Mushroom poisoner has been found guilty

[Viviennemary]

Just seen on the news she's been found guilty. I haven't really followed this in detail. But it does sound like she was guilty. With the different coloured plates and so on. But I suppose there is always an element of doubt.

There's no way she's innocent.

Yeah, it was pretty obvious, I think. Odious creature.

I find it weird the wall to wall coverage this case had. Men murder their families all the time and it gets barely a whisper.

I don't see that element of doubt here. Seems pretty obvious that she did it. Cold and calculated.

I think the coverage is pretty intensive for all family annihilators. It's also pretty unusual to poison your whole family with poisonous mushrooms too. Definitely an unusual case.

Idk, at the same time her trial was ongoing there was a guy in America who shot his two young daughters and then went on the run in the wilderness - didn't get a mention in the guardian.

The coverage is excessive. Compare Erin Patterson to Bradley Edwards (an Australian serial killer, a man apprehended for heinous sexual crimes against women decades after committing them, plead innocent and went to trial) or Peter Miles (Australian man who shot his family and then killed himself, obviously no trial). The difference is so stark. I'm not excusing what she did but her villification in the media is obviously excessive and the only reason I can see for it is that she's a woman.

Its the method. Shooting, knifes etc are common ways of killing people mushrooms are not.

Not very familiar with this case but what was her motive? I gather it wasn't mentioned much.

Those are only common methods because they're how men generally kill people and it is common for men to kill people.

I don't disagree that this case is interesting and different and worthy of press coverage but the coverage of the trial just seemed so excessive.

They didn't argue a motive.

Well, it's fairly unusual for women to be family anihilators, so obviously news are going to give it more coverage due to its extraordinary quality.

Ah thanks. I couldn't discern one myself.

Well, yeah, because it's very rare that a women does something like this.

I agree but I think that's wrong. Suppose she had been found innocent, she would have been judged guilty in a trial by media anyway. Whereas a man who was in the same position would not have been.

I followed this closely. I agree the evidence seemed to point to her doing this intentionally rather than an accident. What struck me as odd is that there was no motive (other than possible resentment) and also she must have realised that it would look suspicious.

For those reasons I did wonder whether she thought that it would just make them sick rather than kill them.

Sounds like an Agatha Christie novel, so I can see why the press interest.

I don't think that's true at all. It's pretty common to hear the phrase "it's always the husband" before any trial has taken place.

The prosecution didn't put one forward because none made sense.

She was close with her in laws and one of the people there she hadn't seen for ages.

Really strange.

The daily court podcast was great. What was put forward in the press seemed very straight forward but the evidence was much more nuanced.

For example, she is bulimic. She claims to have binged the leftover pudding after guests left and then made herself sick. She was still ill but not as much a the others in attendance.

I couldn't shake the feeling that if that was true, the thing that saved her life was also the thing that was most likely to send her to jail. Her survival looks suss.

She did tell some porkers to cover up the things that made her look guilty but she was terrified of losing her kids if SS condemned her kitchen.

I dunno. It was a VERY interesting case.

I half expected the jury to not be able to come to a full agreement, to be honest.

I've just seen pictures of the Wellington. Those poor people must have only eaten it out of politeness.

How wicked.

I think it's because both the method and perpetrator were unusual. Female killers do tend to get more 'attention' and maybe that equates to more villification, but IMO it's because there are so much fewer of them so it becomes newsworthy. It's a sad fact that male family annihilators aren't nearly as uncommon. Although with someone like e.g. Chris Watts there was a lot of publicity over his crimes.
Anyway, I'm glad she was convicted.

This is a really fascinating case.

Obviously women are far less likely to commit murder than men but historically poisoning was the method of choice as women had very little access to other methods (I've read a lot about women in previous centuries 'getting rid' of abusive husbands by poisoning, for example). When they do kill, women are far more likely to choose a passive method such as this rather than a violent and confrontational method eg physical violence.

Resentment is often found to be the motive in family annihilation cases. It's not really that strange if it was her motivation.

So many lies to cover herself.
Even presented herself at hospital in fear of ‘mushroom poisoning’
Disposed of the dehydrator ‘she didn’t own’

I understand what you mean and, to a point, I agree with you. I agree that, generally, media is full of rotten mysoginy, so women will be caracterised accordingly. But I don't think they (the media) would have judge the alleged perpetrator differently had they been a man.
I think the media circus is always bad.
On the other hand, I find popular juries to be abhorrent and completely unnecessary. And I think the media frenzy feeds off them. But I admit I'm 100% ignorant about law matters, so I'm sure there's a very important reason why we have popular juries for highly shocking and mediatic cases.