Australia - 3 dead after eating wild mushrooms, Leongatha, Victoria, Aug 2023 #5 *Arrest*

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Pettiness, spite, resentment, and INHERITANCE.

There's a very good reason that arsenic was known by the moniker 'the inheritor's powder'.

There's actually a book about it called that; I haven't read it yet. What I have read are a bunch of books about individual poisoning cases, and the wonderful history of the development of forensic science in New York called The Poisoner's Handbook. (Not looking for ideas, never fear! Just plumbing the depths of depravity, as all of us on here do, in our own way.)

MOO

Also power and control.

If you're pretty smart and sharp and perhaps perceive that everyone around you is a dumb illiterate country bumpkin (pure speculation on my part), it's possible to imagine you could get away with anything, feeling omnipotent and that there is no threat from the community or the police.

I don't know how remote this area EP lives in is, but she may have slightly lost contact with reality, feeling very much in charge of her own kingdom / land / property, possibly not having a huge deal of contact within the community and maybe noticing that there isn't much of a community. Also it could be possible there's not much of a police force there and maybe over the years if EP had needed the police and noticed they barely respond or don't care or are ineffectual, I could see how she might feel so detached and different that they wouldn't consider police 'consequences'.

 

[Officer Dibble]

I think she made two Beef Wellington meals.

One for her and her kids, and one for the other people.

IMO

I'd love to know if it was brought to the table to be sliced up or served before being brought to the table. MOO

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

I think he might not have died at the time of that interview?

What I found concerning was a quote where EP said about the meal "contributing" to the deaths. I think many innocent people would be feeling that they had (effectively) killed their own loved ones. Guilt can be very strong when a loved one dies even when it's totally illogical and there is no direct causation. Her use of "contribute" rather than "cause" feels like minimisation. A lawyer might suggest this kind of word switch, so I am curious if EP said that in the flow of normal talking or through a statement composed with the help of a legal professional?

The fact that she wishes one of the already dead victims to pull through is very telling. Of course she doesn't want the one barely clinging to life to recover! (if guilty)

Also her wording, the 'contributed' thing stands out as it's an admission of culpability. I wonder if she genuinely believed that everyone's going to buy into an idea that a bunch of frail elderly people died because food poisoning took them?

I still think she did this crime in a fit of temper and hence it wasn't thought through and she doesn't have a good cover story.

 

[iamshadow21]

Also power and control.

If you're pretty smart and sharp and perhaps perceive that everyone around you is a dumb illiterate country bumpkin (pure speculation on my part), it's possible to imagine you could get away with anything, feeling omnipotent and that there is no threat from the community or the police.

I don't know how remote this area EP lives in is, but she may have slightly lost contact with reality, feeling very much in charge of her own kingdom / land / property, possibly not having a huge deal of contact within the community and maybe noticing that there isn't much of a community. Also it could be possible there's not much of a police force there and maybe over the years if EP had needed the police and noticed they barely respond or don't care or are ineffectual, I could see how she might feel so detached and different that they wouldn't consider police 'consequences'.

Yeah, like bombers, poisoners think very highly of themselves. There's a smugness to getting away with it that I find particularly unpleasant. Fortunately, that hubris gets a number of them caught. Not all, though. Poisoners in medicals settings are particularly known for their high body counts, known and unknown.

In home settings, it's less common for them to get away with it the way they used to 100+ years ago, before toxicology. It wasn't uncommon for a whole table for diners to die or be made ill by a meal before we understood hygiene (cholera in the water is bad!) and how much white lead was safe to be in your bread (FYI - it's none) and how much arsenic you should use to colour your sweets green (also none). But these days, people ask questions, and people do tests, and look very hard at sad surviving family members who use their inheritance to buy sports cars.

MOO

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

I’m still worried that if she’s let back into the community, she will try again.

Imo

Jmo

I'm fairly sure that for the rest of time eternity, no-one is going to eat food offered by EP, even if she is cleared in court and found not guilty!

 

[JBowie]

I'm fairly sure that for the rest of time eternity, no-one is going to eat food offered by EP, even if she is cleared in court and found not guilty!

Agree. She wouldn't be able to give away meals.

 

[LondonBloke]

A 'potluck' involving her would be a scream.

 

[ch_13]

I'd love to know if it was brought to the table to be sliced up or served before being brought to the table. MOO

In her statement that was made public she claimed that "she served the meal and allowed the guests to choose their own plates and then took the last plate and ate a serving herself."

