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

In her recent statement she said she cooked and served a Beef Wellington. I think the addition of "pie" in some news reports was people unfamiliar with what a Beef Wellington is, hearing it involved pastry at some point, and calling it a pie for others unfamiliar with the dish. Media have reported her age as 44, 45, and 46, while the police statement at the start of this called her 48.

For those asking how the conversation about the dehydrator came about, I'd bet my money she's just made that up entirely, so that she can explain away the dumping part.

It wouldn't surprise me, especially as she's already admitted to lying.

Yes absolutely. It was a short window, but they would have clearly told doctors and medics what happened. The police and medical staff will know a lot more than is being released to the public. Inc if she really did have symptoms, or if they believe it was not genuine/death cap.

There will be a very good reason she’s been named by police as a person of interest and only her.

Seems rather racist to me to be trying to pin the blame on the 'Asian shop' even if there have been past cases whereby this has happened its extrapolating to a whole group of people the trait of being untrustworthy in the field of food safety. Even worse that she can't remember the shop. Asian owned shops might see their businesses suffer in this area unfairly.

I suspect you're right that it's been fabricated. I mean she's admitted to lying about it already so it's not unfeasible that this is another lie. The fact the dehydrator was mentioned at all is still odd to me. I doubt very much her children would have brought it up especially at the hospital.

Also side note but someone above said her ex husband's time in hospital wasn't poisoning related do we know that for definite? I thought it was still unknown as to why or how he ended up in a coma?

Yes, I was surprised when I read that. I’ve not seen anything either, so likely missed it, but I also thought it was not confirmed and still being investigated.

I wonder if it was actually a spur of the moment decision to add the fatal mushrooms? I could see it happening like this:

She made a sophisticated beef Wellington to charm them as a domestic goddess so they would help her get her ex back. Pre lunch chat made her see that they were all in favor of divorce and in a moment of madness she made some gravy with the dried death cap in.

She thought it would only make them sick as it hadn't killed Simon in May 2022 when she gave him slivers of fresh death cap but now she had dehydrated them and wanting to use them on four people she got the dose wrong and they quickly became VERY unwell.

As drs at the hospital start asking about the food and link it to her she realizes she needs to get rid of the dehydrator which will have death cap on it. So she takes it to the tip. She then concocts the Asian grocer story.

Motive: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. She poisoned Simon to make him ill enough she needed to look after him and he wouldn't leave her. But she overdid it and he ended up in a coma and I think I read that instead he moved in with his parents for after hospital care. The family were supposed to just get D and V a little bit but death cap is potent stuff (unless she really was arrogant enough to think she could get away with killing them all and pass it off as a mistake)

Now we have the satanic death wall.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/death-wall-inside-mushroom-chefs-house/news-story/a879b2505a32b22dc16214201659dab4

Good to see News Corp doing what they do best –– scraping the bottom of the barrel for a non-story.

The media in the UK are obviously reporting this differently. Although the ex had an old social media post about being ill, a friend leaked about that post and then commented that maybe he was poisoned. Then another source confirmed it wasn't poisoning. I'll see if I can find the links.

I think she said Asian shop either because it's true or because most death cap poisonings happen to South East Asian people due to the death caps being mistaken for straw mushrooms, common in SE Asian cuisine. So the Asian shop claim adds some credibility.

I don’t see that as a non story, it’s a year before suspected mass murder and it’s highly disturbing. Children don’t usually drop things like that.

That article says years 5 and 7, what ages are they?

Think it’s 10/11 and 12/13

I'd be interested to read where it was confirmed as everything I've read both in the UK press and online from Australian news sources states the cause of that ICU stay and his illness is still unknown and a mystery hence why it seems to be a significant event when coupled with the deaths.

Is it confirmed that EP lived in the house and her children had done it? A PP who lives in town said she is known to own multiple properties. It could have been rented to a tenant at the time the wall was drawn on. The way the article is written insinuates it was her kids, but doesn't outright say it.

I don't actually find the fact of kids drawing headstones and writing RIP particularly disturbing. Maybe I'm weird, but many children go through phases of being fixated on death. Particularly when someone they know has died (and we know EP's own mother died a few years ago) or they've watched some creepy movies or been reading Goosebumps books.

This style of muckraking where journalists will talk to any person who claims to have a story (however tenuously linked to the actual story they might be) is just to keep people clicking and reading. It doesn't actually add anything to the real story at play (in this case, the mushroom poisonings).

I bet this painter is just some gobby dickhead down at the pub who tries to impress his drinking buddies with his stories.

But another story says the kids are teenagers, so who knows?

My goodness, it's not a tv drama. People have died. You have no idea what happened.

Different view points, but yes I find children drawing their own and grandmothers tombstones disturbing and I really wouldn’t make assumptions about the tradesperson who was also disturbed and took the image.

I find it disturbing, but more that it was on a wall and then left there.... you don't require money or skill to wash walls/slap paint over them.

I can see her cooking a separate meal for the children but why cook a fancy gravy for the beef wellington which is already a very rich tasting dish, why not just use some gravy browning powder to make the gravy, especially if it’s something she doesn’t eat.

A lovely beef Wellington deserves everything else n the table to be equally as lovely. A gravy made with Bisto powder is better kept for other things.

If the DCs had read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings then there are lots of death, headstones, swords, etc. I think it's really shitty of the media to be pulling the DCs into it like this.

Just checked the ex illness story again. The Times said a 'friend' leaked that the ex thought he'd been poisoned but when the ex was asked to confirm he'd said that, he didn't. There was another article (which I can't find) which went into more detail about the ex's illness from a medical perspective (eg iirc it was his gut and bowel that was affected not his kidneys, etc) and explained how his symptoms and treatment had no relation to what happens with mushroom poisoning.

The Times and Sky have also both said the lunch wasn't about the couple trying to get back together.

It seems there's a lot of mixed information and that certain parts of the media are basically printing anything any 'source/friend' says with no corroboration at all. Like a PP said, there's lots of echoes of the Christopher Jefferies' case in the approach to reporting.

If the DCs had read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings then there are lots of death, headstones, swords, etc. I think it's really shitty of the media to be pulling the DCs into it like this

Most kids read those things, they don’t draw their own and their grandmothers tombstones on the wall, and the fact ir was a few months before their grandmother was potentially murdered by their own mother. The kids aren’t being drawn into it. This is about what was going on in that house.

I respectfully disagree. They're trying to pathologize DCs. It's disgusting and unnecessary. All of this is going to be difficult enough for the DCs to process and live with, without the media deliberately targeting them. Those poor DCs.

Good grief, are you saying she murdered her own mother? Who else needs to be added to the body count?