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

Maybe they are saying not to touch them in case some bits get on your hands and you eat it, not that the poison would seep through your skin.

I have read this thread so much over the last week and am fascinated, it was only yesterday I realised it was on ‘Aussie and NZ Mumsnetters page’ I didn’t even see that, it just came up in my ‘active’ topics.

I’d like to know if she has a copy of ‘The Secret History’ on her bookshelf….

I would think picking a death cap mushroom you could then touch your eye, or have an itch and brush the inside of your nostril, or have a small papercut on your fingers, any number of ways you could expose yourself to its poison. Not enough to kill you, but as an irritant. Similarly the juices can leach into surrounding non-toxic mushrooms. These are just basic precautions that people who have had to deal with death cap mushroom deaths have suggested for safer foraging....

That’s how I interpret the health warnings as well - not that you can die if you touch them but you might be affected if you touch them, get a part of them on your hands then eat something else. Hence the specific warning for children, who are more likely to be a bit grotty with hand hygiene

''If it's true that they foraged, maybe an error was made. I don't know what the legal repercussions of an error like that would be. Is it manslaughter or just an unfortunate accident legally?''

Surely this is a grey area- If one can get away with murder by 'accidentally ' picking death caps and making a poisoned meal, then that is concerning.

''Whoops, my bad- sorry about that...Now where is your Life insurance''

Or just ''getting rid'' of someone- it's frightening.

Proving malicious intent must be hard-

But in this case, looking at circumstantial evidence, it's not looking good for Erin.

Who’s to say what the food was/wasn’t though. Maybe there was one lot with ‘the mushrooms’ in and only some got sick. Maybe be there were two lots where the leftovers the kids had was actually a seperate dish cooked with other mushrooms that were then scraped out for show and so the kids would be able to say they ate the same thing. What if, what if, maybe this, maybe that. Who knows.

Well, at some point the forensic examination of the dehydrator will reveal if it contains traces of death cap mushrooms; and the toxicology will be back, revealing if the victims were poisoned by death caps, as is believed by experts treating them at the Austin; and the words of the dying patient to the paramedic that were reported to the police will be factored in. And any amount of other evidence will be compiled, and there will be a case built which lays out what actually happened, and I expect charges will be laid at some point. It would be surprising if they weren't.

Agree, this is all just interesting chat until the forensic and pathology results are made public. If they are made public. Or Erin is arrested, or a statement saying no foul play by police.

They will find out what they died from and absolutely all of them will have given an account when still able. It’s one of the first things medics ask when you have food poisoning, where did you all eat together, when and what, was there any other time, and they go back up to two weeks in the initial phases. When they were first admitted, all four were capable of answering questions. Blood tests, toxicology reports, stool samples, post mortem results, all of it will be included with the testimony.

Even the ex’s testimony will be taken into account, inc did he have the conversation about her poisoning them as she said he did, and then from others her state of mind, and any mental health concerns.

and that testimony will be correlated against Erin’s, as well as the children’s included, who are no longer in the care of either parent, so cannot be influenced in interviews.

even if the dehydrator is clean but has been doused in bleach for example, that will be taken into account. Everything. Then based on that the police will act, either shut it down, or bring her in a second time.

That wouldn't be enough to do you any harm whatsoever. I know it's counterintuitive, but this is absolutely the advice from people who are world experts in mycology (rather than back-covering public health departments). The fear of touching mushrooms probably does more harm than good. To start knowing about mushrooms you need to observe them very carefully indeed - what colour they are, how they smell, whether there are gills or not and how exactly they attach to the stem - and you can't do that without picking them and handling them! A death cap looks pretty sinister but it is also a thing of great beauty. It's a happy day when I come across one - to admire, I stress, rather than to bump off any errant relatives!!

Death cap mushroom 'juices' are not an irritant in any case. They'll screw up your liver and kidneys and make you die a horrible death, but you really have to eat them first in order for that to happen!

Maybe that advice of not to touch them is for people like the husband of an OP in a previous thread who never washes his hands. Not before eating, not after the toilet.

So he would pick mushrooms, then have a sandwich, and become ill from mushroom poisoning.

Or the plonkers on other threads who are forever stuffing their unwashed fingers into newborn babies' mouths with god-knows-what stuck under their gel nails.

'I've been foraging' and 'give babba to nanna' are not things I'd ever want to hear a particular exMiL say during the same visit.

