The mushroom poisoning in Vic...... we are gripped!.....Part 3

[Dustyblue]

New thread! Cheers @echt for noticing!

SO, it seems she's saying yes I foraged for mushrooms, yes I dehydrated them, they are delicious but NO I didn't use any in the BW lunch?

But yes I accept there must have been some DC in the BW?

This woman is doing my head in.

I think she said she dehydrated the foraged mushrooms and put them in a tupperware container along with the stinky dehydrated ones she bought from an Asian grocer whose name and location she's forgotten - as you do!

So it's 50/50 if hers contained death caps, or the grocer ones did - hoping to hedge off manslaughter?

But then it is hard to keep track of her shifting stories.

So her defence is that she’s forgetful about grocery store locations, she likes foraging for mushrooms in death cap locations but doesn’t actually pick death caps - except that oops somehow some death caps got into her home and killed her relatives. And miraculously she was not killed but had 9 seconds of diarrhoea and she put her faith in God that she could feed leftovers to her kids without them dying.

And the wiped phones and dumped dehydrator mean nothing nor does the invented cancer story - am surprised she isn’t trying to claim Ian’s memory of that is a death cap hallucination!

Thanks for the new thread, @Dustyblue.

And @Choux pretty much sums up the defence. Is there precedent for this: the whoops, silly me defence?

Erin Patterson murder trial live: Lunch cook describes planning 'special' beef Wellington meal - ABC News

This is a very strange way to make a BW.

"I used the egg flip again to, I guess, lift a little bit [of the duxelles] out of the oven try and put on each steak ... and then wrapped each one in filo, and then wrapped each one in puff pastry," she says.

By 'egg flip' I assume she means a spatula?

Gordon Ramsay would be swearing his head off.

Beef Wellington Recipe | Gordon Ramsay Recipes

I cannot imagine what her defence was thinking, putting her on the stand. I suspect she insisted, just like she insisted the trial be held locally, not in Melbourne.

The only reason I can think of, to put her on the stand, is to try to summon sympathy from the jurors. Even people like me who are convinced of her guilt would still find it hard to send her to prison for decades and away from her kids.

But facts are facts.

Meanwhile- I was in Leongatha yesterday & got chatting to an older lady about this. I'm about the same age as EP, this older woman made me laugh my head off!

Me: I'm pretty convinced she did it
Older Woman: Of course she did, and she's ruined it for the rest of us
Me: What do you mean??
Older woman: She should've stuck with killing her husband. But she went large & tried to kill his parents too.
Me: You think so?
Older Woman: Oh yes. I've been tempted to mushroom mine, or give him the tontine treatment, haven't you? (Tontine is a brand of pillow)
Me: Actually I'm seperated from mine
Older Woman: Even more reason!
Me: (gasping with laughter) what do you mean, she ruined it for the rest of us?
Older Woman: Because now anytime a man turns up in hospital with organ failure they're going to look hard at the wife, aren't they? She's ruined it for women across Gippsland!

Bless her little cotton socks!😂

To convict someone of murder the prosecution needs to prove actus reus (guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind). Both have to be present at the same time.

if she poisoned them, but didn’t mean to then she can’t be found guilty. Whether she meant to is a matter of the jury- but the standard the prosecution needs to meet is “beyond reasonable doubt”. So Erin doesn’t need to prove she didn’t mean to - just needs to show enough to inject reasonable doubt.

it’s very possible she won’t be convicted.

You don't hsve to "mean to kill" for murder, it's also being reckless as to causing grievous bodily harm in the UK. Similar in Aus - gbh or a reckless indifference to human life.

now she made herself sick after the meal due to weight issues

Older woman: She should've stuck with killing her husband. But she went large & tried to kill his parents too.
Me: You think so?
Older Woman: Oh yes. I've been tempted to mushroom mine, or give him the tontine treatment, haven't you?
She's not wrong... I've been watching this since it happened and am obsessed. I thought she looked guilty from the first time I saw her. She was crying crocodile tears for the benefit of reporters she chose to speak to outside her home. I can't believe EP took the stand.

you would normally invite your dc to the family meal surely

they have to prove that she intended to cause GBH or that she was reckless.

if she has been regularly foraging for mushrooms, mixing them in with store bought ones and eating them herself for years without issue- then is it reckless to the point of criminality to accidentally serve the wrong type?

Her story is that she sent the children out because she thought she had cancer and was seeking the adults support and advice in relation to the children

she apparently offered them a choice, the meal or the cinema

Then doesn’t that support the idea that she didn’t realise anyone was going to get hurt?

my take: I think if she had set out to kill a bunch of people, she would have done a better job at getting away with it. She had time to plan it, it wasn’t an impulsive thing. She had no hope of getting away with poisoning four (or five if her ex had turned up) people and not going to jail - she’s someone who loves her kids and still had a lot to lose.

I think she’ll make out reasonable doubt.

thing is we are hearing her defence now

"That morning, Victorian health official Sally Ann Atkinson began asking Erin about the food poisoning outbreak and the origins of the ingredients.
Erin says she told her the same thing she'd told others, that the majority of the ingredients were bought at the Leongatha Woolworths, with dried mushrooms also used.

She says she told Ms Atkinson the truth.

The court is then shown some of the text messages between Ms Atkinson and Ms Patterson.

In a lengthy message, Ms Atkinson asks Erin to describe the packaging of the dried mushrooms and anything she can remember about the store where she might have bought them.

At the same time as these messages were being sent, Ms Patterson says she was either with her children or in an appointment related to them.
Erin says she was feeling "very anxious ... it was very overwhelming".

Anxious & overwhelmed I can understand. Lying left right & centre about the ingredients is inexcusable.

she did a factory reset of her phone because she didnt want detectives to see her google search and pictures of mushrooms!
edited

@Dustyblue that’s what makes me think she could be innocent. If she’d set out to poison people she’d have covered her tracks better and had her story straight.

she could come across as someone panicking or in shock - having found out that she has accidentally poisoned four people!

Another way of looking at it is that she thought she'd done enough to cover her tracks but that she was wrong.

If you don't have a good working knowledge of police investigations and forensics, and if you don't expect there to be any living witnesses, you could easily overlook stuff. Eg that even if you use multiple phones and wipe one of them multiple times, the police can still discover where you've been with them.

😂@Dustyblue

@GasperyJacquesRobertsbut if she was trying to take everyone out- why did she go ahead when her ex cancelled? It’s him she was maddest at.

why did she bother lying about cancer if she didn’t think anyone hearing her would be alive a week later?

if she’d planned it, what story was she planning to stick to?

people were obviously going to notice that a bunch of people dropped dead after eating her lunch- what was the plan to get away with that? She doesn’t seem to have one.

Just joining new thread.