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?

I know, it was just hoping it was to hear her testify. But I don't like it in general, glad it's not broadcast like that in the UK either.

Yeah I get that! I'm also very interested to see if her defence will put her on the stand (pending what happens on Monday)

Yes I'm very intrigued whether she takes the stand! I think I'm analysing it in a very similar way to @Yazzi but what I'm also intrigued by is whether a jury will stick with logical facts or whether they would be likely swayed by the emotions around it all.

Having seen the jury show on channel 4 (in the UK) where they presented evidence to two juries and one said manslaughter and the other said murder I have lost some faith in juries! There's also OJ Simpson who was acquitted by a jury despite astonishing amounts of forensic evidence.

Yes, I should have clarified. I thought that you agreed that people should keep an open mind. But the open minds in the posts before you were posting their theories on Simon Patterson's involvement in the murder plot.

I can't see how a tragic accident would have distributed the poisonous mushrooms in the duxelles in the individual BW pies so that Erin received none, though.

With DC poisoning, there is a known trajectory. Nobody, and I mean nobody, at any hospital or in the ambulance later during the 90-minute transfer to the city hospital, saw Erin require a toilet. She even drove her son to his flying lesson on Sunday I believe without needing to stop for toilet breaks at any time, although she did enter a servo toilet for 9 seconds, ctv footage showed.

With DC's, the diarrhea first appears 12- 24 hours after ingestion, and after it begins the following 36 hours involve intense and often bloody diarrhea, and vomiting. Then you feel better, but your liver and kidneys are shutting down.

Even if her diarrhea had existed and at some point stopped, her blood and urine tests would have shown something very different to what they did.

I'm a doctor and listening to their evidence on the podcast /abc full text it seems they didn't test the patient's bloods specifically for death cap mushrooms but they tested for markers eg kidney liver electrolytes pH that could be affected. I would be interested if anyone heard anything different to this. So the blood tests are not conclusive that EP didn't have some amount of poison that she had recovered from.

I'm surprised that as a doctor you would not have picked up all the worsening values on the dying patient's tests - none of which appeared on Erin's.

Also, that there is no DC mushroom blood test. The diagnosis is formed by the pattern and intensity of the symptoms, and the tests and visible evidence of the liver and kidneys shutting down.

You also don't get a tiny bit poisoned by DC when you have allegedly eaten the same meal.

Not letting her kids get looked at. Apparently EP didn't like hospitals so that could have contributed. The kids remained well and she knew they hadn't had the mushrooms bit. The kids did get looked at later.

Also, in the same way you cannot control the distribution of DCs "accidentally" included in a duxelle, you cannot control their leakage of toxins throughout the meal, and particularly the meat below them as they are cooked.

It is obvious she did not "scrape" the mushroom duxelle off the children's dinner the following day (after all the lunch guests had been hospitalised) and it is obvious she wasn't worried about the children getting sick, because she did not feed them scraped off BWs, but just a chunk of untainted plain beef leftover from her purchase of ingredients.

The thing is though the evidence the jury has on this is:

1. Erin didn't get extremely unwell, worsen significantly or die
2. Erin was reluctant to remain in hospital
3. It is unusual and suspicious that when you know other people are extremely unwell from eating the same thing you did, to not want to be under close medical attention

Against:

1. Erin's children both report she was unwell with diarrhoea and nausea
2. The doctors who initially assessed Erin said her symptoms indicated she was unwell
3. Another doctor recorded she had symptoms consistent with gastrointestinal illness
4. Erin's husband stating her dislike of hospital and an early self discharge was not unusual for her. Many doctors know patients who act similarly irrationally, from the mainstream perspective, without it being evidence of something further.

Different people will place different weight on those factors.

To me, the two (opposing) factors that remain properly inexplicable at this stage are:

1. why she pretended to have cancer and gathered this particular group, initially including her ex; and
2. why she would kill the party when she had over 18 hours notice that her ex wasn't coming; easily time enough to alter the meal to say scotch fillet with roast potatoes and non-death-cap related veggies.

