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?

her and her husband separated 3 times

Oh wow-we’ve waited for this for 2 years!

She is clearly setting the scene that she had left against medical advice before.

In June 2007, Erin and Simon got married at the Korumburra Anglican Church, the court hears.
She says they didn't get married at the Baptist church because "we wanted Ian and Heather to be able to come and relax as guests rather than have jobs for the day like they would've if we'd got married at Korumburra Baptist [Church]."
At the time of her wedding, her parents were on a holiday 'in Russia, on a train'," she says.
She says Ian Wilkinson's son walked her down the aisle.

So she got married without her parents there and at a church where Ian couldn’t officiate. I imagine both sets of parents might have been hurt by those decisions.

Actually I can see how both those facts would help see her in a better light- maybe her parents chose to be away rather than attend (poor Erin) and I can see the logic in wanting Ian to enjoy the wedding rather than working (kind Erin)

Freaking hell! I can't believe she's doing it!

“The defence will call Erin Patterson,” he said.

(Re the gushing interview/crying) To be fair though, what could she realistically say with a load of cameras shoved in her face in such a situation? and lots of ND people don’t react typically in those situations.

She clearly has had a very strange upbringing. Perhaps she yearned for a normal family and then if that didn’t work out, she felt deeply hurt and abandoned? Hard to work out her psyche but there’s clearly lots going on. Hence I was thinking initially: don’t jump to any conclusions.

Some of you seem to have been utterly convinced she is guilty right from the off, and I can’t understand how you can be so adamant. I was convinced but I’m doubting myself again. Paranoid people do weird shit with their phones all the time but they aren’t all killers. Mental health issues can really mess with your life.

Paranoid people do weird shit with their phones all the time but they aren’t all killers. Mental health issues can really mess with your life

It will be this that the defence will lean on. As I would.

For me it’s things like seeing posts about DCM then pretty much going straight to that location. A dumped dehydrator with traces of DCM and her fingerprints. Wiped phones. A different coloured plate. Everyone becoming seriously ill/ dying apart from her and her DC and an unconvincing story re how she was afterwards (report from hospital, the 30 second stop with supposed diarrhoea). Etc.

Is the benchmark for the jury "Beyond reasonable doubt" in Australia? If so, my guess is Not Guilty due to lack of evidence.

However, her behaviour is just so strange, and the whole setup that day was very odd. But different plates, a kitchen item in the dump/tip, not going to the loo, all that stuff is not (IMO) evidence of guilt, it's just odd.

It will, as we all know boil down to the evidence. I don't think there is enough of that to convict of murder. Just my opinion.

Good thing I'm not the gambling type! 😲

her finger prints were on the dehydrator along with traces of dc mushrooms, cctv shows her car dumping the dehydrator, she had a different colour plate

also paper work related to the dehydrator in her kitchen!, can't remember where she bought the mushrooms

The lying is so prolific she can't keep track of it. That's the only consistency in this case.

I kept an open mind when it first happened but now- yes, I'm convinced she's guilty. I'd ask the opposite- how could anyone think she's innocent? That is- how far can 'panic' go as a defence? How many lies can be reasonably explained here?

The spiritual awakening is brand new. Sheesh, if that isn't a barrel-scraping, pants-shitting response (pardon the pun) then I don't know what is.

She has a lot of self-pity for someone with no pity for the horrendous suffering of her victims - no pity, even if you want to bend over backwards, ignore the fake cancer story used to explain the lunch and lack of children present, and imagine this all was some terrible accident, by refusing to say she'd foraged for those mushrooms, even after it was made clear that clarity about the source and then early treatment was essential if they had any chance of staying alive.

Exactly.

Even if, for some reason, the jury can't find her guilty of murder they must at least find her culpable in these people's deaths. That is, manslaughter at the least.

What I remember is the reference to putting stuff in the brownies and doing blind tests prior to all of this. Putting stuff in people‘s food without their knowledge, or posing it as a game to guess which had powdered mushrooms in or not etc. I might go back and re-read that stuff. It’s bizarre behaviour, of course I can see that, and I certainly would never do that but I can see she could have got carried away with that sort of thing. It’s really stupid but it kind of supports the accident defence. That’s why I spoke a while back of the idea of wicked recklessness as an alternative test of intent for murder (just musing on morality/public policy - I know nothing about the applicable law here so I know it isn’t relevant here) : it’s more than just recklessness, it’s being wickedly reckless as to consequences …. Which feels about right to me. You play with fire, you need to know fire is dangerously. Lethal. And mushrooms - well, they can be fine, like fire, but sometimes not. A bit like fire. Which I suppose suggests they’re something you should never PLAY with. So is doing so wickedly reckless ? Arguably yes.

What clinches it for me regardless is not fessing up afterwards. That was unforgivable.

Yes, definitely at least manslaughter.

I think if I was her child I’d find it easier to think my mum was a troubled manslaughterer than a murderer. That might sway me if I was a juror, if I am honest.

That's appalling.

I thought you said the fact she was a woman and a mummy had nothing to do with your scepticism of her guilt.

ah well. People are strange eh. They change their minds!!

Ultimately I can never know. It doesn’t matter what I think . Nobody can ever know. Unless she admits it.

If Erin didn't want her children to think of her as a murderer, then ideally she would not have murdered their grandparents, and great-aunt, and attempted to murder their great-uncle and their father.

And she didn't just kill them - it is a horrifying and incredibly painful way to die.

Well, if it was a father on the stand with exactly the same facts (which is impossible because men are not women and don’t give birth / have the attendant post partum stuff) I would perhaps give him the same benefit of the doubt, if at the end of the evidence there was doubt, and there might be. There’s definitely a bit of doubt for me. I’ve gone back to that. So yes the parent side of it does come into it. Not so sure about the mummy aspect. Statistically women absolutely do make up a much smaller proportion of those who kill, alone, with deliberate intent and without self defence or other factors such as diminished responsibility being involved so there is no reason for you to scoff - it is perfectly rational for that to be taken into account in trying to infer state of mind.