Which is kind of a weird way to serve Beef Wellington if you think about it. I think the most common way to serve it would bring it to the table, carve it in front of the guests and hand each person their plate.

However, doing it this way allowed her to suggest that by picking the last plate she couldn't have possibly known if she'd get a poisoned serving.

 

[Salah11]

In her statement that was made public she claimed that "she served the meal and allowed the guests to choose their own plates and then took the last plate and ate a serving herself."

Which is kind of a weird way to serve Beef Wellington if you think about it. I think the most common way to serve it would bring it to the table, carve it in front of the guests and hand each person their plate.

However, doing it this way allowed her to suggest that by picking the last plate she couldn't have possibly known if she'd get a poisoned serving.

It’s been suggested before maybe it wasn’t in the Beef Wellington. Maybe it was in some type of Gravy as that would be a lot easier to control on who took some.

Moo

 

[ch_13]

Now she has been charged can we talk about the creepy weird wall in her home the tradie shared??

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/unanswered-questions-as-investigation-continues-into-mushroom-deaths/news-story/44f7f0dbe6c7d23b0f7a8248b0ee4ae7

I got big problems with this stuff.
It is super disturbing and I highly suspect Erin wrote that wall.

my speculation only

I will say, I think too much has been made of the "death wall".

To me it looks like something that the kids drew. EP probably knew she would soon be selling the house and they would have to spruce the place up before putting it on the market. So, she may have just told her kids they could draw on the walls since they'd have to repaint.

There's also been a lot of speculation about the imagery and words relating to death. One tradesperson said “You’d think they’d be drawing flowers and unicorns, not gravestones and death”. But, IMO, that's ridiculous. Whoever said that knows nothing about childhood development. EP's children were right around the age where many kids become interested in the macabre. When I was that age, some kids would litter their notebooks with drawings of skeletons, gravestones, coffins, blood, etc. Some were obsessed with horror movies, death metal or other pop culture with gruesome imagery. There's a whole "goth" subculture that's a reflection of this interest. For most kids it's just a phase that they eventually grow out of. Despite all the speculation, I don't think it's an indication that there was anything wrong in EP's household.

 

[Salah11]

It'd be interesting to know whether the meeting took a sudden downturn and wasn't going in EP's favour or triggered her anger.

I still think it's possible that she didn't plan to poison them all initially and didn't poison them with anything cooked into the main meal. Maybe she had a fit of temper and made everyone a cup of coffee or something with powdered DC mushroom that she already had prepared / stored somewhere (to kill her husband with?). Pure speculation obviously.

That would be one hell of a lot of anger to go from a lovely lunch with your in laws to a fit of temper and trying to murder everybody at the table. Plus with the kids around she would have to be confident that wherever she stored them they couldn’t get hold of them.

Moo

 

[iamshadow21]

That would be one hell of a lot of anger to go from a lovely lunch with your in laws to a fit of temper and trying to murder everybody at the table. Plus with the kids around she would have to be confident that wherever she stored them they couldn’t get hold of them.

Moo

There are exceptions, of course - some poisonings are committed with hardly any forethought - but to me, this has all the hallmarks of a cold crime. The harvesting the mushrooms months in advance, drying and preparing them, planning the meal, serving the guests, smiling and making pleasantries while they dose themselves to death while complimenting the cook. Whatever they say to you, it doesn't matter, because you're winning, they're killing themselves and they don't even know it. If they'd been more biddable and nice to you, maybe you would have spared them, but now it's too late and they haven't even come close to clearing their plates. Pure sadism, especially when you know the kind of death awaiting them. Nothing swift or painless or fixable with an antidote.

Someone who can do that from start to finish - if that is indeed what happened - is not safe outside custody. Not even in their old age. Unlike a physically active murder, just about anyone can poison someone, given the right substance and opportunity.

MOO

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

That would be one hell of a lot of anger to go from a lovely lunch with your in laws to a fit of temper and trying to murder everybody at the table. Plus with the kids around she would have to be confident that wherever she stored them they couldn’t get hold of them.

Moo

I agree but it was probably never going to be a 'lovely lunch' it was going to be one where they were discussing, debating, negotiating the future of her marriage and living arrangements by all accounts. And one where maybe she had already decided in advance to make a further final attempt on her ex/husband's life?

