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

[Dustyblue]

New thread! Cheers @echt for noticing!

Or did she think they’d all die and no one would be around to say where they had been or about different coloured plates etc.

You don’t get symptoms straight away - it can be quite a number of hours afterwards, so it might not have been immediately obvious why they were ill - they might have had dinner since the lunch too, and that could have been their first thought.

i know it isn’t a part of this case now (it could weaken it as there isn’t any evidence), but remember what previously happened to her ex a couple of years ago with him becoming seriously ill with a ‘mystery gut illness’.

She wanted her ex there. She tried to guilt-trip him in to being there. It's plausible that if she decided that if she couldn't get him this time, she could at least carry on and hurt him by getting the people he loved. Family annihilation is a thing.

Her plan to get away with it was to say she'd accidentally bought the mushrooms from a mysteriously vague Asian store. When that tale hit the cold light of day and people started asking questions, she then changed her story.

You need to consider that she may think that she's a lot smarter than she actually is. A lot of murderers do what they think is enough to cover their tracks but still get found out.

She lied about the cancer to get them to her house for a meal. Going to her house for a meal was not a usual thing, if she’d just invited them they’d have probably turned down the invitation, but with her telling them about her shock diagnosis and saying she needed to talk, they likely felt they had to accept.

As said above, you don’t usually become ill straight away, so they might not have worked out how they became ill.

Also we’ve seen that she had not been happy with the family either.

@courageiscontagious crime podcasts (not an authority of course!) often say that criminals are not masterminds and often think they have a good plan but leave loads of evidence.

@mokjkjjoshe didn’t tell them the diagnosis prior, she told them at the dinner according to the survivor.

the survivor also said that they were pleased to be invited to dinner. It’s not so strange to invite your children’s grandmother and great aunt to dinner, especially in a country town and within a church community.

@Civilservantvery true!

she’s not the typical criminal though. No evidence that she was an abusive mother or wife.

I suppose that’s why we are all fascinated! 😜

She told them it was a serious health issue she had to discuss.

It is strange if you read the history.

I agree she could've covered her tracks better! But what continues to stand out for me are her lies about what she put into the meal. And her lies after the meal.

In a sense, it's shame the prosecution dropped the charges of attempted murder on her ex, Simon Patterson. Clearly they didn't have enough evidence to proceed but it would have lent gravitas to what we are seeing now.

There are so many lies. And now she’s denying having seen the posts about DCM on the Inaturalist site, so it must be pure coincidence that she travelled to those locations more than once shortly after the posts.

Totally agree

It's so weird she is pretending she didn't send the children to the movies so she could tell the lunch guests she'd been diagnosed with ovarian cancer...

She's rewriting all the leadup to the lunch, and fudging over her lies about her health concerns, MRIs, and this fake diagnosis, and the threat/hints to Simon about her "issues" and her sad health future, when he said he wasn't coming...

“That’s really disappointing. I’ve spent many hours this week preparing lunch or tomorrow which has been exhausting in light of the issues I’m facing and spent a small fortune on beef eye fillet to make beef wellingtons because I wanted it to be a special meal as I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time. It’s important to me that you’re all there tomorrow and that I have the conversations that I need to have. I hope you’ll change your mind. Your parents and Heather and Ian are coming at 12:30. I hope to see you there.”

Her nose must be so big it's filling the courtroom by now!

The prosecution haven’t started cross-examining her yet - that is expected to take several days and will be interesting!

Was she able to give the name of the shop where she supposedly got the mushrooms? Surely the investigation could test all the mushrooms in the shop to see if any were the deadly ones. If none were, then she did it.

The mobile phone tower evidence is really imprecise. She was just in the region, there could be a lot of reasons.

she could have wanted to see them because she is interested in mushrooms- because she forages and wants to AVOID picking them. She could have just been interested. Her friends and the Facebook chatroom history corroborated the concept of her being “really into mushrooms” for years - that’s a quote from her friend.

showing she went near them is not the same as showing she picked them, took them home, and deliberately served them to her in laws. It’s all circumstantial.

@mokjkjjohit post too soon!

was trying to say: there is only proof she was somewhere nearby- not that she was at the mushroom site. Even if she was at the mushroom site there is no evidence she picked them at that occasion.

absolutely room for reasonable doubt.

Also if googling “death cap mushrooms” is evidence of homicidal intent - I am guessing everyone on this thread is guilty! 😝 I certainly am.

It’s all circumstantial.

Almost all murder cases are circumstantial.

The local council sent a health officer out to every Asian grocery shop in four different suburbs in that region- however they did not send anyone to glen Waverley- which is in that region, has a lot of Asian grocery shops.

they initially thought it was an accident and worked hard to eliminate what they thought could be a serious public health risk (poison mushrooms in stores). Didn’t find any.

Thanks for the new thread.

Her defence have done the best they can to make it seem plausible.

I like the touch about her throwing up after the meal and how that fits in with her planning a gastric bypass. That might also be interpreted as the reason she ‘wouldn’t be able to host a meal like this for some time’

Id have thought that ozempic would have been a better option than surgery though considering her hatred of hospitals 🧐

This was in 2023- Ozempic wasn’t such a mainstream thing- especially not in country towns.

Thats true actually. Shame.

Do you have a source for this? I don’t think that’s right.

maybe most cases that turn into a podcast or attract public interest are? But “almost all” murders, I don’t think so.

Almost all murder trials are run on circumstantial evidence. It is rare to have direct evidence - ie an eyewitness or a ctv recording - of a murder. Even DNA is counted as circumstantial evidence.

Had a Google- according to the ABS most murder convictions in Australia and Victoria record a guilty plea before trial.

So not a matter of circumstantial evidence convincing a jury.