Erin Patterson - We the members of the MN jury find the defendant Guilty or Not Guilty?

[Dustyblue]

Well here we are, after 2 years of head-scratching speculation and many weeks of trial detail-thrashing. It looks like the Judge will give his directions to the jury on Tuesday, after which they'll be sequestered in a local motel (I do not envy them this) to reach a verdict.

Clearly we're not privy to every last piece of evidence shown at the trial, but those of us who've been following closely will surely have formed an opinion one war or the other.

So, I ask you- if you were on the jury- what would your verdict be?

Yes but if she was ill she wouldn’t necessarily assume it was the meal that made her ill. It was the fact that by Sunday eve she knew everyone was ill, and still fed the kids the food. I don’t buy the ‘I scraped the mushrooms off’ tale either. That was uncontaminated meat she fed them, and she knew it!

I’m still amazed by the nonsense of the Asian grocer, the details of which got vaguer and vaguer as public health officials desperately sought information from her.

a) If she thought for one moment that an ingredient she had purchased from a shop had made people seriously ill - and had the potential to make other people seriously ill - she would have provided proper details of every shop she’d ever been to.

b) once she realised that suspicion was falling on her for picking DCM and if she genuinely thought that it was something she bought rather than something she picked she would be providing details of that shop pronto in order to clear her name.

So (imo) it’s pretty clear it was never something she bought and always something she picked. Back to the problem of accidental picking and including DCM in a meal - which everyone ate but only she was not affected.

On her claim that she was unwell - none of her timeline, reported symptoms or hospital tests bear out the likelihood that she had DCM poisoning. Even if she did weigh 100kg and didn’t eat a whole portion. After all Gail only ate half a portion and died within a week. Ian ate a full portion and only survived with a liver transplant. I don’t know if there’s a sliding scale of how much DCM you have to eat vs how ill it makes you but it’s pretty clear that you don’t need much to be very unwell indeed. After her alleged diarrhoea alongside the various car journeys she took with her son, she was shuttling back and forth to hospital, taking the dehydrator to the tip, packing her daughters ballet bag, having a little lie down … none of that points to someone who had also ingested some DCM (or who thought there could be even the tiniest chance her kids may have had exposure to it too).

She says she binged cake and threw that up
atter the meal but I think DCM toxins would be in the system already? Also not sure about her timeline on guests leaving as son and friend came back, then she ate loads of cake, was sick and then drive son’s friend home. It feels like each lie is to answer an allegation, which prompts another question, which prompts another lie, over and over and over.

The cancer lie turned out to be a cover for gastric surgery, turned out to be just an appointment to discuss options. And whatever the kids ate it was never actual leftovers from that meal.

All part of her master plan, so it looked like if she’d given her kids the leftovers, how could it possibly look like she’d intentionally poisoned the other guests! It’s all a web of lies. What puzzles me is did she alone construct all these lies or was she aided by her defence team?

Even her normal behaviour and relationship with food is so twisted. I think she is relying on this to explain away events. Seriously, after eating a full meal, how could anyone eat almost a whole large orange cake? She didn’t of course, it just constructs the narrative to say she puked it all up, including the mushrooms, so she says!

She says she binged cake and threw that up
atter the meal but I think DCM toxins would be in the system already?

From memory, in the bloodstream within 60-90 minutes of ingestion. Lunch was circa12.45 or later (guests arrived 12.30 for lunch). Say she ate at 1pm. The cake was not eaten until much later in the day. In her testimony, she said she ate it in the evening. To be generous, say at 5pm. Vomiting then would do nothing to avert any poison already in her bloodstream from four hours before.

She really needed to have planned out a few other eventualities than the one she expected to occur after her guests fell seriously ill - she was terribly unprepared to just make up new stories on the go.

Exactly regarding the meat.

And I don’t believe throwing up would have helped either.

I don’t understand why the prosecution didn’t bring an expert in to say this though. I mean, I know they can’t test it out on people but you’d think there would be studies or research on it somewhere.

I don’t believe any of her story.

