Australia - 3 dead after eating wild mushrooms, Leongatha, Victoria, Aug 2023 #11 *Arrest*

[dalsglen]

Well holy smokes. Erin Erin Erin never fails to surprise me. She's going to play the poor me I'm a victim of anything and everything. I physically recoiled when I read she was to be studying nursing and midwifery.
Suddenly I'm counting down to bedtime so I can sit here open mouthed at her utter cheek.

 

[Baby baby Jane]

Plenty of women have traumatic or somewhat traumatic births. That's nature. Its place in a murder trial confuses me.

Agree … her life story sounds so ordinary, so typical … (other than her parents not being invited to her wedding … tho she is making it sound as though they decided to take a train to Russia instead of attend her wedding. I’d put money on her “eliminating” her parents from her life long before … for not loving her more than her sister or some other imagined insult. IMO.

 

[dalsglen]

I'd LOVE to hear from her sister.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Yes it seems Simon had a 4 month old child with him.
His child.

EP didn't exactly leave her baby with a stranger. She left the baby with the baby's father.

 

[MsMarple]

Is Erin’s entire life story and chronicling every single trauma and slight in her life the reason for that Monday court recess to figure out how to condense the evidence?

The accused seems to always be saddled with problems, anxiety and constant hurts by the people around her. And why would she decide that she should continue to be included in every event of her essentially ex relatives? To the point of causing drama over a missed invitation?

Separated parents certainly have an obligation to create the best environment for their children but don’t they also need to respect each other’s privacy? What was going to happen if Simon got interested in another woman?

 

[MrJ]

What was going to happen if Simon got interested in another woman?

Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction comes to mind

 

[drsleuth]

Is Erin’s entire life story and chronicling every single trauma and slight in her life the reason for that Monday court recess to figure out how to condense the evidence?

The accused seems to always be saddled with problems, anxiety and constant hurts by the people around her. And why would she decide that she should continue to be included in every event of her essentially ex relatives? To the point of causing drama over a missed invitation?

Separated parents certainly have an obligation to create the best environment for their children but don’t they also need to respect each other’s privacy? What was going to happen if Simon got interested in another woman?

BBM : I think it would have been the judge going over in detail, with Erin , about her rights to testify or not to testify, making sure that she understood the consequences if she testified & that she had discussed it with her legal team IMO

I do believe that Erin choose to testify against the advice of her legal team IMO

 

[Megnut]

Erin isn't exactly obese.

I don't know that I believe she was gearing toward an actual gastric bypass but what does ring true -- her having one, then blaming weight loss on a new cancer, stalling any divorce.

I mean this is someone with four family members she at least purported to care about in the throes of organ failure and death, and she says, you don't know the trouble this has caused me, what with information only trickling in. Her situation is, oh, soooooooo much worse than the four who are dying.

That is one expansive ego.

JMO

 

[Megnut]

Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction comes to mind

Don't eat the rabbit!

 

[MrJ]

Erin isn't exactly obese.

I don't knew that I believe she was gearing toward an actual gastric bypass but what does ring true -- her having one, then blaming weight loss on a new cancer, stalling any divorce.

I mean this is someone with four family members she at least purported to care about in the throes of organ failure and death, and she says, you don't know the trouble this has caused me, what with information only trickling in. Her situation is, oh, soooooooo much worse than the four who are dying.

That is one expansive ego.

JMO

I'm trying to remember the source but she had said to the senior constable when she found out that people had died essentially that nobody tells her anything and it's so hard for her. WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE IN HOSPITAL DYING AND NEEDING A LIVER TRANSPLANT!!

 

[MsMarple]

Erin isn't exactly obese.

I don't knew that I believe she was gearing toward an actual gastric bypass but what does ring true -- her having one, then blaming weight loss on a new cancer, stalling any divorce.

I mean this is someone with four family members she at least purported to care about in the throes of organ failure and death, and she says, you don't know the trouble this has caused me, what with information only trickling in. Her situation is, oh, soooooooo much worse than the four who are dying.

That is one expansive ego.

JMO

Yeah, early on, even before her arrest, some here noticed how she kept talking about how *she* felt and the negative impact on her life. Then came the released statement about how *she* panicked and was afraid of losing her children. Then her other statement whining about being looked at like an evil witch. Erin Erin Erin.

IMO her testimony is going to take a lot of showing affection for her relatives to cancel out those vicious attacks on them to her online friends. I guess all she has is continuing to make herself the victim. Boo hoo.

