Australia - 3 dead after eating wild mushrooms, Leongatha, Victoria, Aug 2023 #4

[Charlot123]

'A lot we don't know': Montana mycologists, foragers talk morel mushrooms following deaths this spring

Charlie Hopkins, a commercial forager in Montana, spends his days searching for wild mushrooms. He traverses across mountain ranges, dense forests and burn scars, spending hundreds on gas in search

www.bozemandailychronicle.com

This is actually quite a lot of information about cooking morel mushrooms, that I never knew about.

OK, I think the poison was the result of confusion between morels and “false morels” - Gyromithra.

Gyromitra - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Morels are not toxic. False morels are. To make matters more confusing, there are gigantic false morels that are safe and normal-sized ones that may be toxic due to gyromithrin. Also true and false morels might grow together.

How Do I Identify a True Morel From a False Morel? - Mushroom Huntress

I personally would not it either because I am not experienced with them. But, either way, false morels are not amanita phalloides.

 

[Neet_Mc]

No idea.

Dog makes an appearance at 0.42 minutes Video: Erin Patterson speaks to the media outside her Leongatha home | Daily Mail Online

 

[kittythehare]

Getting a case scheduled in Coroners Court is like getting a case scheduled in any other court. It doesn't happen quickly.

An inquest itself can last however long it takes for the Coroner to hear the witnesses and evidence. Days, weeks.

Then it takes longer (maybe a few weeks or months more) before the Coronial Findings (a report) are released.

Could be 12 months, easily?

I'll come back next year. or the year after..

 

[kittythehare]

Dog makes an appearance at 0.42 minutes Video: Erin Patterson speaks to the media outside her Leongatha home | Daily Mail Online

Thank you.
Looks like a lab okay..
Good he's allowed indoors, hopefully to live..
Her gardens are pristine, aren't they?
A beautiful space.

 

[Neet_Mc]

But there are no veterinary reports, are there?
labs will only eat everything if they're given everything.
Many people will not feed leftovers to animals because they're unbalanced.

No. I simply stated she has a dog and it appears to be a breed renowned for eating everything.
If there were leftovers, then potentially dog had some.
The dog is not dead, nor reported anywhere as being sick, so presumably it either:
(a) didn’t eat any leftovers, or
(b) like EP and kids, if it did eat them then it didn’t eat any poisoned beef Wellington.
To feed EP, two kids, 4 visitors, potentially the dog, AND have some to still give to health dept, there must have been A LOT of beef Wellington. To me this still lends itself to there being two of them.

 

[Oona]

Mushroom chef's Facebook messages leak

Mushroom chef Erin Patterson lashed out at her local community while putting together the local newspaper, an insider has revealed.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Daily mail answering lots of questions!! A former friend spilling all the goss…

The so-called 'ex-friend' claimed to have met Erin online through the true crime group.

'I think she was also into a lot of crime fiction. Like Agatha Christie,' the person claimed.

And….It seems SP was sick in 2022 with a clostridium difficile infection.

 

[SouthAussie]

Could be 12 months, easily?

I'll come back next year. or the year after..

We will likely hear if the case is ever scheduled for an inquest in Coroners Court. For now, it is an ongoing police investigation.

The Coroner might have been notified by the police already, as they are unexplained deaths (not sure when the notification has to happen). But the police investigation is active and not exhausted.

 

[Sjöberg]

Mushroom chef's Facebook messages leak

Mushroom chef Erin Patterson lashed out at her local community while putting together the local newspaper, an insider has revealed.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Daily mail answering lots of questions!!

I don't like the level of gossip there, but this caught my eye:

'She's an atheist as far as I know ... She was very unhappy in her marriage and felt like a single parent. At the time I thought it was normal 'my husband isn't pulling his weight ' type commentary,' the friend stated.

'We didn't hear much about Simon other than he was never at home. Never helping her. She was very closed about this ... She left him. She didn't want to get back with him.

 

[jjenny]

Mushroom chef's Facebook messages leak

Mushroom chef Erin Patterson lashed out at her local community while putting together the local newspaper, an insider has revealed.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Daily mail answering lots of questions!! A former friend spilling all the goss…

The so-called 'ex-friend' claimed to have met Erin online through the true crime group.

'I think she was also into a lot of crime fiction. Like Agatha Christie,' the person claimed.

And….It seems SP was sick in 2022 with a clostridium difficile infection.

It'd be pretty unusual presentation if that's what resulted in him being in a coma. On the other hand he might have picked that up after ending up in the hospital from something else that caused his problems.

"Illness from C. difficile often occurs after using antibiotic medicines. It mostly affects older adults in hospitals or in long-term care settings."

C. difficile infection - Symptoms and causes

www.mayoclinic.org

 

[Oona]

The former friend claimed “Erin had previously worked as an accountant and with the Department of Defence.

'She's meticulous and very smart,' the person stated. 'Her whole family are extremely smart people.'”

'She was also an obsessive reader. She had tonnes of books. She's very smart and very well read,'

The person claimed she had only ever engaged with Erin online,

'We had a very tight group. It was more intimate than normal due to our shared fascination with crime,' the person wrote.

'You have to imagine the most extreme introvert you have ever met. That is EP. Reclusive. Only online friends.'

from:

Mushroom chef's Facebook messages leak

Mushroom chef Erin Patterson lashed out at her local community while putting together the local newspaper, an insider has revealed.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Oona]

It'd be pretty unusual presentation if that's what resulted in him being in a coma. On the other hand he might have picked that up after ending up in the hospital from something else that caused his problems.

