Australia - 3 dead after eating wild mushrooms, Leongatha, Victoria, Aug 2023 #15 *Arrest*

[Megnut]

I don't want to give any of you any ideas, but would it be possible to serve green potatoes surreptitiously? Maybe covered with lashings of gravy?

I'm not coming to your party.

 

[Salah11]

I don't want to give any of you any ideas, but would it be possible to serve green potatoes surreptitiously? Maybe covered with lashings of gravy?

I just had a Google and I would rather a green potato or two than death Cap.

 

[Spectrix]

I don't want to give any of you any ideas, but would it be possible to serve green potatoes surreptitiously? Maybe covered with lashings of gravy?

Sure, but the worst it would do is give your guest a bit of a belly ache. Green potatoes are also totally obvious, because, well, they are green.
This is my only comment on this issue because it stemmed from a particular posters suggestion that serving foraged wild mushrooms to a guest is no different to serving home grown potatoes or beans, which is a nonsensical argument as potatoes and beans don't kill people.

 

[Dreamcherry]

I was reading this summing up from CNN:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/21/australia/australia-erin-patterson-mushroom-trial-wrap-intl-hnk

It reminded me how 'off' I thought this bit from Mr Mandy was:
'“If you’re pretending to be sick, you’re going to be saying to the medical staff, ‘Hook me up, pump me full of drugs, I am very, very sick. Please,’” Mandy said.'

If you're pretending to be sick, I doubt if you'd do that. They wouldn't pump you full of drugs without testing you, which would reveal the truth. No, what you'd do is try to avoid the medics as far as possible...

I know he has very little to work with, but this was just beyond ridiculous, imo. Talk about speculating...

I have enormous respect for defence attorneys, but this closing was a little too loosey-goosey for my tastes, and frankly, it felt like an insult to my intelligence.

Mr. Mandy has the perfect face to actually play a barrister on some sort of legal drama, though, doesn't he?

 

[CityKid]

I've listed a few things that we've only heard from EP and have not been confirmed by anyone but her (and/or have been denied/contradicted by others or her own actions). Please feel free to add anything else or correct anything I've gotten wrong!

Eating the cake
Vomiting up the cake
Bush poo
No full set of white dessert plates
Scraping off the duxelles
Having a lie-down between hospital visits

 

[Spectrix]

I've listed a few things that we've only heard from EP and have not been confirmed by anyone but her (and/or have been denied/contradicted by others or her own actions). Please feel free to add anything else or correct anything I've gotten wrong!

Eating the cake
Vomiting up the cake
Bush poo
No full set of white dessert plates
Scraping off the duxelles
Having a lie-down between hospital visits

Oh man, I'm sure between a the lot of us we can assemble a great list.
I'll start with just the health related things that (IMO) Erin falsely claimed:

• the biopsy of the elbow,
• the ovarian cancer (also of the elbow),
• the diarrhoea,
• the fentanyl-out-of-ten (pain score) headache,
• the bulimia,
• the gastric band surgery,
• the liposuction.

Who wants to add to this list?
We can call it The Long List of Lies

 

[Smelly Squirrel]

Thinking about the "if innocent, she should have disclosed using foraged mushrooms to her guests" argument, if Erin's version of events is to be believed, at the time of the lunch she had no idea she had inadvertently included foraged mushrooms. (I don't believe her version of events.)
As far as I can tell, nobody is suggesting she intended to use non-poisonous foraged mushrooms in the meal - the prosecution says she deliberately added death caps, her defence claims she included dried Asian mushrooms which just happened to have home-dehydrated foraged mushrooms mixed in with them (that Erin had completely forgotten about) that just happened to be death caps.
I suspect that's why they stuck with the Asian mushroom story: to reduce culpability.

The DCs were powdered so it's a lie that foraged mushrooms were inadvertently added.

 

[Susjay]

The DCs were powdered so it's a lie that foraged mushrooms were inadvertently added.

Hey smelly squirrel, I just love your name! Really cool!

 

[Dreamcherry]

The DCs were powdered so it's a lie that foraged mushrooms were inadvertently added.

Maybe the Tupperware with the powdered DCs was opened by a dingo, and she happened to sneeze while she was near it, because she suddenly became allergic to the ovarian cancer in her elbow. Maybe that's what the appointment with the allergist was for!

 

[MsMarple]

If you grow your own beans and potatoes, there is zero chance they would contain lethal toxins if you served them to your guests.

If you pick wild mushrooms, you found growing UNDER AN OAK TREE , there is a strong possibility they could be lethal. IMO

Yeah it’s weird that she mentioned foraging near oak trees in her testimony. If she had researched death caps only to learn if they grew in Gippsland then surely she also learned that they grew near oaks. It’s a mystery.

Erin Patterson disputes testimony of witnesses and family in mushroom murder trial

In a tense morning of questioning, accused murderer Erin Patterson says multiple witnesses who have given evidence during her trial have been mistaken.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Salah11]

I will admit I still chuckle over her gastric bypass surgery lie . For some claiming Erin wouldn’t do this because it’s too obvious, and she would never get away with it, look no further than this lie.


In court, telling such ridiculous lies and never researching that the clinic she was using didn’t even offer that as an option. It’s just moronic!

IMO MOO

 

[Moll]

Hey smelly squirrel, I just love your name! Really cool!

But somehow evocative of mouldy nuts, or off mushrooms.