 

[Cedars]

Yeah, early on, even before her arrest, some here noticed how she kept talking about how *she* felt and the negative impact on her life. Then came the released statement about how *she* panicked and was afraid of losing her children. Then her other statement whining about being looked at like an evil witch. Erin Erin Erin.

IMO her testimony is going to take a lot of showing affection for her relatives to cancel out those vicious attacks on them to her online friends. I guess all she has is continuing to make herself the victim. Boo hoo.

IMO that victim mindset would be why someone would poison their in-laws. People who are compassionate about other people, don't try to kill them.

So she's actually revealing her motive to the jury.

 

[browneyes]

So far, she hasn't given the Prosecution much ammo. How can they deny or rebut personal stories from a decade or more ago?

All due respect, but who cares. If I was a juror, that’s how I would feel. Let’s explain the lunch of lies. IMO
*not directed at you @katydid23

 

[arrogantcat]

I’d love to know if she pushed to testify against advice from her team. I guess it is possible her team decided it was the best way to address the agreed facts of her lying about the mushrooms, dehydrator, cancer etc. I can’t really think of any other way they can put forward a direct defence for that to the jury, other than her testifying. Either she explains (her version of) why she lied and potentially wins some jurors over, or it remains unaddressed and definitely counting against her.

I actually think they did a pretty good job of humanising her, and painting her as a sensitive and caring mother and family member.

She’s obviously articulate and able to come across as a regular, reasoned person in the dock. How well this stands up to cross by the prosecution is an entirely different matter, of course!

As a linguist I always try and read testimony like this as if I knew nothing about the case or the person beforehand so my bias doesn’t skew my interpretation.

Eg, if I was reading this same testimony and was told it was by a victim of domestic abuse, would anything stand out as particularly toxic, remarkable, contradictory or alarming?

And to me the answer is no, which is not at all surprising — everything will have been all but scripted by her team well in advance, shaped and sanitised of anything remotely problematic to form the best narrative for their cause.

I think they did their job well, but how smoothly she can maintain that under cross is going to be fascinating to watch.

 

[browneyes]

It appears that Erin Erin Erin is an estrangement maker.

JMO

I know someone like that. Nothing is ever their fault and people must be punished. It’s exhausting.

 

[Bekind89]

IMO that victim mindset would be why someone would poison their in-laws. People who are compassionate about other people, don't try to kill them.

So she's actually revealing her motive to the jury.

Oh,dear, a grievance collector. We had one in our family and they are actually sinister, imo.
She would hold a grievance over the slightest things and seeth over it for years.
She wouldn't confront us at the time or sometimes never , but never directly. You only learned that she had been secretly seething over a minor " offence" of yours years later. Most of the time we wouldn't even remember which incident she was upset about, but trust me, she would make you pay dearly.
These people are toxic and imo, extremely dangerous.

 

[arrogantcat]

IMO that victim mindset would be why someone would poison their in-laws. People who are compassionate about other people, don't try to kill them.

So she's actually revealing her motive to the jury.

But equally, thousands of people share a similar persecution complex and don’t ever go on to murder anybody.
Like a woman I work with

I understand why the prosecution said in their opening statement that they wouldn’t be positing a motive for this crime during the trial: for all we might read into small details of her words or actions, we haven’t really seen anything rare, pathological or even particularly remarkable about Erin the human being. If you remove the crimes she’s accused of and the various corresponding acts and lies around that time, you’re really just left with a pretty ordinary middle aged woman with some family gripes and a prickly relationship with her ex. It’s all remarkably (and a little disappointingly) mundane.

Naturally, the defence are leaning hard into that to try and humanise her as much as possible. I have to believe that if there were enough tells or skeletons in her closet, the prosecution would be showing them to us too. If they had witnesses who had seen her being aggressive or wild, we’d be hearing their testimony.

It really seems like nobody — even her ex husband — has very much to say.

IMO they know they can’t prove that so they’re staying fully away from attempting to paint her character or motive, and relying on the extremely solid forensic evidence they have instead. I think it’s the right choice and will be enough to secure a solid conviction, but of course it only takes one juror to feel some empathy for Erin for the outcome to shift.

 

[MsMarple]

Do the jurors have access to all the testimony on their tablets or just the visuals like maps and charts, etc?

 

[MrJ]

Proper good morning from Melbourne. @MsMarple I'll handle the ABC coverage since it's going to be a pretty rainy day today.

 

[MsMarple]

Proper good morning from Melbourne. @MsMarple I'll handle the ABC coverage since it's going to be a pretty rainy day today.

Thank you @MrJ !