I think presuming both factors remain inexplicable at the conclusion, people's leaning will depend on which of those two they find the more significant.

Erin did not appear unwell. She said she 'felt clammy' and on the 90 minute ride in the ambulance (during which the paramedic noted she had no need to go to the toilet) she had a headache. Her blood pressure was raised when she first went to the local hospital, but subsided. Unlike the other victims, who arrived vomiting profusely and with uncontrollable and frequent bouts of diarrhea, she was not seen by any staff to need the toilet. Unlike the others, her LFTs were normal. Her lactate levels were normal. Etc.

There are multiple staff quoted giving evidence that Erin was not unwell in the way one would expect after DC poisoning. Here's one:

"Cindy Munro cannulated Erin Patterson and administered the IV fluids when Erin returned to the hospital after initially leaving.

She says Erin didn't look unwell as Ian and Heather.

She says she remembers Ian being so unwell he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow, but Erin was sitting up and didn’t look unwell."

Her children were 9 and 14 at the time and appear to have believed whatever their mother told them. She went to the bathroom 10 times - easily done, or add a dose of laxative to enhance the simulation. But on presentation to the hospital none of that continued - as it would with DC poisoning.

Erin's most significant noted symptom was a high heart rate which subsided. That means nothing in the scheme of things. She simply wasn't sick.

I can't think of any way the others could've been accidentally poisoned when she was not.

why she would kill the party when she had over 18 hours notice that her ex wasn't coming; easily time enough to alter the meal to say scotch fillet with roast potatoes and non-death-cap related veggies.

She sent a long, manipulative text the evening before after Simon said he was too uncomfortable to attend, she ended it saying she hoped he would come.

He didn't reply, but told his parents he would not be going. The first Erin knew he was not coming was when Gail and Don, and Ian and Heather, arrived around 12.30.

Still plenty of ways to call off the murdering. Ooh, I burnt them, the dog ate them! And still plenty of other food she could still serve.

Beef Wellingtons are made with fresh mushrooms, not dried. If the poisonous mushrooms were in the dehydrator doesn’t it make it more likely they were made into flour? Or that Erin collected and dried Death Cap mushrooms for the thrill, then didn’t clean the dehydrator properly before making more mushroom flour from edible foraged mushrooms? We know Erin experimented with adding mushroom flour to recipes from her Facebook friend’s testimony. Erin could have used mushroom flour to make the pâté more richly flavoured, could have even been weeks before the dinner. Is it possible for mushroom flour to be so unevenly mixed through a pâté that some Wellingtons had a lot and others almost none? Erin also would have needed fresh mushrooms for the Wellingtons, which may well have come from Safeway or a Chinese grocer.
I don’t see a smoking gun.Beef Wellingtons are made with fresh mushrooms, not dried. If the poisonous mushrooms were in the dehydrator doesn’t it make it more likely they were made into flour? Or that Erin collected and dried Death Cap mushrooms for the thrill, then didn’t clean the dehydrator properly before making more mushroom flour from edible foraged mushrooms? We know Erin experimented with adding mushroom flour to recipes from her Facebook friend’s testimony. Erin could have used mushroom flour to make the pâté more richly flavoured, could have even been weeks before the dinner. Is it possible for mushroom flour to be so unevenly mixed through a pâté that some Wellingtons had a lot and others almost none? Erin also would have needed fresh mushrooms for the Wellingtons, which may well have come from Safeway or a Chinese grocer.
I don’t see a smoking gun.

I'm really struggling to see any reasonable doubt, other than when it comes to motive. That's the only part I'd have trouble with as a juror and as we've heard, the prosecution don't have to prove motive for a guilty verdict to be reached.

Whether the jury act on that though I guess is a different matter.

EP said she used fresh and dried mushrooms. BW are made with a duxelle of cooked fresh mushrooms- not unusual to include dried ones for added flavour. No reason to think they were added to flour. I'm not even sure flour is used in pate (if she made a mushroom pate instead).

