Latest news with #toxicmushrooms
BBC News
13 hours ago
- Health
- BBC News
Mushroom trial: Accused weighed fatal dose on kitchen scales, prosecutors say
An Australian woman accused of murdering relatives with beef Wellington documented herself using kitchen scales to calculate a lethal dose of toxic mushrooms, prosecutors Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to killing three people and attempting to murder another at her home in regional Victoria in July 2023, saying it was a tragic on Thursday suggested photos found on her phone showing wild fungi being weighed depict her measuring the amount required to kill her Patterson told the court she had likely taken photos in question but said she didn't believe the mushrooms in them were death caps. Ms Patterson's in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, all fell ill and died days after the lunch. Heather's husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, was also hospitalised but recovered after coming out of a weeks-long induced high-profile trial, which started six weeks ago, has already heard from more than 50 prosecution witnesses. Ms Patterson became the first defence witness to take the stand on Monday cross-examination from the lead prosecutor, Ms Patterson admitted she had foraged for wild mushrooms in the three months before the July lunch, despite telling police and a health official that she hadn't. The court was also shown images, taken in late April 2023 and recovered from Ms Patterson's phone, which depicted mushrooms being Patterson previously admitted she had repeatedly wiped the device in the days following the lunch because she feared that if officers found such pictures they would blame her for the guests' to earlier evidence from a fungi expert who said the mushrooms in the images were "highly consistent" with death caps, Dr Rogers alleged Ms Patterson had knowingly foraged them days had seen a post on iNaturalist - a website for logging plant and animal sightings - and travelled to the Loch area ten days later on 28 April to pick the toxic fungi, Dr Rogers Patterson said she couldn't recall if she went to the town that day, but denied she went there to find death cap mushrooms or that she had seen the iNaturalist post."I suggest that you were weighing these mushrooms so that you could calculate the weight required for... a fatal dose," Dr Rogers put to her."Disagree," Ms Patterson on Thursday, Ms Patterson's barrister asked her why she repeatedly lied to police about foraging mushrooms and having a food dehydrator - which prosecutors say was used to prepare the toxic mushrooms for the meal."It was this stupid knee-jerk reaction to dig deeper and keep lying," she told the court. "I was just scared, but I shouldn't have done it."Ms Patterson also repeated her claim that she never intentionally put the poisonous mushrooms in the meal.
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Health
- Malay Mail
Australia's mushroom murder suspect says toxic fungi may have been foraged by mistake
SYDNEY, June 4 — An Australian woman accused of murdering three people by lacing their lunch with toxic mushrooms told a court on Wednesday she may have unwittingly used 'foraged' fungi in the dish. Erin Patterson is charged with murdering her estranged husband's parents and aunt in 2023 by spiking their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. She is also accused of attempting to murder a fourth guest — her husband's uncle — who survived after a long stay in hospital. Patterson maintains the lunch was poisoned by accident, pleading not guilty to all charges in a case that continues to grip Australia. The 50-year-old choked up with emotion as she gave her account of the meal on Wednesday. She said she decided to improve the beef-and-pastry dish with dried mushrooms after deciding it tasted a 'little bland'. While she initially believed a kitchen container held store-bought mushrooms, she said it may have been mixed with foraged fungi. 'I decided to put in the dried mushrooms I brought from the grocer,' she told the court. 'Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.' Patterson earlier told the court how she had started foraging for mushrooms during a Covid lockdown in 2020. She also told the court on Wednesday that she had misled her guests about the purpose of the family meal. While they ate, Patterson revealed she might be receiving treatment for cancer in the coming weeks. But this was a lie, Patterson said. 'Shouldn't have lied' 'I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery, so I remember thinking I didn't want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. 'I was really embarrassed about it. 'So letting them believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment might mean they could help me with the logistics around the kids,' she told the court. 'I shouldn't have lied to them,' she added. The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests and took care that she did not consume the deadly mushrooms herself. Her defence says Patterson ate the same meal as the others but did not fall as sick. Patterson asked her estranged husband Simon to the family lunch at her secluded rural Victoria home in July 2023. Simon turned down the invitation because he felt too uncomfortable, the court has heard previously. The pair were long estranged but still legally married. Simon's parents Don and Gail were happy to attend, dying days after eating the home-cooked meal. Simon's aunt Heather Wilkinson also died, while her husband Ian fell seriously ill but later recovered. The trial is expected to last another week. — AFP
BBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Australia mushroom trial: Erin Patterson says she made herself sick after meal
An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge-eating Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges - three of murder and one of attempted murder - over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick her third day of testimony, Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of the lunch and later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before vomiting. Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis - which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house - as she was too embarrassed to tell them she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson's former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.A single lunch guest survived, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in Victorian Supreme Court trial - which started almost six weeks ago - has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues. The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through "quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook" for the lunch before choosing to make beef dish - usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms - was something Ms Patterson's mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she the morning of the lunch, Ms Patterson recounted frying off some garlic, shallots and several trays of supermarket-bought mushrooms that had been finely chopped in a food processor. "I cooked that for a very long time," she said. "You've got to get almost all the water out," she added, so the mushrooms won't make the pastry soggy. "As I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland to me," she this point, she decided to add some dried mushrooms that she had bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne several months earlier and stored in a container in her pantry. Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: "Now I think there's a possibility that there were foraged ones as well."Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started foraging for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for mushrooms had expanded to include wild mushrooms as they had "more flavour". Ms Patterson told the court she had served up the food and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing were no assigned seats or plates, she told the Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange questioning from defence counsel Colin Mandy, Ms Patterson said she didn't have any grey plates, instead listing black plates, white plates and one that was red on top and black underneath. During the lunch, Ms Patterson said she didn't eat much of her food - "a quarter, a third, somewhere around there" - because she was busy talking. After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought and then "another piece, and another piece" before finishing the rest of the cake."I felt sick…over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again," she said."After I'd done that, I felt better."Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.
