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

[kittythehare]

I don't know if bacteria formed on mushrooms could contribute. I'm sure we will learn from the experts called in.
The point I was trying to make was that perhaps her immune system was built up to handle the toxin better. MOO.

there is negotiation with death caps.
Nobody has immunity.
There is no gradual build up.
But, death cap has not been officially confirmed as the causative agent in this case.

 

[Forest_Wood]

there is negotiation with death caps.
Nobody has immunity.
There is no gradual build up.
But, death cap has not been officially confirmed as the causative agent in this case.

Do you mean there is NO negotiation with death caps?

You are correct. There has been no confirmation of what toxin has caused this or if it even was death caps or even mushrooms. So it's all moot until we get an official cause.

 

[JLZ]

Do you mean there is NO negotiation with death caps?

You are correct. There has been no confirmation of what toxin has caused this or if it even was death caps or even mushrooms. So it's all moot until we get an official cause.

If we've been misled about the strong likelihood of it being amanita poisoning, I'm going to doubt whether it was Erin's meal at all. For all I know it could have been a slow-acting poison ingested in a shared meal the previous week.

 

[jjenny]

Well, didn't she go into the hospital and was transferred to a different hospital? That would be easily verifiable for authorities.

Apparently, mushrooms have to be taken in moderation and over time for your system to handle more. "Some people will get sick from a correctly identified and correctly handled edible mushroom if they eat too much of it." -- Excerpt from the book I'm reading about foraging. He says you must limit yourself to 1-2 TBSP to begin with (or enough for an omelet).

So possibly she was more used to eating mushrooms and therefore not as affected as the others. Just speculation. MOO.

Death cap is not an edible mushroom.

 

[Forest_Wood]

Death cap is not an edible mushroom.

Why do you keep focusing on death cap? Nothing in the post you're replying to is referring to death cap.

 

[JLZ]

Death cap is not an edible mushroom.

What Forest Wood quoted was explicitly about edible mushrooms.

 

[Ellery84]

I'm not accusing anyone here, but in a case like this if a person of interest is considered a flight risk and the investigation is slow, what steps would law enforcement take to prevent them liquidating assets and leaving the country?


I well if she hasn’t been charged, she would not be “out on bail” so there would be no bail conditions on her, and police would have no legal reason to take her passport.

It’s possible her name and passport number is on the Do Not Travel list at all of our Ports and Airports.

Imo

 

[JLZ]

Death cap is not an edible mushroom.

What Forest Wood quoted was explicitly about edible mushrooms.

Sorry Jjenny I thought you were replying to my post.

 

[kittythehare]

If we've been misled about the strong likelihood of it being amanita poisoning, I'm going to doubt whether it was Erin's meal at all. For all I know it could have been a slow-acting poison ingested in a shared meal the previous week.

There may have been no intention at all to mislead.
it simply might have looked like one thing while being another.
Realistically, by now they have either confirmed the presence of death caps or are now searching for something similar that might or might not be fungi.

Introduction to Mycology - Medical Microbiology - NCBI Bookshelf

There are of course billions of poisons capable of bringing about similar pathology.

I could search this out but all I would find would be a billion possibilities with insufficient knowledge to know whether any of them were even remote possibilities.

Do I believe her to be innocent?

I simply do not know because I take no information from certain media sources to be either reliable or remotely accurate.

We do not know of how the poisonings affected the bodies of the deceased and the living recipient too. We received contradictory reports about his current condition from awaiting liver transplant to improving and possibly not needing it. This is a medical mystery to me.

We don't have enough information to assess this. Their autopsies have not been made public.

I'm not going to hate on the woman based on very sparse facts.
Why would I?
I'm on Websleuths long enough to have learned the value and art forum that is critical thinking as applied to cases. I try to practice it. It's a good discipline and requires that I explain my rationale for my thinking and that my thinking is joined up thinking.

To that end, a DUI 19 or 20 years ago has no bearing on this case.
UNLESS it turns out she had a long term problem and there is no open source information on that subject available.

 

[RickshawFan]

The expert in the video posted earlier on this thread, was handling death caps with his bare hands. I only watched a few minutes of the video but I understand he later on addressed the risk of surface contact?

