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?

Will the jury be offered manslaughter as an option or would that have to be plea bargained?

I dunno, I still think her arse covering behaviour points more towards murder. Why so much panic over an honest mistake, especially when speaking up about the foraged mushrooms to begin with could have saved lives? If it was an honest mistake she wouldn't necessarily have known they were DCs- there are plenty of other dodgy mushrooms that will make you sick but not kill you.

She didn’t have enough pâté for all of the Wellingtons and gave herself the dud one? Presumably she’d have told police that, though. But if she’s trying desperately to pretend it couldn’t have happened, even to convince herself, maybe she wouldn’t acknowledge that?
I can totally see how that looks like clutching at straws! But for me a lack of motive just makes premeditation impossible.
Posters convinced Erin is guilty of pre-meditated murder, are you filling in the motive for the prosecution? If so, what do you believe is the motive? And why do you think the prosecution won’t specify this motive?
If not, do you think it’s more like, she didn’t have a reason to kill them but she wanted to see if she could?
I know very little about court cases and I can’t get my head around why the prosecution can’t identify a motive. It seems truly bizarre to get to this point without having any idea what motivated Erin.

Firstly, a duxelle is not a pâté. There is no way a duxelle could be mixed in such a way that one guest gets no poisonous mushrooms in their serve.

I believe the prosecution are not putting forward a motive, but the inference is there. I would think she was impelled by vengeance, rage, bitterness, and a desire to control.

I can see how, if you're not familiar with, for example, certain Cluster B personality disorder people, then none of her motivation or actions would make sense. They don't make sense to the normal person.

Also, your idea she ran out of the mushroom duxelle does not hold up. She says she "scraped" it off the leftovers she fed her children the following evening.

She could possibly have got away with this with a bit more intelligence. She just needed to say she’d foraged and fucked up. No lies about Asian shops, no dumping the dehydrator. Spent a bit more time locked in a toilet so her symptoms were more convincing. Yes, there would have been doubt but probably not at this level and less likely that a conviction would have been gained.

It's not that the prosecution can't argue whether there's a motive. It's that in order to establish a finding of murder you have to demonstrate all the elements for murder are there. The elements for murder in NSW (presume the same in Victoria) are well explained by the judicial commission if you are interested, but essentially come down to a voluntary physical act (actus reus) accompanied by intention to kill (mens rea). Therefore motive doesn't have to be established by a prosecution in order for a finding of murder to be made, legally.

However, being able to establish a motive can be enormously persuasive in demonstrating the intent to kill existed, in situations where an otherwise alternative could be an accidental killing (such as, a crude example, taking out a life insurance policy on someone and then feeding them a peanut based dish and then claiming you didn't know that there were peanuts in the sauce).

Here's some of the evidence given so far re degrees of sickness:

Nurse Lisa Shannon is up next in the witness box.

Ms Shannon had worked for five years at Korumburra Hospital, which had two beds in its urgent care centre.

The set-up at the hospital means one nurse cares for both patients.

Ms Shannon says at about 10am the day after the lunch, both Don and Gail presented to the urgent care and reported their symptoms.

"Donald was considerably sicker than Gail, on arrival," Ms Shannon says.

"I remained in the urgent care room, couldn't leave because I was quite busy with both of those patients."

She says she needed to assist Don to use the bathroom roughly every 10 minutes.

Don and Gail were both given IV fluids and an ECG was taken, as well as blood tests.

Don and Gail said they had taken an anti-nausea medication earlier that morning, Shannon says.

“They were requiring one-on-one care. They were very unwell,” Shannon says.

"It became obvious that Donald was becoming worse, he was very lethargic, blood pressure was going down a little bit, pulse was going up a little bit," Ms Shannon says.

She tells the court it was clear he was in a worse state than when he arrived.

Ms Shannon says Simon Patterson arrived to see his parents that morning, and she was aware that two other patients had arrived with similar symptoms.

When the results, of i-STAT blood tests returned, Ms Shannon says it was clear something out of the ordinary was occurring with Don.

"In regards to Donald, it was extremely abnormal," she says.
She tells the court that Don had a lactate of 6 [mmol/L], which was indicative of serious health issues such as sepsis or liver damage.

According to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health, normal lactate levels are less than 1.0 mmol/L in all age groups.

The reading would require transfer to a tertiary hospital with a larger ICU.

And this:

Before a break, Dr Rogers has Dr Beth Morgan give a very specific definition for lactate, which she says is present when tissues are not receiving enough oxygen or cells are not metabolising correctly.

