The mushroom poisoning in Vic.... I am gripped - Part 2

[ImustLearn2Cook]

Hi everyone, Aussie Mumsnetter here. As some have requested a new thread be started by an Aussie I decided to do it.

I am still gripped by this case and like many, I am awaiting updates of new information.

Will a matching donor for a liver for Ian be found soon? I hope he makes a full recovery.

Will he be able to shed new light on the lunch they all shared?

And of course is she guilty of deliberately poisoning them or was it an innocent mistake?

Big up yourself for having a superior understanding of how the law charges people then. Perhaps you could explain how someone can attempt to murder someone who isn't present for the rest of us dum dums (as thus far no one on any of the other forums has supplied the legal technicalities of this either). Even hiring a hitman to kill someone doesn't count as attempted murder.

That's an oddly hostile response.

Here is one Australian definition of attempted murder:

"Attempted murder is any act done by the defendant, towards the commission of a murder, which goes beyond mere preparation, and could not reasonably be regarded as having any purpose other than commission of that crime. To be guilty of attempted murder, the defendant must have intended to carry out any/all acts necessary to result in him/her committing a murder, even if those acts did not eventuate."

Preparing a poisoned meal - and going ahead and serving it - shows intent to murder. If SP had not pulled out of attending that lunch at the last minute, he too would be dead. That does seem to have been her intent.

Sorry, yeah it was. I apologise. I read up on quite a few diff forums as to what grounds a person could be charged with attempted murder in direct relation to this case and most people were baffled, including some fairly expert people with verified expertise. Also a lot of people are thinking the previous attempted murders are a bit unlikely to stick in court unless the law enforcement have some pretty hefty evidence. However, I do also 'get' it as you explain. We'll just have to wait for the court case for the real test of all this.

So this morning I followed the bread crumbs from Essential Baby closing to everybump and have spent the last hour in tears.

First I read about Bad Cat passing and then beautiful Ella 😢😢I'm going to need to go to my happy place for a while.

What I want to know is why food hydrators haven't featured on the central aisle at Aldi so far this year. 😉

Ummm….I didn’t think we had many poisonous mushrooms in this country. Then I had a quick google. Death cap is common in England… I imagine also the rest of the uk.
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2022/10/poisonous-mushrooms/

A close friend of DM’s who lived in London all her life and then moved to countryside a few years ago enjoyed foraging for mushrooms.

She once got sick after doing this and had to have hospital treatment for this. She thought she knew which ones were safe. She now doesn’t forage for mushrooms.

Assuming the motive is money - she didn't want the husband to have half/a proportion of her inheritance....

If the husband stands to inherit from his parents (and potentially aunt/uncle), then their deaths would benefit her financially.

If she couldn't kill the husband (despite several attempts) then in her desperation his family was the next target.

Grim. I feel for the kids. Their lives are likely destroyed by this.

One definitely needs to know how to ID mushrooms confidently if one is going to ingest them.
I haven’t seen Death Caps personally- or maybe haven’t looked hard enough.
Fly agaric live in birch forests
Death Cap in Oak forests

The kids are the ones I feel sorry for too. Their close relatives have been killed (whether intentional or otherwise), by their DM who’s also tried to kill their DF three times before. I guess if Erin gets jail her ex DH (their DF) will get full custody.

I just don’t get her thinking at all, and how Erin ever thought she’d get away with it.

I had no idea there were that many poisonous mushrooms in the UK.

@Mummyoflittledragon I can't open that site in Oz for some reason, but I found a similar piece in The Independant.

That's so interesting, I've seen many UK cooking shows where people forage and eat (Jamie Oliver & Antonio Carluccio for eg)

I've always known not to eat mushrooms in Oz. You just don't. I probably mentioned on the othet thread that I did a 1-day mushroom-picking course in Daylesford. We foraged for hours then the fungus-expert inspected our haul and threw about 75% of them out. The rest were cooked for lunch.