BBC News
2 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Erin Patterson tells murder trial wild mushrooms have 'more flavour'
An Australian woman who cooked a toxic mushroom meal has told her murder trial she has long been a mushroom lover, but more recently developed a taste for wild fungi varieties that have "more flavour".Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to the murder of three relatives, and the attempted murder of another, after serving them death cap mushrooms at her home in Victoria in July 2023. Prosecutors say she deliberately put the poisonous mushrooms in the meal but her defence team says it was a "terrible accident".Ms Patterson - during her second day on the witness stand - told the jury she began foraging for wild mushrooms during the Covid pandemic, years before the fatal meal. Ms Patterson's in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, were all hospitalised after eating beef wellington at the lunch and died several days Wilkinson, the uncle of Ms Patterson's estranged husband, also fell seriously ill but survived after weeks of telling the court she accepted that death cap mushrooms were in the beef wellington she had served, Ms Patterson described foraging for mushrooms at various locations - botanic gardens, a rail trail near her house, and on her own property. "I mainly picked field mushrooms," she told the court, explaining she sometimes foraged with her two children. She recounted the first time she tried wild mushrooms, cutting off a small part before cooking it in butter. "[It] tasted good and I didn't get sick," she told the court also heard she had bought a food dehydrator in April 2023, in part because wild mushrooms had such a "small season" and she wanted to preserve them for later where the mushrooms for the lunch at the centre of the case came from, Ms Patterson said "the vast majority" were purchased from a supermarket in Leongatha while some had been bought a few months earlier from an Asian grocery store in Melbourne. She couldn't remember "the specific purchase", but had previously bought a variety of mushrooms - shitake, porcini, enoki - from similar stores, she said. Other times, she'd purchased "wild mushroom mix" or "forest mushrooms" which didn't specify exact Ms Patterson had stepped through changes in her dynamic with Simon Patterson and her in-laws following the couple's separation in 2015."In the immediate aftermath it was difficult... but that only lasted a couple of weeks... we went back to being really good friends."Her relationship with her in-laws "never changed", she said."I was just their daughter-in-law - they just continued to love me."However, she told the court her relationship with Simon turned tense amid conflict over finances from October 2022 onwards, and she had tried to get her in-laws to mediate.
News24
3 days ago
- Health
- News24
Mushroom murder accused claims she was ostracised and had ‘never-ending battle of low self-esteem'
An Australian woman is accused of killing her in-laws. Erin Patterson felt ostracised from her husband's family. She fed them a meal laced with deadly mushrooms. An Australian woman felt ostracised from her husband's family in the months before she allegedly murdered three of his relatives with toxic mushrooms, a court heard on Monday. Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with murdering the parents and aunt of her estranged husband in 2023 by serving them a beef Wellington laced with lethal death cap mushrooms. She is also accused of attempting to murder her husband's uncle, who survived the meal after a long stay in hospital. Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges in a trial that continues to captivate the country. Having watched the prosecution build its case over the past five weeks, Patterson took the stand for the first time on Monday to mount her defence. READ | 'Causing chaos': Australia police arrest 14 over organised crime attacks disguised as antisemitism She described how husband Simon - the pair were estranged but still legally married - seemed to be pushing her out of the family in the lead up to the fatal meal. 'We saw each other less. I'd become concerned that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much in the family anymore. I wasn't being invited to so many things.' At the same time, she was struggling with lifelong issues of low self-esteem. 'I'd been fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my adult life,' she told the court. 'The further I got into middle age, the less I felt good about myself.' Patterson said their marriage had for years been plagued by poor communication. 'Primarily what we struggled with over the entire course of our relationship was we couldn't communicate well when we disagreed about something. 'We could never communicate in a way that made each of us feel understood and heard.' Martin Keep/AFP Patterson asked husband Simon to a family lunch at her secluded house in rural Victoria in July 2023, also extending an invitation to his parents Don and Gail. Simon turned down the invitation because he felt too uncomfortable, the court has heard previously. But his parents Don and Gail were happy to attend, and died days after eating a beef-and-pastry dish prepared by Patterson. Simon's aunt Heather Wilkinson also died, while her husband Ian fell seriously ill but later recovered. The meal consisted of 'an individual serve' of beef Wellington entirely encased in pastry and filled with 'steak and mushrooms', Ian Wilkinson previously told the guests' meals were served on four grey plates, while Patterson's was on a smaller orange plate, he said in earlier testimony. Patterson and Simon were at odds over finances and child support at the time, the court has heard, and she had sought help from his parents. The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests and took care that she did not consume the deadly mushrooms herself. Her defence says it was 'a terrible accident' and that Patterson ate the same meal as the others but did not fall as sick. The trial is expected to last another week.