Lactate levels were now at 10, when the normal range should be from 0.5 to 1.

"This was a very, very high lactate," she says.

Dr Morgan says Don also had abnormal readings for other markers such as potassium, urea and creatinine.

She says the fear of significant organ damage was raised as a result of these tests.

A liver function test was then run on Don, with markers such as the aspartate transaminase level measured.

The levels were highly abnormal, and Dr Morgan says the result made her very concerned about liver damage that Don had sustained.

he concluded that gastro brought on by food poisoning alone would not account for his illness.

As night closed, a CT scan was conducted, which was able to rule out an ischemic bowel. She says she needed to rule out ischemic bowel disease – “dead bowel,” she says – to determine the cause of Don’s illness.

About 10:30pm, Dr Morgan says she texted the toxicology department, who ordered her to find out more about what was served at lunch.

"I was concerned that this wasnt just gastroenteritis caused by food poisoning," Dr Morgan says.

"There was a discussion about the presentation and how it was quite severe, but the onset of symptoms was quite delayed.

"This would be more indicative of a serious toxin syndrome as opposed to a food poisoning."

Dr Morgan says the toxicologist on call told her that if it was a toxin poisoning, it was most likely due to the ingestion of the amanita phalloides (death cap mushroom) toxin.

And also here:

At about 12:22am, fresh VBG tests showed that Gail was now also showing elevated lactate levels.

The emergency room doctor also contacted the toxicologist, who recommended a repeat of liver function tests, and the administering of NAC if necessary.

At 1:53am, Dr Morgan reviewed Gail and spoke to her at bedside, when she discovered that Gail had only eaten half her portion of beef Wellington at lunch.

At 2:08am, the results of the new liver function test arrived, showing that her liver function was worsening over time.

Yet another test showed worsening signs, and lactate levels over 5.6.

It triggered Dr Morgan to move Gail to the ICU.

At 6.50am the next morning, after conversations with the toxicology department, it was suggested that doctors begin administering the antidote silibinin and the antibiotic rifampicin.

The court hears that meanwhile, Ian and Heather were still at the Leongatha Hospital and had continued vomiting all night.

Doctor Beth Morgan was a medical registrar at Monash Health, which is a junior doctor working under the supervision of a consultant physician, at the time of the poisonings.

Her role involved taking referrals from the emergency department and conducting assessments to determine the level of care required.

She was working a night shift and was the doctor on call at Dandenong hospital when Don and Gail were admitted.

“(Don’s) initial history was documented as 30 to 40 episodes of vomiting and diarrhoea that had started since midnight the night prior,” she said. “Donald was also reported to be quite sweaty and lightheaded and displaying symptoms of feeling very faint.”

A liver function test showed his aspartate aminotransferase level – which is an enzyme primarily found in the liver – was extremely high.

“Normal for an AST is between five and 35. Donald’s AST was 583,” she said.

Meanwhile, Erin self-reports a bit of gastro.

@velvetandsatin thanks for reproducing all of that.

I just can't see how this is explainable under the tragic accident/honest mistake scenario. If this was the case she must've barely inhaled some of the shroom powder but still managed to eat a BW containing next to none of it. And panic simply doesn't explain the lying.

I know sometimes if you tell one lie, you end up having to tell more to cover the 1st one and on it goes but this is surely extreme. And she didn't need to lie in the first place if it was an honest mistake.

I agree sometimes motive isn't fathomable. Revenge, bitterness, years of suppressed anger, perceived loss of control are all possible in my view. On that I'm guessing, but I'm not guessing on the evidence presented in court.

I don't feel the medical evidence is the gotcha you think it is.

Yes the other guests were very sick and EP wasn't. That's not in dispute. The other guests had severe liver failure consistent with death cap mushrooms. That's the only thing I can get from the medical evidence.

Different people react differently to toxins and presumably the portion EP had had a very minimal amount of poison if she was indeed sick with gastro symptoms. As you say we only have her kids and her word for it though generally children I'd say would be less likely to lie to police than adults. She could also have faked it. But I don't think the medical evidence can give us the men's rea

@velvetandsatin I had to look up duxelle. I’ve never eaten beef Wellington in my life, so my go to was Australian Women’s Weekly, which has chicken or duck liver pâté in the recipe.