Erin must've had some decent knowledge to do this. One report I can't seem to find now mentioned nightshades as a possible poison for the previous attempts on SP. Things like Belladonna, Deadly Nightshade etc. Totally unsubstantiated but THAT would be a twist!

No way I'd eat wild mushrooms here in Australia either. I even gave the supermarket ones a suspicious bit of side-eye last week.

Except for the magic mushrooms I had in my Monash uni days....

I hadn't made that connection before. But makes sense.

Yes, I vaguely remember eating some small, blue foraged mushrooms in my La Trobe days. But they were foraged by an expert- he had dreads down to his knees, played the flute and wore rainbow overalls. I trusted him 😛

I too have collected and eaten Psilocybe semilanceata when they were fully legal, when I was a teenager and had no responsibilities..
They are easily distinguished when one gets one's eye in - But nowadays {many years later} they are ''Class A'' and illegal to collect in U.K

They used to be very popular.
In my dotage I still see people looking for them, and definitely picking the wrong ones- I have warned them.
Not every small mushroom is a 'Magic' mushroom.

You don't want to pick 'Tragic' mushrooms.

Indeed! Our house backs on to a reserve with lots of trees and funghi in season. I watch people collecting them in bags from the kitchen window and think "Sheesh, I hope they know what they're doing".

Or to quote Chong (of Cheech & Chong fame) - "I hope you're not busy for the next month".

Lol re Cheech and Chong
But the chances of dying from a misidentified toadstool 🍄 or mushroom is too great to take chances with.
I was taught by an experienced person as to what to look for.

Whenever I collected my own ( then legal) magic mushrooms I never felt Ill

But once took some prepared by someone else-
And urgh the dirty nausea absolutely put me off EVER taking them again.

I’m certain they picked some wrong- uns
The person with me also felt horrendous.

We held our nausea to us like a precious object for hours and hours-
Grim grim grim.

They then became illegal so just as well

Are they illegal here? Just had a quick look, and it seems cultivating and buying/selling them IS illegal, but nothing said about picking and eating them. Bit hard to police I guess.

@oakleaffy We held our nausea to us like a precious object for hours and hours made me crack up, god you've brought back some memories!

I was flat on my back literally unable to move for a few hours, staring at the sky, then had a rush of energy & decided to walk to the servo. My friends found me sitting in front of the drinks fridge, eating a sausage roll & babbling about the 1000's of colours in the fridge & how they all had different feelings. The servo attendant said he didn't mind b/c I wasn't annoying anyone.

Then the nausea/vomiting. As you say, grim grim grim. I was already hallucinating about colours, so I was spewing rainbows. Not in the servo thankfully.

Bloody hell, the things we did to ourselves!

I think in the UK there's supposed to be some simple-but-complicated law whereby you can pick wild magic mushrooms but you're not allowed to process them and then consume. Something like that.

Btw I found this article from the Guardian Australia in 2015. I remember reading it at the time because an ex-boyfriend's mother was a forager (this was in England), and I had apparently gravely insulted her by refusing to eat her dodgy mushrooms. The BTL comments were scathing about the (lack of) safety information and measures, so I felt a bit vindicated!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/australia-food-blog/2015/apr/20/foraging-for-wild-mushrooms-in-australia#:~:text=Your%20best%20bet%20then%20is,we%20know%20as%20a%20mushroom.

EP has put her Mount Waverley townhouse up for sale. Her legal fees must be enormous, and ongoingly so.

Accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson lists Melbourne house for sale | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Lucky for her she has so many assets to sell off. Her lawyers must be salivating!

Not sure money always buys a winning legal defence though. I thought she might go with Robert Richter KC, he loves defending the indefensible (George Pell for one). Shudders.

Should qualify that I'm not truly comparing Erin and George, quite a difference there, but Richter has some dodgy defendants in his past. He'd love her.

Wonder who would want to buy a house off of this bloody killer?
I wouldn't want her energy anywhere near.

Eh. Literally anyone 😂 it’s not like people died there. I hope.