It sounds like (someone please correct me) he would have explained that surface contact is not deadly and the fungi needs to be ingested to cause problems? Otherwise I assume he would have worn gloves while making the video. So that kind of casual kitchen contamination seems unlikely? Again, please correct me as I didn't watch the full video. MOO

I got itchy when he put his fingers up to wipe his nose after handling those mushrooms.... So, he wasn't just getting death cap on his fingers. From COVID, we learnt that putting fingers near noses is not a good plan.

 

[al66pine]

Measuring the Speed of Wheels of Justice?

Australia wheels of justice really move slowly don’t they?!
How is it a month in from the poisoning and there is still no movement here. It’s farcical at this stage that she hasn’t been arrested ( if guilty) 1 month later when 3 people are dead and 1 critically ill. In the U.S and U.K. there is simply no way it would take this long to get a basic idea about what happened with the food that lunch time.
Moo

@Salah11 Respectfully, this is Real Life.
Not a tv drama or movie in which crimes occur w LE investigations and prosecutions following at breakneck paces, w slam dunk convictions.

Not suprising to me that no arrest has been made (yet).

BTW, LE silence does not indicate "no movement" in the investigation, or that an arrest could not happen tomorrow. We/members of the public do not know.

 

[RickshawFan]

Australia question... I'm speculating that Erin might have used 3 batches of mushrooms: 1 (or more) package of supermarket mushrooms, 1 package of Asian mushrooms, and 1 pickings and dryings of her own making.

So, what she said about her sources would be truth, just not the whole truth.

So, here's my question.

When you buy a package of supermarket mushrooms and a package of Asian mushrooms in Australia, are there enough mushrooms to make a beef Wellington? It takes a lot of mushrooms, yeah? You have to make enough glop to lard onto a "roast beef" in every dimension, and big enough for at least 5 people, or 7 if you count the kids. I'm thinking all that glop might take many packets of mushrooms.

Erin says she got 1 package of Asian mushrooms, yeah? What size packet did she get from the supermarket? There should be evidence from cameras or register receipts for the latter. Between them, there might not be enough for the recipe. Does this mean part of the meat didn't have mushrooms on it, or does it mean she added death caps to provide the quantity required by the recipe and the dimensions of the beef?

 

[JLZ]

Australia question... I'm speculating that Erin might have used 3 batches of mushrooms: 1 (or more) package of supermarket mushrooms, 1 package of Asian mushrooms, and 1 pickings and dryings of her own making.

So, what she said about her sources would be truth, just not the whole truth.

So, here's my question.

When you buy a package of supermarket mushrooms and a package of Asian mushrooms in Australia, are there enough mushrooms to make a beef Wellington? It takes a lot of mushrooms, yeah? You have to make enough glop to lard onto a "roast beef" in every dimension, and big enough for at least 5 people, or 7 if you count the kids. I'm thinking all that glop might take many packets of mushrooms.

Erin says she got 1 package of Asian mushrooms, yeah? What size packet did she get from the supermarket? There should be evidence from cameras or register receipts for the latter. Between them, there might not be enough for the recipe. Does this mean part of the meat didn't have mushrooms on it, or does it mean she added death caps to provide the quantity required by the recipe and the dimensions of the beef?

At a supermarket the mushrooms wouldn't necessarily be pre-packaged. I think you'd select your own and as many as you choose to put in a bag, or bags. If she's cooking to impress I'd imagine she'd made beef wellington before and knew the quantities she'd be needing.

 

[RickshawFan]

At a supermarket the mushrooms wouldn't necessarily be pre-packaged. I think you'd select your own and as many as you choose to put in a bag, or bags. If she's cooking to impress I'd imagine she'd made beef wellington before and knew the quantities she'd be needing.

You don't buy them in punnets in AUS? In supermarkets in the US, this is how they are generally sold. In specialty shops, you might get loose ones.

 

[JLZ]

There may have been no intention at all to mislead.
it simply might have looked like one thing while being another.
Realistically, by now they have either confirmed the presence of death caps or are now searching for something similar that might or might not be fungi.

Introduction to Mycology - Medical Microbiology - NCBI Bookshelf

There are of course billions of poisons capable of bringing about similar pathology.

I could search this out but all I would find would be a billion possibilities with insufficient knowledge to know whether any of them were even remote possibilities.

Do I believe her to be innocent?

I simply do not know because I take no information from certain media sources to be either reliable or remotely accurate.

We do not know of how the poisonings affected the bodies of the deceased and the living recipient too. We received contradictory reports about his current condition from awaiting liver transplant to improving and possibly not needing it. This is a medical mystery to me.

