The mushroom poisoning in Vic.... I am gripped

[Dustyblue]

This has been all over the news. I live one town over from Leongatha and believe me, it's the talk of the towns.

We have loads of mushrooms around our place but wouldn't dream of eating them. About 90% of foraged mushrooms in Australia are poisonous.

Then again, you do get groups of people who think they know what they're doing, and perhaps they do.

Meanwhile this is suss-as.

Three people died from suspected mushroom poisoning after sharing a meal. Here's what we know - ABC News

@ladeluge i think you’re might be giving her too much credit for logical thinking. She clearly missed the fact she would be in jail.

Only if she is deemed a suspect and arrested and charged, and then found guilty.

It is over two weeks now and I realise that toxicology reports are not in yet. But the fact that she is still free, not arrested or on bail is weird. I think it was planned, and that she will get away with it.

It is over two weeks now and I realise that toxicology reports are not in yet. But the fact that she is still free, not arrested or on bail is weird. I think it was planned, and that she will get away with it.

I hadn't realised it was over two weeks ago.

She seems to have quite a bit of money, so perhaps the point is that she doesn't want to get divorced because she will have to split her assets with him.

I don't think there's an automatic entitlement of spouses to inheritances in Australia, so killing off the family and not him would not give her access to those assets.

I go from thinking she's guilty to she's not guilty then guilty again and on and on. Then I think of Lindy Chamberlain, Kathleen Folbigg and Cleo Smith's parents and how they were treated because of how they reacted/didn't react. Best to leave it to the police to gather the evidence and for the courts to decide if the evidence stacks up. Will admit though it's a gripping case.

It is over two weeks now and I realise that toxicology reports are not in yet. But the fact that she is still free, not arrested or on bail is weird.

They have to get the amatoxin standards and associated reagents first, apparently, to run the tests for death cap in the victims' urine/bodies. Then the results won't take so long, apparently. It's not a simple test they have on hand. They would want to get the results back from the dehydrator dumped at the tip, also, to add to their case or not.

I think they are biding their time collecting all possible evidence before they make a move.

I also think they are quietly putting pressure on her via the press. If she cracks and confesses she lied and in fact she did forage some of the mushrooms and it was a horrible mistake, that's one thing. The evidence may point otherwise.

How would they know the incinerator was hers and relevant? Do they automatically search tips if there is a suspicious death? Or deaths

Incinerator? A food dehydrator was found at a local tip. Maybe workers at the tip gave them a tipoff. They have since asked for cctv footage of cars going into and out of the tip, and are forensically tested the dehydrator found there for her dna and for death cap mushrooms also.

Oh, and it's not "over two weeks now". Today is Saturday August 12th in Australia, and the lunch was held two weeks ago on Saturday July 29th.

The three poor people who have died after this lunch did not die until the end of that week, and the news only reached the media after their deaths, a week after the horrible lunch. It was only after the two women died on Friday 4th August that homicide detectives began looking into the circumstances; and that the dehydrator appeared in the tip.

It’s not. They only died a week ago, and as I said up thread and others have also stated, the police need to investigate and await the results of the toxicology results, until they get those they can’t even confirm a crime has been committed, never mind start arresting folks, locking up or charging and bailing.

I am really surprised how little knowledge some people have of criminal justice. To think folks think you can just arrest people and lock them up or charge and bail them when there is not yet any factual evidence of a crime is disturbing.

how would the interview even go.

Police..did you poison them
erins lawyer,,before proceeding, do you have evidence they were even posioned
police,.. well no, we don’t. But we think they were
erins lawyer, well release her and ask her again when you actually know if a crime was committed , you can’t arrest folks when you don’t even know for sure if there was a crime.

or what, “we are going to lock you up/charge and bail you just in case as we think a crime has been committed but we aren’t right sure at the moment”

Australia isn’t some corrupt dictatorship, the police will do their job correctly and follow process.

Not sure if it’s been mentioned already, but apparently it was Beef Wellington that was the dish served. Fair enough the kids not eating such a rich dinner so I assume she was eating a veggie version or something to not arouse suspicion as to why she was eating something entirely different? Of course without seeing that very odd video of her seemingly forced crying, I could’ve believed they had been shop bought and spiked elsewhere?

It is up there with the whole Melissa Caddick mystery though.

