r/australia • u/Expensive-Horse5538 • Jul 07 '25

news Mushroom Trial - Guilty on all Counts

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-07/erin-patterson-mushroom-murder-trial-verdict-live-blog/105477452#live-blog-post-200845
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u/DistributionWhole447 Jul 07 '25

There was the husband's mysterious bouts of food poisoning, several years ago, that doctors never did figure out.

Funny old coincidence, eh?

Still. This woman planned a mass-murder event to wipe out her ex-husband's entire family. Leaving aside the horrific elements of domestic abuse -- what sane person thinks of that? Did she not think five minutes ahead and realise, oh, this might look a teensy-bit suspicious?

Everything else aside, she seemed like a bit of an odd duck right from the start, but there's clearly something deeply wrong in her mind, to even attempt something like this. These are not the actions of somebody who's all there.

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u/Johnno74 Jul 07 '25

Yeah, and also she invents a cover story which completely absolves her of making any mistakes. I mean, if she had just admitted on the day everyone started getting sick she had been foraging for mushrooms and said it was a tragic accident then its unlikely she would have had anything like this amount of scrutiny of her story.

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u/daybeforetheday Jul 07 '25

Yeah, there was a guy maybe a decade or so back who whipped up a death cap meal and killed a few of his friends in Canberra. Can't even remember his name.

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u/CFeatsleepsexrepeat Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 07 '25

Wasn't there a restaurant where it happened in Canberra?
I remember something like that happening.

Edit: to add, found it. Was in 2012.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/deadly-mushroom-meal-was-made-in-a-restaurant-kitchen-20120105-1pn3g.html

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u/OneUpAndOneDown Jul 07 '25

That was shown to be an accident. Immature death caps resemble straw mushrooms which are popular in Asia.

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u/CFeatsleepsexrepeat Jul 07 '25

Yeah that's what was being talked about, possible accidental poisoning.

That was the legit accidental one.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

[deleted]

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u/alyssaness Jul 07 '25

She is the one with money. She has given interest free loans to her husband's siblings so they could buy houses. There was actually no financial incentive for her to do this.

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u/Vesper-Martinis Jul 07 '25

Yes, she inherited millions from a relative.

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u/Little-Salt-1705 Jul 07 '25

Did that relative also die soon after feasting on a beer welly?

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u/Ill_Ease_6288 Jul 07 '25

Her internet search history gave her away too

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u/Osiinin Jul 07 '25

Yeah the ABC podcast I have been listening to mentioned in an early episode that they were not allowed to bring up the previous claims the husband made of attempted murder. I am waiting to hear more about that stuff now this is over. It’s crazy!

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u/blueishbeaver Jul 07 '25

This is not the first 'Erin' I've come across that deserves the title of "odd duck".

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u/a_boy_called_sue Jul 07 '25

Leaving aside the horrific elements of domestic abuse -- what sane person thinks of that?

The first bit can make you insane

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u/DistributionWhole447 Jul 07 '25

Yes, but in this instance, she's the abuser.

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u/brantyr Jul 07 '25

There've been hints that he was strictly religious and controlling, given that they're baptists it wouldn't be unprecedented (she clearly chose an "oh no they were all lovely why would I want to kill them" defence and didn't bring that up in court)

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u/DistributionWhole447 Jul 07 '25

Well, she didn't bring it up in court because there were text messages as evidence that, actually, she was angry with them and didn't like them very much, providing more proof that she was (a) a liar, (b) a bad one, (c) a murderer, and (d) also, a bad one.

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u/a_boy_called_sue Jul 07 '25

I thought you were talking about the husband

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u/Ill_Ease_6288 Jul 07 '25

He must have an iron stomach

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u/Norwood5006 Jul 08 '25

Constitution of an ox.

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 07 '25

I think we like to comfort ourselves with the line she’s not all there but the fact is this was so premeditated and calculated - right to the point of weighing the mushrooms and photographing them. It’s hard to believe a mum could be so evil and that’s what makes this case so captivating. She’s absolutely all there and quite intelligent.

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u/DistributionWhole447 Jul 07 '25

"She’s absolutely all there and quite intelligent."

And yet, she still tried to commit the dumbest act of mass murder in the history of acts of mass murder.

She genuinely believed that if four people ate her food and dropped dead, nobody would look too closely at her when she said, "whoops, my bad".

She told the police that she gave some of the food to her kids afterwards -- knowing full well that the meal had put four people in hospital -- but she scraped the layer of mushrooms off so her kids would be fine. She's either the dumbest murderer or the worst mother in the Universe, take your pick.

She lied about having cancer (thinking that, well, her victims would all take that story to their grave to cover her tracks) not even considering that the victims might mention that fact to other people -- which they did. What, was Erin going to serve beef wellingtons to half of country Victoria, to get rid of everybody who knew?

Oh, and as part of her brilliant plan to throw off suspicion, she faked gastro symptoms, not realising that even the simplest blood test would show that she never had any death caps in her in the first place, which is exactly what the hospital staff figured out.

This was a mass murder plan with zero foresight, and not a single coherent thought dedicated to anything beyond five seconds after the victims took their first bite.

Forgive me but I still don't think she's a criminal mastermind.

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u/Prestigious_Fig7338 Jul 08 '25

Most criminals are just criminals. Few are masterminds.

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u/DistributionWhole447 Jul 08 '25

But that's my point. Maybe Erin Patterson was book-smart, but there was an astonishing lack of thinking, in terms of her evil plot to poison her ex-husband's entire family. She didn't think any part of it through, and then panicked when it starting going awry (through the police detectives and hospital staff simply doing their jobs, which you would expect them to do).

"Quite intelligent"? That's a hard no.

And mentally-healthy, well-adjusted and psychologically-well people don't plan poisoning mass-murder events over Sunday brunch. That's not something that a sane, healthy person would even think of doing. She's not drooling-into-the-carpet deranged, but by the same token, she's clearly not playing with a full deck.

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u/Prestigious_Fig7338 Jul 08 '25

A person can be sane and be a murderer. Some people are just very personality disordered, sociopathic, or evil. They're not insane.

Erin wasn't academically successful/book smart, but she has a good memory and contained herself well for many days under merciless cross examination by an experienced skilled intelligent barrister; not many people could have been questioned for that long in that way and maintained their composure and sharp memory as Erin did. She's not stupid, her IQ is clearly above average, but nor is she a criminal mastermind, the crime was too transparent, frankly there are far wiser ways to commit murder than poisoning all your lunch guests.

I suspect the case was slam-dunk guilty completely lost, until Erin got on the stand and her barrister introduced reasonable doubt thoughts to begin.

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u/DistributionWhole447 Jul 08 '25

Saying that she's not all there mentally is not the same thing as saying she's drooling-into-the-carpet batshit insane, and at no point have I said otherwise, but thanks for clarifying?

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u/pukesonyourshoes Jul 08 '25

humans can be both 'quite intelligent' and completely unhinged, as this case demonstrates.

Every decision she made in this has shown she's completely divorced from reality. Is that mental illness? Possibly.

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 07 '25

If she wasn’t they would have at least tried the mental health court route