terms . If LE hopes to gain conviction (i know nothing of the legal system there) If they left the kids in her care ,it looks really bad on them and a huge winfall for the defence..IMO..BASED ON the nothing a know about this legal system.

 

[Ellery84]

Erin Patterson mushrooms: Woman at centre of Leongatha deaths investigation visits Melbourne lawyers

amp.theage.com.au

By Ashleigh McMillan, The Age​

August 29, 2023

Erin P. was seen to be dressed casually in a grey jumper and khaki pants in Melbourne, Victoria today.

The person of interest Ms. Patterson stayed quiet as she was escorted out of her lawyers’ office in the Melbourne legal district on Tuesday afternoon 29 August, 2023.

Erin, the person of interest in the “mushroom” case, was flanked by her legal representatives, she did not respond when asked by journalists about the purpose of the meeting with her legal team, or if she had anything to say about the case.

 

[Ellery84]

DBM

 

[Ellery84]

I can think of five possible scenarios. I've listed them below, but the bottom four each have major caveats that make them much less likely IMO.

1. She poisoned the meal intending to harm one or more of the invited guests.
2. She accidentally picked poisonous mushrooms and added them to the dish. Problem: It doesn't jibe with her most recent statement (made in accordance with advice from her attorney) that she only used mushrooms from the market.
3. The poisonous mushrooms were store-bought. Problem: From what we have learned about the supply chain this seems exceedingly unlikely. Plus, no one else has become ill.
4. Another person poisoned the meal. Problem: How did this person get unfettered access to the food and why was Erin not affected.
5. The victims were poisoned at another location. Problem: There's been no indication that the four met up separately. Also, if this happened at a commercial establishment we almost certainly would have heard about the repercussions.

6. She poisoned the meal intending to harm her ex partner Simon, and then she was advised that he was not coming, and she made a decision to continue with her plan and to poison his parents and relatives instead.



I’ve added a 6.


All jmo

 

[Ellery84]

The thing is ,if they are saying she did it on purpose and can prove that then she also delibaretly fed poisoned food to her children and that makes her a danger to them ,in real terms

Yes, I completely agree. And maybe the threshold for removal of a child from Child Services (or whatever the agency is called) in Victoria is lower or different than the threshold for reasonable doubt in the courts within a criminal case for manslaughter or murder.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Leading toxicologist Dr Michael Robertson revealed the toxin found in death cap mushrooms are only detectable for about 48 hours after ingestion, with growing fears the samples weren't taken in time.

'The laboratory knows what it is looking for, death cap mushrooms, but that's not something we see routinely in Australia and the method of analysis is far from routine,' Dr Robertson told the Herald Sun on Thursday.

'Those early samples are very important because they, particularly any urine samples, would help prove it was death cap mushrooms.

The toxicologist said detectives may have to rely on samples taken during the first two days Ms Pattersons' lunch guests were in hospital.

However, he said it was likely doctors had taken blood samples from the lunch guests to monitor their kidney and liver function.

'But once they were transferred to Melbourne hospitals, have those samples been kept or thrown out?' he continued.

'They may well have been discarded because the seriousness was not realised by the hospital and they were no longer patients at that hospital.'

Crucial detail in 'poison' mushroom case that may have been missed

Gail and Don Patterson, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, died after eating a beef wellington lunch at Leongatha, in Victoria's Gippsland region, on July 29.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Baby baby Jane]

If guilty why on earth would she give a real sample over? She could have given a sample of the not poisoned Wellington she fed herself and her kids. Hypothetically speaking.

I suggested she did not poison the main dish of beef Wellington, but rather it was the gravy that was poisoned. She handed over the Wellington leftovers which did not have gravy on it.
Gravy was separate, served in a jug for pouring over.
She had disposed of the gravy after the meal. Down the drain, it’s gone.
Kids and she ate the Wellington, without gravy.

 

[Ellery84]

I suggested she did not poison the main dish of beef Wellington, but rather it was the gravy that was poisoned. She handed over the Wellington leftovers which did not have gravy on it.
Gravy was separate, served in a jug for pouring over.
She had disposed of the gravy after the meal. Down the drain, it’s gone.
Kids and she ate the Wellington, without gravy.