This is what I don't understand - and I've read enough crime novels and true crime books that I feel I should! - say the lunch guests all stopped for coffee/mushroom tea/home-made salad or cake on the way to, or the way back from, the lunch. And they gave Erin a tiny amount to try (which causes her to get ill but the DCs don't because they aren't there and don't try it).
So the time frame would be similar. The digestion would be similar. How can the police hope to prove that the 'poison' came from the lunch and not from anything else?
Or does it mean that the police are really relying on supplementary evidence (eg from the leftovers provided or from the dehydrator) because without those they can't prove anything?

I mean it's possible that the all had a big bowl of mushroom soup together - at the moment we just don't know.

However (it is said) that one of the victims said something to a paramedic just before they died that made the paramedic so concerned that they contacted police

Erin has admitted to cooking the beef wellington and that it included mushrooms. If in addition to that the guests had brought along anything involving mushrooms I'm sure she would have mentioned it by now to defend herself.

'She had no symptoms', the detective inspector is quoted as saying: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12412175/Erin-Patterson-10-questions-homicide-detectives-set-ask-chef-deadly-mushroom-lunch.html

And it says here that 'she saved the final plate for herself, which her children ate the following night, but she scraped the mushrooms off the dish because they didn’t like them': https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/impossible-national-peak-industry-body-releases-statement-contrary-to-fatal-leongatha-mushroom-lunch-cooks-claim/news-story/e09b8506f520026a438451ef6f89f1b8

And 'she served the leftovers to her children after knowing her guests had gone to hospital with suspected food poisoning', according to the Daily Mail.

Just watching the body language in the video OP linked to...it's obvious she is lying and putting on an act of grief. She blatantly evades questions about the details of the incident. She overtly multiple times makes gestures of wiping tears away. Her acting is quite bad really.

The police need to discover the motive...is she or her children due to inheritance from the now deceased elderly relatives? Life insurance payout? Property inheritance?

There's also just too many 'coincidences' to ignore...her not getting poisoned herself, I mean I get kids being fussy and not liking mushrooms, hence they didn't eat it, or if the woman was vegan or had a dietary allergy, where she didn't eat the beef & mushroom wellington, but made it for her guests, as they eat meat etc. But she is guilty AF...police need to seize her phone, any digital devices and look for incriminating stuff.

It would be a real shocker to me if she was genuinely innocent.

Whilst I agree it's just two of the many coincidences, I know plenty of people who are happy to cook with mushrooms who don't like them. And loads of kids don't like them.
I often cook with them and don't eat them now there's an idea...

Yes, foraging is a thing in Gippsland. The greengrocers you mention are a genuine local organic veg supplier, who do home delivery. And they occasionally run foraging classes.

I've not done that class personally! but some neighbours use their veggie deliveries.

Even the South Gippsland Shire Mayor said he & his wife are foragers. He contradicted everything Poisons Information Victoria had to say, but there you go.

I follow an online mushroom ingestion poisons advice group

In fairness this raises far more questions than it answers.

Sorry but this made me laugh

I’m assuming as they’d have spoken to the victims and they’ve confirmed when they got together and the sequence of events.

Yes fair point 😂. It's called 'Poisons help: emergency identification for mushrooms and plants' on Facebook. It is 'for situations where someone had consumed an unknown fungi, or touched or consumed an unknown plant' (which tells you what they think the risk from touching mushrooms is - zero!) It has some serious botanical and mycological expertise - a lot of foragers follow it because it helps you learn plant/mushroom IDs! Nobody who isn't an acknowledged expert is allowed to post, so you don't get the usual idiots you get on on more open foraging groups saying 'i think this might be an acorn' when someone posts a picture of a blackberry.

You also (and this might be of interest to those on this thread 😉) sometimes get on-the-edge-of-your-seat live update threads where someone has actually consumed something dodgy and has to navigate the dubious poisons expertise of some provincial hospitals. They have saved more than one life with their specialist knowledge - in one case I remember a hospital was claiming that watchful waiting was the best approach when someone's child had possibly consumed a chunk of 'destroying angel' mushroom. Thanks to them, the child got transferred to a specialist hospital who knew what they were doing. It's pretty important work they do, all as volunteers.

Amazing! That must be a bit like working for the Poisons Info Hotline... those staff seem to know everything. Major hospitals call them when they have questions. What knowledge they must have! All the different toxins & situations they'd hear about!

I once called them when my dog ate about half a kilo of silica gel sachets. The person I spoke to was great, knew instantly what to do and calmed me down. Lucky we have a service like that.