It wouldn't take much to have a small pot of ground up powdered DC mushroom which could be used to poison anything anytime. She could easily have kept it where children would never look or go or even kept it in her purse or pocket at all times. All she'd have to do is sprinkle some on or in whatever it was - in the gravy / on the dessert / in a cup of coffee.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

There are exceptions, of course - some poisonings are committed with hardly any forethought - but to me, this has all the hallmarks of a cold crime. The harvesting the mushrooms months in advance, drying and preparing them, planning the meal, serving the guests, smiling and making pleasantries while they dose themselves to death while complimenting the cook. Whatever they say to you, it doesn't matter, because you're winning, they're killing themselves and they don't even know it. If they'd been more biddable and nice to you, maybe you would have spared them, but now it's too late and they haven't even come close to clearing their plates. Pure sadism, especially when you know the kind of death awaiting them. Nothing swift or painless or fixable with an antidote.

Someone who can do that from start to finish - if that is indeed what happened - is not safe outside custody. Not even in their old age. Unlike a physically active murder, just about anyone can poison someone, given the right substance and opportunity.

MOO

I agree, when she speaks as to them taking their own plates and serving themselves, to me there's two elements in that - one she's being detailed in a very defensive way that looks almost guilty in and of itself, two it does lean towards a sadistic notion that 'they served themselves' and had their own hand in their own fate. If they were deeply religious people and she wasn't, one could imagine her thinking 'where is your god now?'

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

There are two aspects since the beginning of this case that I am mystified about:

1. On what basis were the Pattersons and Wilkinsons invited to the lunch?

2. What was Erin's motive for murdering them?

Good questions. Maybe the husbands family were turning up 'mob handed' as there were difficult issues to address and they wanted witnesses (to verbal agreements / discussions) or it was going to be a bit confrontational / intervention style?

But why wasn't it just the ex and his parents?

And why would she want shot of the whole lot of them and how on earth could she possibly expect to get away with it? (<my regular question as I'm so baffled).

 

[RickshawFan]

Erin will face court in Morwell tomorrow.

Judging by this “
UPDATE: The further three attempted murder charges relate to three separate incidents in Victoria between 2021-2022.

It’s alleged a 48-year-old Korumburra man became ill following meals on these dates.”

Erin stands accused of trying to poison her husband on three separate occasions!

Yowza! That's three other times, excluding the fatal meal, which was in 2023?

 

[Salah11]

Good questions. Maybe the husbands family were turning up 'mob handed' as there were difficult issues to address and they wanted witnesses (to verbal agreements / discussions) or it was going to be a bit confrontational / intervention style?

But why wasn't it just the ex and his parents?

And why would she want shot of the whole lot of them and how on earth could she possibly expect to get away with it? (<my regular question as I'm so baffled).

It makes me wonder how petrified she was when she heard Ian Wilkinson had survived her lunch time meal. She could spin her lies all she wanted but unfortunately for her there was now a witness to what really happened that lunchtime .

 

[RickshawFan]

You might be surprised by how long pathology samples are retained in case they need retesting.

Also some poisons remain detectable in bodily tissues, hair follicles and hair itself for a very long time.

Police certainly do sometimes press charges for a large number of charges in the hopes of a negotiated settlement/plea deal for some of them, but they usually offer to drop the most serious charges in return for guilty pleas to lesser charges. Bulking murder charges with lesser attempted murder charges that may be more difficult to prove doesn’t fit this model very well.

I haven't seen Simon with hair.

 

[iamshadow21]

I agree, when she speaks as to them taking their own plates and serving themselves, to me there's two elements in that - one she's being detailed in a very defensive way that looks almost guilty in and of itself, two it does lean towards a sadistic notion that 'they served themselves' and had their own hand in their own fate. If they were deeply religious people and she wasn't, one could imagine her thinking 'where is your god now?'

It's also creating that psychological remove. She's talking about all the minute actions THEY did that caused their deaths. Never mind that the worst you should get from a solid meal like Beef Wellington is indigestion. How they took the plate and served themself a slice doesn't factor at all. But if you tell yourself that if they hadn't have come and served themselves lunch, they'd be fine, and it's nothing to do with you, with your foraging and dehydrating and cooking a dratted Wellington which is the most fiddly thing - never done it, never will, too much faffing about - just to murder your family at your dining room table. Malice aforethought, indeed.

MOO

 

[ch_13]

I haven't seen Simon with hair.

He has eyebrows and presumably he has body hair.