We don't have enough information to assess this. Their autopsies have not been made public.

I'm not going to hate on the woman based on very sparse facts.
Why would I?
I'm on Websleuths long enough to have learned the value and art forum that is critical thinking as applied to cases. I try to practice it. It's a good discipline and requires that I explain my rationale for my thinking and that my thinking is joined up thinking.

To that end, a DUI 19 or 20 years ago has no bearing on this case.
UNLESS it turns out she had a long term problem and there is no open source information on that subject available.

I'm not saying there was an intention to mislead.

BBM1, but it's also possible that amanita is not confirmed in the toxicology but neither is it ruled out as having previously been present and caused the deaths.

BBM2, that's very much what I'm wondering: whether there are other substances that would cause the same pathology, perhaps with a different timeframe. Because if it wasn't Erin's mushrooms it might have been a different meal. As a matter of fact I had been wondering if one of the women bought a food product off a ute by the side of the road and then split it with her sister, so that both households cooked and ate it in a meal separately at around the same time.

 

[RickshawFan]

Next question. If you re-hydrate mushrooms from dry, do they revert to their original size or are they shrunk from their original size? If the latter, you'd need a lot more mushrooms than the recipe called for, just to get enough bulk.

 

[RickshawFan]

I'm not saying there was an intention to mislead.

BBM1, but it's also possible that amanita is not confirmed in the toxicology but neither is it ruled out as having previously been present and caused the deaths.

BBM2, that's very much what I'm wondering: whether there are other substances that would cause the same pathology, perhaps with a different timeframe. Because if it wasn't Erin's mushrooms it might have been a different meal. As a matter of fact I had been wondering if one of the women bought a food product off a ute by the side of the road and then split it with her sister, so that both households cooked and ate it in a meal separately at around the same time.

I watched this 60 Minutes video tonight, and they point at the obvious: doctors would soon ascertain that the common denominator was that lunch. I suppose it's possible that's the only item all four ate. Also, the presenting timeline and the symptoms correspond to amanita poisoning:

 

[JLZ]

You don't buy them in punnets in AUS? In supermarkets in the US, this is how they are generally sold. In specialty shops, you might get loose ones.

You might be able to get them in punnets. I rarely go to the supermarket now so I'm not sure. Mushrooms I would buy loose at the greengrocer. At the supermarket there are some prepackaged fruit and vegetables but most are loose, pack your own.

 

[JLZ]

I watched this 60 Minutes video tonight, and they point at the obvious: doctors would soon ascertain that the common denominator was that lunch. I suppose it's possible that's the only item all four ate. Also, the presenting timeline and the symptoms correspond to amanita poisoning:

Yes, but if the timeframe corresponds that's assuming the poison was taken at the lunch!

And the lunch is one common denominator. It doesn't mean there aren't others.

 

[kittythehare]

I'm not saying there was an intention to mislead.

BBM1, but it's also possible that amanita is not confirmed in the toxicology but neither is it ruled out as having previously been present and caused the deaths.

BBM2, that's very much what I'm wondering: whether there are other substances that would cause the same pathology, perhaps with a different timeframe. Because if it wasn't Erin's mushrooms it might have been a different meal. As a matter of fact I had been wondering if one of the women bought a food product off a ute by the side of the road and then split it with her sister, so that both households cooked and ate it in a meal separately at around the same time.

Could even be a snack they shared if they travelled in the same vehicle to and from the lunch.
Those people went to hospital feeling pretty ill and with symptoms of poisoning.
Stool and urine and blood samples would be taken as a matter of routine.
They should be present in those..
They were hospitalised within 36 hrs of the lunch from what I am gathering from unreliable media.. Amanita is present if it is. I put a link up on diagnostic tests available and routinely used in Aus, yesterday. It's not a complicated test..
BUT I remember doing research on other highly toxic mushrooms a few threads back, some are strikingly similar in the symptoms they produce.

It's impossible to guess at it.

The victims would have had liver and renal function monitored constantly which would show poisoning progressive damage despite their best efforts to save them.
She allegedly provided a sample of leftover lunch for further examination, possibly while they were hospitalised but before they died.
I don't have a clue what their bio tests or the tests of her food yielded.

It's a mystery.
All of it.

Strychnine, for example goes like this

Strychnine

Learn more about strychnine and what to do if you are exposed.

emergency.cdc.gov