In the above post, I referenced what things could have virtually exonerated her or at the very least seriously helped her case. 2 years ago, all we knew was that there had been a meal where a number of people were seriously ill or had died and the chef was seemingly fine. This singular fact made it huge news around the world. As I said, once we found out more details about the case, the suspicion could have greatly reduced, but in my opinion they have only got worse. I decided to write some of the things that could have been discovered after the initial media circus that would have helped...
@MaxDecimus13
This is an excellent post - and I think you are coming to the dark side despite your resistance
Without a doubt, Erin is a very intelligent person. She
is methodical.
She is obsessive in researching and fact gathering I would even suggest she is quite OCD in this way. She would make an excellent investigator. I've said before that it's a mistake to underestimate her mental faculties like I have seen many people do. It is without doubt that someone who qualifies as an Air Traffic Controller has a high level of intelligence.
However, nobody is a purely rational actor. She is quite rigid and I can imagine that any 'spanner in the works' (such as the hospital being onto the Death Cap cause quickly) caused irrational and careless actions post-lunch. However, that doesn't explain the
one thing that has always given me pause, and that is - how could someone plan to kill 4 or 5 people and expect not to have intense focus on them?
But I think this explains it; assuming Erin was driven by a revenge mindset, she could have convinced herself her story would be believed through a blend of emotional distortion and irrational self-deception. Feeling wronged due to marital tensions, losing control of Simon who she saw as her possession rather than a partner, child-support disputes, and in-law conflicts she may have convinced herself her actions were justified emotional retaliation rather than murder, fostering motivated reasoning that reframed lethal intent as a kitchen mistake . This emotional fog likely triggered tunnel vision, so she fixated on immediate details (the cooking, the lunch) and ignored systemic consequences like forensic testing or rapid police probing and data connections .
Each time she imagined her narrative, that she panicked, not plotted her brain’s dopamine-driven reward circuits reinforced that belief, making it feel rational and believable. This would be further exacerbated by the fact it was long planned and she didn't discuss it with anyone else, which leads to confirmation bias, and eroding of rationality because other peoples thoughts on it aren't being reflected back at her to tighten up her logic. Similar to what happens with conspiracy theorists in echo chambers.
Finally, she likely overestimated the power of her emotional narrative - no motive, no symptoms, expressions of shock, believing that emotional testimony would outweigh hard forensic evidence, even as investigators found toxin DNA, chemical traces, and phone data inconsistencies.
In short, maybe revenge fuelled self-deception and emotional overconfidence blinded her to the reality that the tools of modern investigation wouldn’t be swayed by personal narratives, especially when she has been so adept at manipulating people and situations with her personal emotional narratives in the past.
Edit: To add to this, she was telling her only friends and social network (the online FB group) this emotionally deceptive narrative about her awful in-laws and estranged husband, which we saw during the prosecution case invited comments and perhaps further confirmations that her feelings of wanting to "get rid of them" were valid. Innocent comments from her support group who have been deceived on the truth about her in-laws like "You need to remove these toxic people from your life" could have very much helped fuel her self-deceptions and righteousness in getting rid of them in the most literal sense, IMO.
IMO only.
