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

[Dustyblue]

New thread! Cheers @echt for noticing!

This is reminding me so much of when Lucy Letby gave evidence in her trial.

@stubbornhabits my post was based on something i recall a judge saying to a defendant in another trial but I couldn’t remember which one or I would have quoted it properly. Was it Lucy Letby’s trial then?

@velvetandsatin I think her defence team was a bit stuck. There has to be a defence or she needs to plead guilty. The nature of the crime mean there isn’t a host of witnesses to call so the defence has to be Erin on the stand. The cross examination was always going to be tough because her version of events doesn’t make any sense. Too much memory loss, contradictions and lies. I don’t know how the defence lawyer is going to be able to construct the defence’s closing statements to give her a shot at being acquitted through reasonable doubt.

I’m delurking to say surely there doesn’t have to be a defense - the onus is on the prosecution to prove beyond all reasonable doubt. All the defence needs to do is reinforce (or introduce) doubt in/to the jury. It will definitely be interesting to see how her defence lawyer tries to pull it all together - I wonder if the mess and confusion will help him consolidate what he wants in the jury’s recollection.

I have been listening to the Mushroom Pod Daily, and have followed the case from the start and since the trial started I’ve switched between thinking she’s guilty, or stupid and panicked.

I wonder if she wanted to make them very sick, but not actually kill them. And then it all went wrong.

She’s obviously not a smart murderer, but I think she could be a very deluded and mentally unwell person who lives partly in a fantasy world.

I think the fact she used death caps - and had pics of them carefully weighed out on her phone - means she wanted to kill them, rather than just make them sick.

Here's a link to the timeline, which has more info.

The key people, timeline and evidence in Erin Patterson's mushroom murder trial - ABC News

being a liar doesn’t make her a killer.

maybe she is a fantasist

Her whole persona seems to be of someone who craves attention. The lying about cancer is a prime example. Whether she was generally like this or whether it was part of a ploy to attention from her ex I don’t know.

i wonder if she thought his parents were ill/dead would it throw them back together? That she could support/help him and spend time with him and ultimately he’d then want her back?

I’ve known someone who made illnesses up trying to get back with an ex before.

Just reading the ABC blog and there is no other defence. She is the sole witness.

That still seems to be bizarre but I don’t know much about how trials work. Is it usual to have no other defence witnesses? Even if it is just some character witnesses.

The lying about a serious health issue (cancer) was to get them all there, as it has been said during the trial that it was very unusual to have them over - two hadn’t been there for years, since the children were very little, I’m not sure about the others.

I don’t think she thought they’d be around for much longer afterwards for people to find out about the lies she’d told.

She clearly has issues, but based on everything I’ve read I think she intended to kill them. She likely put her ex into a coma a while back so she knows how seriously they can affect you. This time she weighed the mushrooms out.

Is she still claiming she bought the mushrooms from an Asian grocers? If so why haven't any other customers got unwell or died?

Deluded, ill, naive, chldish, vulnerable,m fantasist, murderous... all these things are not mutually exclusive.

She now admits she also foraged for some mushrooms which may have got mixed in with the (imaginary) asian grocery mushrooms.

@courageiscontagious It’s not just the lying, it’s a series of actions - evidence.

She initially claimed that she'd purchased dried mushrooms from some Asian grocery in Melbourne, in possibly Glen Waverley or Mount Waverley.

She owns a house in Mt Waverley and would absolutely know which shop she went to. I lived in Melbourne nearby and know the area well.

She happily sent the health dept on a wild goose chase. Really- if you genuinely thought your dried mushrooms from a shop had caused this- you'd want them out of the supply chain.

It's been proved that no death caps are possibly available in shops in Australia, and in fact they don't grow in most asian countries.

Also the ex being hospitalised and it being put down to a ‘mystery illness’ with no suspicion at all on her probably gave her an added sense of confidence if she was involved in that (which based on symptoms etc seems very possible).

I feel like she put all her effort into planning it but forgot to work out what to do afterwards.

I think she thought they'd all be dead before they were, and that all the traces of DC in their bodies would be gone, and they would not suspect DC poisoning, let alone treat them for it, and have one guest survive.

She didn't plan for any of that, and started deflecting, blocking, and spinning more and more outlandish stories. I think she's been reading Websleuths during the trial, also, because she's borrowed answers from them - the coffee that no-one with diarrhea would drink, that he son says she was drinking the morning after the lunch, is now a herbal tea, etc. Possibly ginger and lemon!

But she can't remember her previous lies, even ones told the same day, and keeps contradicting her own evidence - as well as claiming everyone else is either lying or misremembering, including medical staff who have notes to refer to, and her own children, and of course the survivor, Ian Wilkinson.

In short, she's nuts. And very arrogant and cold, and also lacking in any empathy for her victims, which you would think she would at least try to fake.

It's what the lies are about though. She and the defence now admit that there were death cap mushrooms in the meal. So then the question is did they get in the food accidentally or deliberately? Her story is that she foraged for mushrooms and these foraged mushrooms accidentally ended up mixed in with the Asian grocery dried mushrooms. However their is no evidence she foraged at all - both her children said they never knew her to forage despite her claiming she did it with them. There was no searches relating to edible mushrooms on any of her devices - only death caps, no books on mushrooms, no friends to say she talked about foraging, nothing.
On the other hand there is evidence she logged into the website where reports s of death caps were made and travelled to these locations on two separate occasions. And purchased a dehydrator a couple of hours after visiting the first location where death caps had been reported.

And if the death caps had got into the Wellingtons by accident, how can it be there were no death caps in hers?

Maybe she's really bad at mixing a duxelles?

Ooo, you think she's been reading Websleuths @velvetandsatin?? I've see there's a confirmed friend of Erin's on there now, pretty intriguing

Her internet friends said she was really into mushrooms.

the onus of proof is on the prosecution. She doesn’t actually need to prove anything.

Oh my god - @courageiscontagious ...are you Erin?? 😀

lol @Thatsnotmynameeno, fortunately not!

i just don’t think the prosecution have done enough.

also glad I’m not on the jury, what a marathon trial for them.