To think Erin Patterson could have got away with murder

[Cheesychipsandbeans]

If she'd just said from the beginning she went foraging for mushrooms, thought she knew what she was doing and made a "terrible mistake".

I think that's what I find most disturbing about this case. Her lies and deception after the fact is what tripped her up. I read the article where the doctor treating the victims stated he knew it was her once she said she bought the mushrooms at a supermarket. No one was dead at that point so her reasons to lie if she was innocent were nill and as they already knew it was mushroom poisoning, and absolutely no way they would have been bought in a shop, it was such a terrible lie. If she'd said straight away she'd been foraging and not tried to lie her way out of it, I genuinely think she'd have gotten away with murder.

I thought exactly the same about the plate thing.

Mushroom Case Daily has been a good podcast - I thought The Trial was not as good for this case - lagged behind and relied upon one local presenter.

What is your evidence for this abuse?

I feel that the fact so much crucial evidence about her previous behaviour was inadmissible was really wrong. It’s so relevant.

reports say that a possible second trial has been dropped so it makes no sense.

it almost feels like misleading the jury and the public by not including that evidence. Is this really how justice works? Glad she was convicted but if she hadn’t been it would’ve been a travesty

I also agree with the financial point. Abuse is too strong a word but it’s clear that one of the reasons she was so unusually friendly with her in laws despite being separated is that Simon’s siblings were all living very comfortably off her inheritance.

I also think the religious aspect is relevant too in that they seemingly ignored how dangerous she was due to being ‘kind’.

a normal separation would’ve been a lot better for everyone

I don't accept that Erin was a vulnerable woman who was being financially used at all. All the evidence - messages etc show her as a controlling woman. I'd say she lent the money to gain control over the family and when she didn't get the control she wanted she lashed out.
It's appalling for you to put any blame at all on the innocent victims in this - who from all evidence (including from Erin herself for what's its worth) treated Erin well.
The multiple reports of her laughing and joking with prison guards in the court just after the harrowing details of her victims treatment and subsequent deaths in the ICU was heard show what kind of a person she is.

It was awful what she did, the brother in law had to cancel, or he would have been dead as well. But we've been binge watching crime/detective stuff, so I can spot mistakes straight away.

What brother-in-law? Her estranged husband, you mean.

Also the footage of her crying and wailing that she loved them (the deceased). She screws her face up nicely but not one tear is actually shed.

Which podcast do you recommend for this case?

Which podcast is it please?xx

She's evil, like all murderers.

Her victims did not deserve to be murdered.

It is still a fact that her in-laws en masse had sought and accepted large amounts of money from her (from her personal inheritances from her own family) and that her husband, in particular, had manipulated her into putting property in his name, dangling the carrot of a possible reconciliation as an enticement.

Just because he was a probable victim of her earlier poisoning ventures, and just because he lost his parents and aunt to her murder plot, does not make him a good man.

Just because these poor people were murder victims, were Christian, or tried to "stay on good terms" with Patterson does not mean that, as a whole, her husband's family had treated her with love or respect. She was financially rinsed, humoured, manipulated. If you read the court files carefully, you'll begin to see why she festered with the kind of sullen resentment that, in a twisted mind like hers, became a justification for murder.

It isn't victim-blaming to recognise that human characters are complex. As it emerged at trial, not much about this wider family set-up was very healthy at all.

I feel for her kids who by all accounts still support and believe in her. Their father has not been on good terms with them for some time, their grandparents are dead, and they must feel so cast adrift now.

It does seem like the in-laws were comfortable siphoning her money and I didn't know the ex-husband is not on good terms with his own children. But he has custody of these children now?

None of what you assume in this post as fact is fact - aside from the fact she is a murderer.

She used her money to exercise coercive control, she controlled Simon, and when he made one small error that casued her ire, writing "separated" on his tax return, after being hospitalised and in a coma, and losing sections of his bowel, after her latest attempt at poisoning him, she went postal.

She used her money to cement her position in the family, but when even after that they forgot to invite her to Gail's birthday (who'd had to be shielded from Erin's upsetting texts), she began setting in motion her revenge, and poisoned them all.

A poisoner, driven by petty slights and a desire for control, will warp a child's thinking. It happens often in quite normal separations - which theirs was not, she left Simon or booted him out over and over, over a 9 year period.

And she wasn't "rinsed". She was an accountant. The loans were set up in such a way they minimised her tax burden. She may have done them partially to curry favour/cement her place in the family - but they advantaged her, also.

Agree

The problem is she logged onto a site - i naturalist - that logs things like where deathcap mushrooms are found. She went to two of those locations that specifically showed where these specific mushrooms were found, her mobile phone signal pinged she was there. She knew what deathcaps looked like, and she went onto a website forum to find them, and went to those exact locations.

So plausible deniability doesn't work here as she actively googled deathcaps, and went to the actual locations.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mushroom-case-daily/id1736879192

This is the podcast that I’ve been most hooked on. Fascinating case.

Once suspected, she couldn’t ‘lie better’. She’d already acted in ways that would ensure she was found guilty. For example, she couldn’t just say she went foraging and mixed up her mushrooms because her internet history shows she searched for places where death caps were growing locally and then drove there to pick them! More than that, she bought a dehydrator to preserve them until a poisoning opportunity arose.

I’ve been following this closely too via the Daily Mail podcast. Does anyone know why Simon’s CS liability ($38 per month) was so low? I thought he was an engineer so was surprised that it was so skimpy. Assume he was still off sick after his serious illness, but it was never addressed whereas there was a lot of detail of her sharing her two huge inheritances.

This is true. Most of us can't consistently lie accurately enough, especially under pressure, and make basic mistakes. For most people, killing someone is the first time they do it and they can't handle the psychological pressure and either make these mistakes or seek attention and involvement and eventually something happens that is too obviously a lie or incriminating.
The ones that can handle all this generally get away with it. Worryingly, the more you do it the better people seem to become at handling the psychological side of killing people and less likely to incriminate themselves. Serial killers are nearly always convicted on physical evidence, or at least the ones we manage to catch are.

I’m assuming it was because she is a multimillionaire (big inheritances from grandmother and mother) and they take both incomes into account when determining how much each should contribute? I don’t know what his income is or whether he was working, but I’m guessing it was tiny in comparison to hers. Even Simon said he was surprised how little they asked of him.