Even so, the toxin from DCs will leach through the rest of the dish. So I don't think this is possible. Colin Mandy hasn't mentioned it yet!

This is your interpretation of the evidence presented, though. The three points I stated (kids evidence, blood pressure, noted as symptomatic consistent with gastro) were all factually true too.

You can discount them, and you might be right to. That's what I'm saying- the weight placed on the evidence in each direction will determine the conclusion, and people will have differing views on this.

I have no idea of the chemical properties of amatoxins, so that’s interesting to know they would leach through all the dish. And you’re right, pâté isn’t usually made with any sort of flour – I was just thinking of the way Erin had added home made mushroom flour to other recipes.

It’s the lack of motive that makes me look for ways this could have been accident / carelessness. What does it even mean to poison four people just because? And adding this “admin” day, on top of the last minute changes to the prosecution case does make me wonder about what exactly is going on – is it a complete shambles? (Though I realise that’s well outside what the jury members should be considering in making their judgement calls).

Well, no. She did not have symptoms of DC mushroom poisoning. This has been stated by witnesses called to the stand during the trial.

The signs and trajectory of DC mushroom poisoning are quite distinct. And EP showed nothing of that nature.

It's not my interpretation of evidence presented - it is the actual evidence presented. You can get a bit anxious and have raised BP, but you cannot just hype yourself into extremely high liver function tests or lactate levels.

Beef Wellingtons are made with fresh mushrooms, not dried

So what? Lots of people change recipes.

Not one medical expert has stated it would be impossible for her to present with the symptoms she did had she had some level of exposure. Which is what you asserting. If it was true, then the prosecution would have asked this question directly, because it would be incredibly compelling evidence.

I'm not going to argue the evidence further- you have a view and I disagree with how you are interpreting the evidence, which you believe is objectively, and I don't. Ultimately maybe the jury will feel similarly to you. I guess we will see.

Obviously if the dehydrator was involved she must have modified the recipe. I was just wondering if mushroom flour added more unusually to another part of the meal could be a possibility, rather than dried mushrooms in the Wellington. Because Erin’s FB friend spoke about the way she had done this with a brownie recipe.

When I've used dried mushrooms, which I have actually purchased from Asian grocers (shitakes are delicious btw) I've rehydrated them with water and chopped them up. The liquid makes a tasty stock. We know EP has ground dehydrated mushrooms into powder before, which could well have been added to fresh ones whilst cooking them. Regardless of cooking method they ended up in the BWs.

She undoubtedly chucked the dehydrator, wiped her phone & consistently lied to police. And so much more. How anyone could come to the conclusion of tragic accident baffles me.

As for EP being sick, her extremely mild symptoms may have been consistent with a mild form of gastro but were clearly nothing like the symptoms of the people who DIED. These are facts, I can't see how any alternative interpretation of the facts is truly possible.

But it's not over yet, maybe the Defence has something earth shattering up their sleeve. They'll need it to have any hope of proving reasonable doubt IMHO.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Death Cap poisoning does not result in "a bit of gastro" - and in any case, no-one in any of the hospitals saw any signs of a bit of gastro.

There is no need to modify the recipe. Plenty of recipes online suggest adding dried mushrooms to the duxelle for extra flavour, as Dusty said.

How was it, in any case, that Erin's individual pastie ended up with zero DCs or DC toxins in it?

I do think her behaviour after the fact can reasonably support the tragic accident alternative (all clumsy and panicked attempts to disguise her role in obtaining the mushroom whether she knew they were death cap in advance or not)- but even if this theory is true, such behaviour was cowardly, morally reprehensible, and criminal. That is why I think at absolute minimum she is guilty BRD of manslaughter.

The 'signs of gastro' were self reported by EP. The only sign actually recorded by medics was elevated BP & heart rate. Which I have every time in a medical setting due to anxiety. It's called white coat hypertension.

So her kids saw her go to the toilet multiple times. Means nothing clinically speaking.