 

[Susjay]

But somehow evocative of mouldy nuts, or off mushrooms.

Nah just love a smelly squirrel, Perhaps it’s the alliteration.

 

[Susjay]

Yeah it’s weird that she mentioned foraging near oak trees in her testimony. If she had researched death caps only to learn if they grew in Gippsland then surely she also learned that they grew near oaks. It’s a mystery.

Erin Patterson disputes testimony of witnesses and family in mushroom murder trial

In a tense morning of questioning, accused murderer Erin Patterson says multiple witnesses who have given evidence during her trial have been mistaken.

www.abc.net.au

I think her testimony is oh this, and then this, then this, oops then this…

 

[MsMarple]

I've listed a few things that we've only heard from EP and have not been confirmed by anyone but her (and/or have been denied/contradicted by others or her own actions). Please feel free to add anything else or correct anything I've gotten wrong!

Eating the cake
Vomiting up the cake
Bush poo
No full set of white dessert plates
Scraping off the duxelles
Having a lie-down between hospital visits

Ah, the mystery of the plates. Ian saw 4 large grey plates, Erin’s son and his friend saw small white plates. Erin said she doesn’t own any matching plates.

From the trial posts:

The video from the police search at Patterson’s house showed two white plates, a few colourful plates and some black plates, Mandy says.

“There weren’t any orangey-tan plates,” he says.

Erin Patterson mushroom trial day 34 – as it happened

This blog is now closed

www.theguardian.com

Her lawyer asks her about the dinner plates. Earlier in the trial we heard that Heather Wilkinson, while ill in hospital, had questioned why Erin Patterson had used different plates for her guests to the one she ate off.

"I think there’s a couple of black, a couple of white, one that’s red on top and black underneath and then I’ve got one that daughter made at kindergarten," she says.

She tells the court she told the guests to grab a plate while she finished off the gravy.

Erin Patterson gives evidence for fourth day in Australia mushroom trial

Australian woman Erin Patterson denies murdering three relatives and seriously injuring another by serving death cap mushrooms.

www.bbc.com

 

[Salah11]

I believe the guests recall over the plates because let’s be honest it would be seared into their heads especially as it stood out as strange at lunch. So then when they got sick it was quite obvious something wasn’t vibing.

IMO

 

[Baby baby Jane]

BBM
Don't we know that no actual pieces of death caps were found? They were only detected with further testing, so were likely to be blitzed to dust? That's my belief anyway. As for the Asian store mushrooms, she may have only used a small portion of them, enough to be detected and then she could claim the death caps were in there too - even though they were crushed into tiny pieces/dust.
MOO

The turning mushrooms to powder, Might be why victims got so ill, so quickly. Apparently mushrooms are difficult for humans to digest, the cell walls are chitin and apparently mushrooms are often not completely digested in humans.
As Powder …. The cell walls are already broken down and therefore there is faster and more complete digestion of the nutrients and toxins.

 

[CityKid]

Oh man, I'm sure between a the lot of us we can assemble a great list.
I'll start with just the health related things that (IMO) Erin falsely claimed:

• the biopsy of the elbow,
• the ovarian cancer (also of the elbow),
• the diarrhoea,
• the fentanyl-out-of-ten (pain score) headache,
• the bulimia,
• the gastric band surgery,
• the liposuction.

Who wants to add to this list?
We can call it The Long List of Lies

The Tupperware too!

 

[Montrealaise]

Oh man, I'm sure between a the lot of us we can assemble a great list.
I'll start with just the health related things that (IMO) Erin falsely claimed:

• the biopsy of the elbow,
• the ovarian cancer (also of the elbow),
• the diarrhoea,
• the fentanyl-out-of-ten (pain score) headache,
• the bulimia,
• the gastric band surgery,
• the liposuction.

Who wants to add to this list?
We can call it The Long List of Lies

Ovarian cancer of the elbow! Now that's a good one.

 

[Montrealaise]

If I brought freshly and safely prepared potato salad to an outdoor family reunion where, after some hours in the blazing heat, it veritably bloomed, and my Cousin Vinnie chose to pack up himself an unfortunate to-go dinner, which he then left in his car for two days before bringing it into the house, and then did or didn't put in his refrigerator for a hot minute or two before ultimately deciding he best bin it, but not before choosing to take an apparently irresistible megamouthful of expanding potato salad, I'd still feel terrible when he got sick from the potato salad I made.

Where is EP's remorse? Has she no natural empathy? Is she wholly immune to the suffering of others?

This same person who allowed her lunch guests to pray over her for a cancer she did not have, regardless of intent over DCs, didn't feel even remotely sad about the violent illnesses her guests were experiencing?

Where is the humanity?

That's next level self absorption.

JMO

A lot of people have noticed her lack of empathy. Simon has testified that when she learned that her guests were in the hospital because they had gotten sick after eating her food, she never even asked how they were. And she wants us to believe she loved them? When she was on the witness stand, nobody saw a shred of remorse or regret or guilt. Her callous indifference to her guests' fate is chilling.

BTW I think that the reason Simon got his parents, uncle and aunt to the hospital so quickly is because alarm bells went off in his head, based on his own experience. He had become violently ill after eating Erin's cooking and even though he may not have suspected poisoning at the time, when his family became very ill after dining at Erin's house something must have clicked. People becoming very sick after eating food Erin had cooked - it cannot be a coincidence.