“I believe the prosecution are not putting forward a motive, but the inference is there. I would think she was impelled by vengeance, rage, bitterness, and a desire to control.”
I think that actually makes more sense than just a motivation to kill Simon, but for some reason going ahead even though he wasn’t there.
“I can see how, if you're not familiar with, for example, certain Cluster B personality disorder people, then none of her motivation or actions would make sense. They don't make sense to the normal person.”
Do you think the prosecution have decided that not offering any motive at all will be more convincing for the jury than trying to explain personality disorder?

Just on cluster b personality disorders (such as narcissism, borderline personality disorder etc)- I can't remember reading anything about EP having any psych assessments done post arrest. Not that they would necessarily be conclusive, psych tests are notoriously fallible but I wonder if any were actually done?

Personally as an atheist, as EP has reported to be (both in the media and by locals I know, although I'm unsure how reliable that is) being married to a devout baptist, dealing with his family and having to send my kids to a faith based school would fill me with a lot of suppressed rage. Yes, I know she went to church too sometimes however I'm local enough to know she didn't go that often. There's a little bit of motive right there. People have killed for less.

I’m trying to work out when she got rid of Simon’s uneaten pasty and the grey plates.
It must have been before she attended the hospital otherwise she wouldn’t have been so happy fit the police to look for the leftovers.
But her kids were at home from Saturday evening so she couldn’t have left the house then.
actually where was the daughter while she was taking her son for the flying lesson? Was she in the car as well? That wasn’t mentioned

Thanks @velvetandsatin. If the jury are hearing evidence in such detail about the sickness the 4 had and Erin is still able to go 90 minutes without using the bathroom after eating the same meal and there is no evidence she had the same elevated markers the only logical conclusion (for me) is that her meal was not actually the same meal at all. Which can only be a deliberate decision by Erin.

Erin will have had a forensic psych assessment while in gaol.

I don't think Velvet considers the medical evidence in itself to be a gotcha, at least not on my reading! But it is crucial in establishing that a) she wasnt really sick, b) she knew she wasn't going to become fatally sick and c) she knew her children weren't going to become sick. It also lends authority to the prosecution case that she was evasive when dealing with medics, and that she's an accomplished liar.

There's no one smoking gun in this case.

I would've thought so too. I wonder if it will be brought into evidence? Maybe it didn't show anything that would benefit either side.

It makes you wonder why people with such wildly differing approaches to faith get together, eh? Can’t be easy living in a small town surrounded by your DH’s family. But they did go travelling when the kids were younger, didn’t they? Quite unconventional… He seemed to be ok with doing that, at least initially. I must have a look at her own background. She’d lost her own mum, hadn’t she? Feels as though the whole family setup was complex.

It is pretty clear that if you imbibe DCs you are affected. You may be lucky enough to not die, but that is quite rare. You don't somehow magically manage to have no measurable - by that I mean blood and urine test results, for starters - biological effects. High lactate. Sky high LFTs. None of which EP had, they all were in the normal range.

It's not a gotcha, it's just basic facts.

People don't react differently to DCs to the point they have no clinical signs. It is the deadliest mushroom poison.

None of the nurses, doctors, or paramedics saw Erin need the toilet, or had to help her to the toilet. Instead, as I posted above:

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.

and

Paramedic Eleyne Spencer says Erin told them she had had diarrhoea up to 30 times before going to hospital.

But during the one hour and 40 minute trip from Leongatha to the Monash Medical Centre, she did not need to use the toilet.

It doesn't matter if you can't read between the lines from statements like that and draw the obvious conclusion. I am pretty sure the jury can. It simply isn't possible to be a bit immune to DC, or to get just a little bit sick. But what a coincidence that of all the portions the one on the orange plate seemed to contain so very little DC (aka zero, the inference of all of this says).

Yes - the individual wellingtons and her behaviour after the fact are very telling.

https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/courts-law/exhusband-of-mushroom-mum-erin-patterson-almost-died-from-sudden-gut-illness/news-story/db6624ef427b9d965b50e7f1fd163206

I wanted to go back and watch the 1st media interview EP did just after the lunch. Apologies for ads etc.

The same things resonate with me now- the lack of real tears, checking her fingers for tears that weren't there, praying that Don pulled through because her kids loved him when he was dead, it was Ian still alive. Ignoring all questions about the meal, saying Gail was the mother she never had as she'd lost her own Mum, when we now know she & Gail had little relationship at all. Me me me. I guess you could explain some of it by panic. I just find something very disingenuous about this alone, and it's before we knew about the lying.

Yes, definitely very odd.