Okay, let's go with your Theory: Erin intends to make 4-5 guests 10-30% dead.
She collects the Deathcaps in Loch on April 28 (which, as you've pointed out can't be proven... the data isn't clear etc), and bought the dehydrator two hours later (This has been proven 100%... It's a little more than a coincidence that it happens right after the "possible foraging", no?).
We know from photos she's collected 500g of Deathcaps. That's enough Deathcaps to make 10x adults dead. And I mean properly dead. Not just 10-30% dead. But hey, maybe she collected a few extra just to be sure.
We have the photos in evidence that she weighed them on her digital scales, and weighed them again after dehydrating them (mushrooms are 90% water, so it best to be very clear on the weights... you want to get the quantities perfectly right when you're trying to make your inlaws 10-30% dead).
Erin then devises her plan to lour the lunch guests with her sudden case of terminal ovarian cancer of the elbow / laparoscopic band surgery / liposuction at a dermatology clinic for which she doesn't know how to tell the children and thinks she might need some help dropping them off to the bus stop each morning.
The guests all agree to turn up to their 10-30% murders except for Simon, but never mind, there's an extra Beef Wellington in the oven just for him in case he stops by to say hello when he brings the kids back from the movies.
The guest's then eat their lunches and end up 10-30% dead.
Are you still reading? I hope so because this is the part of the plot where I'm really struggling to imagine what Erin plans to do next. What has she achieved, exactly, by making her guests 10-30% dead?
Or if we consider the actual outcome, she made her 4 guests 75% dead. So where exactly did she go wrong?
Was it the measurements?
How do you even weigh the correct amount of Deathcap to make your victim 10-30% dead, when the most commonly available figures are the quantities of 30-50 grams, the amount required to make an adult properly dead?
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Thanks for this detailed reply. I wouldn't want people to make the mistake that I'm wedded to this idea, I'm just trying to make the best of the available evidence and it is a working theory based on if she is guilty, I certainly don't claim to know all the answers. A lot of people just seem to say 'yeh she wanted them all dead' without considering the implications of this opinion.
In my theory, she didn't have a detailed plan of how to use the Deathcaps, and didn't measure them out to calculate a dose etc. She only had a vague idea of how poisonous they were, and an opportunity presented itself where she was able to get some; she wasn't seeking them out. A lot is made of the measuring of the DC, but in the trial we have seen her posting to her friends about how much she was enjoying the dehydrating process and how much it had reduced them by. She didn't only weigh and photograph the DC mushrooms. Does it really make more sense that she's plotting a detailed murder but posting all this information to her friends?
As for what she hoped would happen, she was expecting for them to get sick and to then be able to exploit this situation by either being part of a shared tragedy, or by being able to care for them afterwards. We know already that she was the sort of person who would lie about having cancer for personal gain; that is an extreme situation. This is how she benefits from this situation. She's a woman with cancer who is running around after these people who have gotten mysteriously sick. Again, it makes no sense that people wouldn't know she had cancer, they could have text Simon straight after the meal.
Where she went wrong was simple: she didn't realise how much dehydrating would concentrate the dose and not only how much it would accelerate the symptoms but also how lethal it would be. As I've pointed out, she isn't necessarily thorough like everybody claims she is. This also explains her subsequent panicked hiding of evidence instead of a much better planned cover up.
Now my turn to turn the tables on your presumed account of guilt! I seem to hear a lot of replies about how murder isn't logical, and how people often don't plan for the aftermath but to me these seem like a bit of a cop out answer that is asserted rather than explained. Yes, I can imagine this is the case for a crime of passion or an opportunistic murder.
In this theory, Erin has planned a mass murder over the course of a couple of months. She has sought out DC mushrooms, carefully measured out a lethal dose, created a pretense for the meal and then committed the murder only to not consider what would happen next? On top of this, we actually know that she must have considered what happened next because she already started lying about being sick herself before anybody went to hospital.
What did Erin seek to gain from murdering these 4 people, considering that most people think she also wanted to kill Simon?
Also, how did she get it so wrong? How did she not consider that 3 people dying (with the intention of 5) at a meal she'd hosted would have serious negative consequences for her and her family? Even if they didn't catch the DC, of course she would be suspected, how did she miss this as a true crime fan?
Did she really think that a bit of gastro would absolve her of any suspicion when everybody else got seriously ill or died?
Again, I'm only considering likelihoods. We can't discount that she murdered for the thrill of it, or was filled with such hatred that she wanted them dead no matter the consequence, or was so arrogant she thought everybody would believe her story. It just doesn't seem very likely based on what we know to be the case.