I wonder if they thought it was just common sense. When you cook a juicy component, its juices leach out into the surrounding ingredients - so should toxins, one would think.

I know the toxicologist they had on the episode of Under Investigation, back in 2023, said the toxins would absolutely leach out into the meat.

It seems like common sense to me, however I believe the throwing up was mentioned to explain why she wasn’t seriously ill, so they should really have brought someone in just to clarify this?

I’ve been binging various podcasts over the last couple of weeks as I’ve just ended up fascinated by this and more and more I really do think she’s going to be found not guilty just on the basis there’s just not enough there to prove it was deliberate. Which is quite terrifying especially considering the time and effort that has been thrown at this by everyone involved, and the extent of the evidence put forward by the prosecution - but I just don’t think it’s going to be enough! There’s just no way to prove intent.

Even all the strongest evidence is just too open to doubt. There’s the photos of the mushrooms on her device but no way to prove they’re DCs. There’s visiting the area with the DCs but no way to prove she was foraging there or exactly where the mushrooms were or where she even went or why . There’s evidence of the DC sighting on her computer but no way to prove it was her and even if it was it doesn’t prove anything else, could just be a coincidence. There’s the lies to get them there and all the others in addition but no way to say that makes her a murderer. The suspicious behaviour afterwards could reasonably be panic. The lack of desire for medical attention could be denial. The lack of illness could be just luck or physical differences and there’s no way to prove if she ate any DCs or not, no tests she had show that one way or another. There’s speculation about motive but no proof of it besides some angry messages, and not that many of them. There’s the phones and deception there but you can’t say well there must be something on that phone if it’s not found.

The only hope really is like the prosecution said is to consider the whole puzzle and look at all these pieces together but I’m not sure they can do that - if you take each piece on its own merit you can’t say well adding them up together increases the chances, can you? There’s too much doubt.

My concern about this is that I think the reason so much has been thrown at this with such a mammoth case is because if they can’t prove it then it opens up a whole new way of murdering people and getting away with it, if you’re smart enough to throw enough confusion into the situation as she has. It seemed at first like she was reacting without thinking and making mistakes but actually I think she calculated the likelihood of anything being pinned on her with any certainty and knew she had a very decent chance of success despite how obvious it would be that she did it.

I also believe that once the verdict is in, one was or another, and we hear about everything else that was going on (probably munchausens, poisoning Simon previously, coercive control and financial control, etc) it’ll become completely obvious she’s done it but it’ll be too late.

I hope I’m wrong but I have a bad feeling!

Absolutely agree. They missed a few major points this way. Rather odd. (Mind you, the throwing up was thrown in during her surprise appearance on the stand, and for reasons I'm not aware of, no rebuttal witnesses were called, or perhaps allowed to be called by the prosecution.)

Following @PossumHollow’s post - it all sounds a lot like the Lucy Letby case (purely from a lay person standpoint, clearly i wasn’t in court and didn’t see everything the jury did and I have no desire to open a debate on that case here!) but that seemed to be a matter of stacking coincidence upon happenstance until the only possible outcome seemed to be murder. But that case has thrown up so much doubt about what was and wasn’t included in evidence and who said and saw what when that it remains incredibly contentious. There was no obvious motive there and lots of things happened that in isolation might seem inconsequential but the whole picture seemed damning.

That’s what this feels like. There’s a (not very good or plausible) explanation for everything. But for every single item or issue raised there is an explanation of some sort. If you take it piece by piece it looks like not guilty. If you stack up and say what’s the likelihood that a, then b, then c and guess what d e f and yes even g all happened it looks a lot more like guilty. If the jury is not allowed to look at the whole picture then she might get off.

I still feel if it was accidental poisoning because she foraged them then why the reticence to ever ensure the Asian grocer mystery was cleared up. It’s all smoke and mirrors and obfuscation and delay. She said she was very helpful to the health authorities, but she was in fact no help whatsoever.

I agree. LL came to my mind too. And there are many cases (in the UK at least) where people are found guilty with no definite evidence, it just needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

You can look at each piece in this case and it doesn’t prove guilt, but putting everything together only points towards one verdict to me. Wiping a phone that the police have taken and making another disappear don’t exactly help her case either.