Yes, they've been saying 'Beef Wellington Pie', whatever that is... most of us know Beef Wellington as a roll, not a pie. That pointless detail has grabbed me for some reason.

I was surprised it takes so long to test for the toxin, in that they don't already have the standards, reagents etc. Thought they'd at least have something available to compare it to given we've so many of the bloody things. I guess it's more complicated than testing for something like spider or snake venom, which seems to happen a lot faster. And there are antidotes for those; I guess not for mushrooms.

Oh yes, wanted to assure the non-Australians that mushrooms in shops are fine! The commercial cultivation standards are super high, given the potential for disaster. In a way that's annoying, since you really only get buttons and flat browns in most supermarkets. Anything more exotic is hard to find and very spendy. I envy the varieties you can get in the UK.

So if I have family over for dinner I could easily cook a couple of different meals. Dh is vegetarian, I’m not, dd is vegetarian and coeliac, sil is coeliac but not vegetarian, my brother eats meat and isn’t coeliac. Maybe it’s something similar.

I don’t know where it came from but I heard the mushrooms were in a gravy. She apparently didn’t like gravy and the children had a completely different meal.

Yes and just a very unfortunate Co incidence there was likely death cap mushrooms in the gravy she made and they all died/became critical.

I've been wondering about 'pie' too! I think it maybe a way of making a dish with the flavours of beef wellington but using a cheaper cut of meat and stewing it before putting pastry on top. If so the pie would have its own gravy and perhaps the death caps were just in extra, optional, gravy on the side.

That is interesting to know the timeline. Had she taken the dehydrator to the tip before the police started investigating then I would have seen that as a very guilty act and covering her tracks. I suppose she could argue that she took it to the tip once she heard about the deaths as she didn't want any traces of deadly mushrooms in her house (that she "accidentally" cooked) with the risk her children might touch it.

I wonder if she is known as a dedicated cook. That is going some to dehydrate mushrooms for a potential gravy if this was all an accident.

I am really surprised how little knowledge some people have of criminal justice. To think folks think you can just arrest people and lock them up

With respect most of the posters on here are in the UK where if you call someone a 'lesbian nan' the police do just arrest people and lock them up.

The more I read the more I start to doubt her but I honestly don’t know one way or another if she innocently made a mistake or deliberately poisoned them or whether they had met up earlier and were accidentally poisoned elsewhere.

But it is so tragic. What I have read about these people is that they were really good people who were well loved in the community. And being a close knit community where many grew up together and known each other for most of their lives.

Some members of the community offering to donate their liver (I am not sure if a living person can donate their liver). But a very kind gesture.

But if it was "Beef Wellington Pie", as described in some reports, mushrooms are actually part of the dish, and wouldn't be a side dish in a gravy. Beef Wellington is quite a fiddly dish to make and I find it strange that someone who didn't like mushrooms would make it for lunch guests and not eat it themselves, if that is what happened.
All speculation.

Beef Wellington (and presumable Pie) has the mushrooms in it with the beef. Why would you then make an additional mushroom gravy? It wouldn’t go. You’d need a thin, clearish gravy just to moisten the beef a bit. Perhaps she liked to use a pinch of dried powdered mushrooms to add to the gravy for just a hint of mushroom flavour, but then mistakenly added a pinch of death caps that she’d pre-dried in order to poison her ex? She could hardly explain that accident to the police, could she?

Where did the gravy bit come from anyway? I’d have thought the mushrooms would just be the ones in the Beef Wellington. Maybe she meant she just picked out the beef for herself and left the mushrooms as she didn’t like them? If they were death caps though, she’d still have been ill from the proximity to the beef. It just seems very convenient that neither she nor her DC ate the mushrooms. She never tasted a mushroom while cooking, she never tasted the hypothetical gravy to check for seasoning, she didn’t accidentally eat a small piece of mushroom that she’d failed to pick out when she served her portion?

Which says deliberate..no?

It suggests it, yes.

Someone mentioned upthread that a person might be able to build up a tolerance to the toxins in death cap mushrooms, the Amonita phalloides.

Is this actually true, or was it just a guess? I've googled and can't find anything.

I know that you can do this with some other poisons like arsenic (Victorian era 'arsenic eating' was a weird old thing), but this toxin is very different I guess? Anyone got more knowledge than me? (Or can search the internet more competently!)

@ImustLearn2Cook I believe that it's possible to be a living liver donor if compatible - you donate part of your liver.