"Illness from C. difficile often occurs after using antibiotic medicines. It mostly affects older adults in hospitals or in long-term care settings."

C. difficile infection - Symptoms and causes

www.mayoclinic.org

I don’t think it is unusual if he experienced a bowel perforation or sepsis. Also possible he contracted C diff in hospital after routine surgery. Didn‘t SP mention one planned operation or procedure in his Facebook post?

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

OK, I think the poison was the result of confusion between morels and “false morels” - Gyromithra.

Gyromitra - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Morels are not toxic. False morels are. To make matters more confusing, there are gigantic false morels that are safe and normal-sized ones that may be toxic due to gyromithrin. Also true and false morels might grow together.

How Do I Identify a True Morel From a False Morel? - Mushroom Huntress

I personally would not it either because I am not experienced with them. But, either way, false morels are not amanita phalloides.

We don't know what killed the people yet, is it being long term assumed that it was death cap mushrooms but there has been no verification or confirmation of that from LE or any other authority.

Anyway, I would be terrified to pick mushrooms after all of this!

 

[Neet_Mc]

The former friend claimed “Erin had previously worked as an accountant and with the Department of Defence.

'She's meticulous and very smart,' the person stated. 'Her whole family are extremely smart people.'”

'She was also an obsessive reader. She had tonnes of books. She's very smart and very well read,'

The person claimed she had only ever engaged with Erin online,

'We had a very tight group. It was more intimate than normal due to our shared fascination with crime,' the person wrote.

'You have to imagine the most extreme introvert you have ever met. That is EP. Reclusive. Only online friends.'

from:

Mushroom chef's Facebook messages leak

Mushroom chef Erin Patterson lashed out at her local community while putting together the local newspaper, an insider has revealed.

www.dailymail.co.uk

True crime fascination….here we go!!

 

[Oona]

True crime fascination….here we go!!

maybe she’s one of us!

 

[Oona]

If EP is indeed an Agatha Christie fan she undoubtedly has read a lot about poison as a method of murder, including death cap toxins.

“Fungus fiction​

Agatha Christie was a big fan of the mushroom death. Florrie Gibbs in Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy supposedly died of poisoned mushrooms that she picked herself. In The 4.15 from Paddington, Lucy Eylesbarrow creates a dish with mushrooms that is blamed for the entire household becoming ill. By the Pricking of my Thumbs has a poisoned mushroom stew and the Secret of Chimneys has a poisoned sage and mushroom soup. Basically, if a whodunnit fan offers to cook, don’t let them.”

from:

BBC Radio 4 - Radio 4 in Four - The Perils of Mushrooms

Here are our top murderous mushroom facts.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[AliceInPain]

I don't think comments in that FB group posed any threat to a "fair trial" until the reporters decided to sneak in and write about it.
It's a private group, so, not "widely-accessible" to everyone, and as a private group posts from there shouldn't really be shared outside of it (although it happens a lot, but I think it's ugly - - groups are private so people can discuss things freely and openly - obviously adhering to FB rules).
imo. Every word the "ex-friend" said in DM was also copied from that group.
Media aren't worried about a fair or unfair trial, if they were they wouldn't be using unethical methods to gather irrelevant info.
Obviously I'm a member and there's nothing slanderous or bullying about it, just pretty much a meme and joke group about mushrooms for people with a dark sense of humour.

 

[NeverPersonal]

Or, maybe she did feed the kids the meal knowing that it was poisoned. There are parents, usually men, who kill their children to punish their escaped spouse.

the kids had no symptoms and didnt even have to go to the hospital. plus liz has said they dont like mushrooms (idk how much i trust her on literally anything but she did say it)

 

[Salah11]

The former friend claimed “Erin had previously worked as an accountant and with the Department of Defence.

'She's meticulous and very smart,' the person stated. 'Her whole family are extremely smart people.'”

'She was also an obsessive reader. She had tonnes of books. She's very smart and very well read,'

The person claimed she had only ever engaged with Erin online,

'We had a very tight group. It was more intimate than normal due to our shared fascination with crime,' the person wrote.

'You have to imagine the most extreme introvert you have ever met. That is EP. Reclusive. Only online friends.'

from:

Mushroom chef's Facebook messages leak

Mushroom chef Erin Patterson lashed out at her local community while putting together the local newspaper, an insider has revealed.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Well shows she obviously was a bitter woman in the marriage.

So if her In-laws were trying to get her to back together with them and she had hated the marriage there is a Motive imo

 

[katydid23]

Interesting that this online friend says EP wanted out of the marriage and did not want to reconcile. I may have had it backwards because I thought she probably wanted to get back w/him.

I am still wondering though. Did she tell her online friends the whole truth? IDK

 

[katydid23]

Also, very interesting that she is supposedly a true crime buff. Maybe that's why there seems to be a lack of solid evidence?

If she made a separate pot of poison gravy---and never gave LE any of that with the leftovers, there might not be any trace for them to find?

The potential crime might look very suspicious, but could be very hard to prove. JMO

If she follows true crime cases, she likely knows to completely get rid of all the toxic ingredients before guests get sick.

And being a very private person, she didn't tell anyone. JMO