Bingo - you are an actual genius.

 

[Soulmagent]

I suggested she did not poison the main dish of beef Wellington, but rather it was the gravy that was poisoned. She handed over the Wellington leftovers which did not have gravy on it.
Gravy was separate, served in a jug for pouring over.
She had disposed of the gravy after the meal. Down the drain, it’s gone.
Kids and she ate the Wellington, without gravy.

I suggested that she told LE she fed the kids the poison food and that is why the kids HAD to be removed. If she did or didnt remains to be seen, but what she said she did ,if she did , it is defintly a cause for concern and a statement that implicates a possible failure on LE's part to protect the kids ,if they believe she did poison any them on purpose and they had left them in her care.... Again IMO..
Silly woman never saw that coming ,she thought by lying that she fed the kids the same dish it would make her look less quilty ,but it backfired .

 

[Werlan]

I can think of five possible scenarios. I've listed them below, but the bottom four each have major caveats that make them much less likely IMO.

1. She poisoned the meal intending to harm one or more of the invited guests.
2. She accidentally picked poisonous mushrooms and added them to the dish. Problem: It doesn't jibe with her most recent statement (made in accordance with advice from her attorney) that she only used mushrooms from the market.
3. The poisonous mushrooms were store-bought. Problem: From what we have learned about the supply chain this seems exceedingly unlikely. Plus, no one else has become ill.
4. Another person poisoned the meal. Problem: How did this person get unfettered access to the food and why was Erin not affected.
5. The victims were poisoned at another location. Problem: There's been no indication that the four met up separately. Also, if this happened at a commercial establishment we almost certainly would have heard about the repercussions.

All of the scenarios you listed are plausible, but I agree that the first one is the most likely. Strong evidence is the fact that the woman's ex-husband believes that she tried to poison him in the past.

 

[SouthAussie]

I think the estimate given on that show was 10 death caps to poison four adults - so approx 2.5 mushrooms a piece. It was probably just the most generous estimate so perhaps 2.5 a piece if they were small mushrooms or something?- so standard deviation going down from there? Or experts disagree? Not a biggie, Imo. Jmo

I just deep-dived back into the episode of Under Investigation.

(Starting at the 18 min mark in the video)

What the mycologist (Dr. Heike Neumeister-Kemp) says is that she tried to calculate how many mushrooms you would need to kill 5 people. She thought it would be 10 full mushrooms "to get enough paste to have that [toxin] in there".
That you would need a fair amount of the mushrooms for preparing the meal.
Meaning making a paste that would cover the whole beef wellington, and have a decent (and deadly) consistency of the Death Cap toxin throughout the paste.

The toxicologist (Dr Michael Kennedy) then said that "one mushroom per person would make them quite ill, you might need two per person to lead to death". He says the majority of the toxin sits in the cap of the mushroom.

Under Investigation Season 5 Ep 9 The Last Lunch, Watch TV Online

Liz Hayes and her team of investigators probe the mystery gripping Australia and the world. Three dead, another clinging to life, after a mushroom lunch in small-town Victoria.

www.9now.com.au

 

[SouthAussie]

Just to add to this ^^^^

Mr Claringbold - a different Death Cap poisoning (self) victim - said his doctor explained that mushrooms are organic, that there isn't the same amount of toxin in each mushroom.


He basically just explained that the mushrooms are an organic thing," he said.
"Their toxin levels aren't going to be consistent; it's not like taking a pill out of a bottle, sometimes some will have more toxin than others and it was just a chance that you didn't ingest enough to overcome."

'I thought it was the end': Death cap mushroom survivor recounts brush with death

With the country gripped by the mystery surrounding the death of three elderly Victorians from suspected death cap mushroom poisoning, Simon Claringbold knows better than most how dangerous the fungus can be.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Forest_Wood]

Was she even known to forage mushrooms? I haven't been able to locate anything about that.

 

[SouthAussie]

(Starts about the 30 min mark in the video)

So, EP did go to the nearest dump (apparently). Glad I relistened to that part! I thought she went to the further away dump for some unknown reason.


