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

[Dustyblue]

New thread! Cheers @echt for noticing!

I’ve just listened to the podcast-she has an answer for everything doesn’t she!
That 9 second service station toilet stop-to dispose of a dog poo bag containing tissues from a roadside poo.
you’d think she’d take the opportunity to use a toilet while it arose though?
And her son said that they didn’t stop. I think my teenager would definitely remember me stopping to take a shit at the side of the road?!
I can’t wait for the cross examination

Yeah I gotcha.

most cases in Victoria don’t go to trial. The ones that do often rely on circumstantial evidence.

cases where there is direct evidence - the defendant would likely not have made things worse for themselves by going to trial. in Victoria the fact that a defendant chose to plead guilty is a factor given weight at sentencing - an early guilty plea can justify a shorter sentence.

so you are speaking about a warped sample. Yes the murders that go to trial are likely to rely on circumstantial evidence.

That said, the threshold is beyond reasonable doubt- just a few of these circumstantial evidence “bricks” need to wobble for it to be very open to the jury to say it amounts to reasonable doubt.

it is possible (not likely, just possible) that a woman who was into mushrooms and wanted to be closer to her former in laws would invite them for dinner? Is it possible that someone would get so into mushrooms they started to research and forage them, and use them in recipes? And feed them to other people?

i think so.

possible for a woman with decades of disordered eating and low self esteem would make herself vomit after a lunch with ex in-laws who she worried were rejecting her?

yes again, in my mind.

what if everyone got sick, and she in shock, and feeling guilty (that she accidentally made them sick) started to panic, and her ex accused her of using her dehydration machine to poison them on purpose? (Note that he knew she had one, she didn’t hide it from him which is what I would do if I was planning to poison people with it)

would she think, oh fuck, I just remembered that time I texted my friends about what arseholes they were being- I should wipe my phone. I should chuck out that dehydrator.

i actually think it’s all possible.

on the balance of probabilities- did she poison a bunch of people and then try to cover it up- yes I think she did.

but beyond reasonable doubt- I don’t think they’ve made that out. and the defence isn’t done yet.

No, it's usually a combination of the two. And the circumstantial evidence is usually stronger, too- eg CCTV or GPS tracking more directly linking the defendant with the location of the mushrooms would be stronger circumstantial evidence.
But that's not to say I consider that a finding of guilty would be a miscarriage of justice in this matter. It certainly seems open to the jury. Just that the prosecution have built a good case out of ultimately not the strongest evidence.

I think it’s the sheer number of coincidences that might swing it. Every individual thing than be explained away, but for it all to come together that neatly….?

To add- when I say it's a combination I mean that to prove an offence, a number of elements (which in total constitute that offence) have to be proved. There could be direct evidence for two elements, but no evidence for the third- then the prosecutions case fails. There could be direct and circumstantial evidence for two, but circumstantial only for the third- probably a pretty strong case. To have only circumstantial evidence across all elements makes it, from the prosecution's perspective, a fairly risky endeavour, because there's a higher likelihood of a finding of not guilty BRD.

Doesn't matter that she made herself sick after eating, that's not going to save you from death caps!
She's such a wanker

her ex accused her of using her dehydration machine to poison them on purpose?

he denied this @courageiscontagious

I liked the bit where she carried out a remote factory reset of her phone after it had been taken by the police, just to see if they had been 'silly enough to leave it connected to the internet'.

Most definitely an innocent explanation behind that, completely normal behaviour, something we would all do in those circumstances, not dodgy at all!

Omg, was she successful?

Yes!!!

I've been listening to the podcast and am confused.

• Is she now admitting she foraged mushrooms?
• And is she saying she may have accidentally added these foraged mushrooms into a lunchbox with the mushrooms from the Asian grocers?
• and if so, what does she think killed them, the mushrooms she foraged or the mushrooms for this supposed Asian grocers?

Feel like I need a flowchart!!

Yes, it is hard to keep track of her lies. She insisted she hadn't foraged until it came time for the trial. Then her defence opened with saying she had in fact foraged but lied about it as she was afraid of losing her children, etc.

There is no flow chart in the world to encompass the extent of her lies, and her retrofitting of facts - had plenty of time in jail to rework her story - but this gives a good broad outline of that basics of the case:

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

She's trying to hedge her bets and throw suspicion back on the Asian grocers - as if she got the one pack in Victoria/Australia/the world that somehow was contaminated with death caps, even though those dried mushrooms are commercially grown and not foraged - by saying she put some mushrooms she dried in the same tupperware container as the packet she bought that were too "smelly" to use previously...

Woah! It looks as if the trial may extend considerably.

I wonder is the prosecution allowed to call rebuttal witnesses? I really hope so.

To rebut, for example, her claims of vomiting being the reason she was unaffected (in a way that blood tests would show) from her alleged intake of DCs? Because from everything I've read, the toxins enter the bloodstream very quickly and begin their destructive work - far sooner than when she would have binged the cake after her guests left, ie.

This is from the ABC coverage of court today. Dr Rogers is the Prosecutor, for those following from the UK!

Another photo shows Erin Patterson's kitchen scales on the bench, with a dehydrator tray. The weight appears to read 158.9 grams, Erin agrees.

Dr Rogers goes to another image of mushroom pieces on a dehydrator shelf, which Erin agrees she probably took and appears to show her kitchen bench and the images was last modified on April 30, 2023.

We go to another image where the shelf with mushrooms is balanced over the electronic scales, which read 255.8 grams, with the image records showing it was last modified on May 4, 2023.

Another photo has a bowl of large mushrooms balanced on electronic scales, with the weight recorded as 490.5 grams.

When asked about the origin of the photos, Erin says she "probably" took the images, but had no memory of doing so.

Rogers: I suggest that you were weighing these death cap mushrooms so that you could calculate the weight required for the administration of a fatal dose for one person. Agree or disagree?
Patterson: Disagree.

Why would you be weighing your mushroom like this? Certainly not for flavour. You do that by taste, as she's already mentioned.

Erin Patterson murder trial Live: Accused killer says she didn't intentionally put deadly mushrooms in meal - ABC News

Here’s the latest reporting from the UK’s BBC on the trial, which tries to make sense of EP’s defence case. I’m grateful for this thread which adds so much context and background information.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c79ejjxw21vt

Her lies don’t have to make sense. Just add enough confusion for the jury to have doubts.

Is the defence planning on calling any other witnesses. I read the blog and it seemed that they weren’t but that would be unusual wouldn’t it?

she says she was upset that simon didnt come to the meal because she was anxious about the forthcoming procedure
which was a lie anyway?
and she took photos of the mushrooms on the scale, that seems odd
arguing about definition of mushrooming as compared to foraging

I think the upcoming procedure was a weight loss one. But I am getting very confused. Was that even booked or just hypothetical?

no mention of weight procedure

The photos and having used the scales seem strong evidence. Not remembering taking photos won’t be plausible to the jury.

Re the latest updates re what she told them at the meal, she said she researched brain and ovarian cancer as she believed she might have them. I wonder if she sought medical help for symptoms linked to these. If not, that’s another blatant lie, and it’s as the prosecution have suggested, that she was looking up symptoms to tell a more convincing lie about having them.

She keeps changing her story on so many things!

I wish I could be a fly on the wall there!

You’d weigh your mushrooms to check you had enough for a complicated recipe, that’s not implausible to me.

She bought them in punnets from Woollies - they tell you how much they weigh!

It's also not that complicated a recipe and she deviated from it significantly and left out many major ingredients oddly.