I still feel if it was accidental poisoning because she foraged them then why the reticence to ever ensure the Asian grocer mystery was cleared up.

She has only admitted she foraged for them as a last resort, almost two years later, as part of her defence. Prior to that, she denied foraging. The fact she was so cavalier with the "Asian grocer's" alleged location as her lunch guests were being placed in induced comas, and as you said was so unhelpful to the health authorites in this time, does not display an innocent person, to my mind.

I cannot get past the medical experts all saying she had no signs of death cap mushroom poisoning. It cannot have been accidental, therefore.

It’s really chilling isn’t it, if you thought you’d accidentally poisoned your guests you’d do everything you could to help. If you thought an ingredient you’d bought was to blame and therefore many tens or hundreds of other people could also be at risk, you’d do whatever you could to help. I don’t buy the panicking and worry about being blamed excuses. Because if you genuinely knew you’d bought them (and not foraged as per her story at the time) you’d be ensuring the source was found.

The reality of how those poor people died should have seared her soul with everlasting guilt.

The main points that lead me to believe she is guilty, based on the evidence we have heard as general public.

1. She has an amazing memory, yet couldn't remember the asian grocers store, or even exactly which suburb it was in.
2. Lying about the dehydrator
3. Not being concerned to take her children to hospital. If it was accidental and they did in fact eat the same meal, she would have been terrified for their health.

I was pretty certain before you questioned it that the podcast I’m following (The Trial) said they had and it absolutely would have hit her bloodstream before the throwing up.

Yes I’d read that too, which is why it’s surprising it wasn’t brought up. Maybe it was because she mentioned the cake last minute and the prosecution didn’t get a chance to respond to it. I remember wondering though why they hadn’t done so. Maybe they aren’t allowed to bring in new people to respond to things and experts have to be agreed from the start (I have no idea how law works).

Agree and actually feeding her children the leftovers in the first place. She didn't know it wasnt the meat at that point. But she did course she knew it wasnt the meat.

I can't see how it was an accident. I have tried but it makes no sense.

So her testimony about the cake, was that entirely new? She’d never mentioned it in questioning. This is perhaps why she’s gone on the stand, to intrigue a whole new load of doubt that isn’t then unpacked and examined.

but the jury has been told by the judge that if the jury don’t like (trust) her evidence they can put it to one side I think .

I feel as if the judge is steering the jury towards an acquittal 🤔

Yes I got that sense too. He weighed in heavily to say her lies should not lead the jury to think she’s guilty. But isn’t that just the point, surely her lies try to cover up the truth or pervert the course of justice. I’m in the UK but I’ve never heard a judge’s direction to the jury like this one.

Me too (in Uk) plus he said the lack of motive could be something in her favour. Judges here don’t tend to take control of the evidence in that way.

I agree with this summing up and it's why I believe she should be found not guilty. There's an awful awful lot wrong with the criminal justice system but one of its founding principles is that it's better for a hundred guilty people to walk free than for one innocent person to lose their liberty at the hands of the state.

That's why all elements of a crime must be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

I agree with everyone here that as a whole picture, it seems damning and much less plausible that this was not a deliberate act. But I do not believe the prosecution have presented any evidence proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

I think it's also murkier than people think. Certainly people can kill seemingly without motive and they can be proved guilty without a motive ever being resolved- there's a great link to a blog post by a recent American juror on a case where this occured that I'll find. However fantastically unlikely coincidences can occur too- it could be a one in a billion chance, but there are six billion of us on earth. As well as Lucy Letby, to me the case it brings to mind is Kathleen Folbigg and I would urge interested people to read up on this. Given her recent release, unsafe convictions based on coincidence and tendency evidence is very much on the mind of the Australian legal profession.

This is the link I referenced, really interesting:

thingofthings.substack.com/p/i-was-a-juror-on-a-murder-trial?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

Can't see any similarity whatsoever with Kathleen Folbig's case and this, other than they are both women.