Private Investigator: She's decided to go to the tip in Koonwarra [the tip closest to her house], and on speaking with the workers there, interestingly, without saying when did she come or anything like that, one of them stated to us that "I don't know because I wasn't working Saturday morning".

Liz Hayes: Saturday morning, that's the morning of the lunch.
PI: Yeah, which doesn't make sense. There was CCTV footage, so the police will have that and they can work out when it was.

PI: So what a lot of workers said down there, look they've been told not to say anything to media, so they basically said the police were here on Tuesday looking for, I think it was, microwave trays and other utensils. So, you know, they're wondering what she did dump there and if there's a chance she did dump other kitchen utensils and things there.

Former Major Crimes Detective: They wouldn't have gone just to that tip. They would have gone to every tip in the area. And they would have interviewed all the relevant witnesses, all the people that were present, obtained all the exhibits.

Under Investigation Season 5 Ep 9 The Last Lunch, Watch TV Online

Liz Hayes and her team of investigators probe the mystery gripping Australia and the world. Three dead, another clinging to life, after a mushroom lunch in small-town Victoria.

www.9now.com.au

 

[SouthAussie]

Was she even known to forage mushrooms? I haven't been able to locate anything about that.

I think the whole Patterson family were said to be foragers. Including EP.
It sounds as if one of the 3 who died might have also told the paramedic about that.


On Tuesday, a friend of the family told The Daily Mail that Ms Patterson was an experienced forager who was known to pick wild mushrooms around the Gippsland region.

The outlet quoted the friend as saying she was “very good at foraging” and identifying different mushroom varieties.

“The Patterson family [including Erin and Simon] would pick mushrooms each year when they were in season,” the friend said. “It’s very common for people to go mushroom picking around that area.”

It comes after it was revealed that a paramedic who had a final conversation with one of the three guests who died passed the details on to police.

https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/mushroom-poison-victims-final-words-to-paramedic/news-story/13ea59d2bcb3947bb5e9d2503819e8ba

 

[Ellery84]

,she thought by lying that she fed the kids the same dish it would make her look less quilty ,but it backfired

If that was the case, it backfired BIG TIME.

 

[Oona]

I think the whole Patterson family were said to be foragers. Including EP.
It sounds as if one of the 3 who died might have also told the paramedic about that.


On Tuesday, a friend of the family told The Daily Mail that Ms Patterson was an experienced forager who was known to pick wild mushrooms around the Gippsland region.

The outlet quoted the friend as saying she was “very good at foraging” and identifying different mushroom varieties.

“The Patterson family [including Erin and Simon] would pick mushrooms each year when they were in season,” the friend said. “It’s very common for people to go mushroom picking around that area.”

It comes after it was revealed that a paramedic who had a final conversation with one of the three guests who died passed the details on to police.

https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/mushroom-poison-victims-final-words-to-paramedic/news-story/13ea59d2bcb3947bb5e9d2503819e8ba

Well spotted.

I also noted this statement, again from a “friend”:
The friend told The Daily Mail on Wednesday that the Patterson and Wilkinson families, like Simon, harboured doubts about her version of events.
To me this is suggestive of a lack of trust toward EP, maybe things were not as “amicable” as she has stated.

 

[SMK777]

What makes you think it's easy enough to do? They would need to trace every movement of all parties to determine each of their activities in the day or days leading up to this -- including the ex-husband who decided to not attend the dinner at the last moment ... including researching the store and its products, testing the leftovers, waiting for toxicology results, and so on. I would think it's a time consuming investigation. The fact they haven't arrested her after a month seems hopeful.

There’s no need to trace the victim’s’ activities leading up to the lunch. The lunch was what poisoned them
Her story is full of inconsistencies and I believe at some point she will be charged.

 

[Oona]

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Fpoisoning-suspect-erin-patterson-convicted-five-times-for-highspeed-drunken-rampage%2Fnews-story%2Fc3199f79afb93bc40f96f1295b290536&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-high-test-score&V21spcbehaviour=appendend

can any subscribers give the details

Headline is: Poisoning Suspect Erin Patterson convicted Five times for high-speed drunken rampage
From The Australian