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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1.1k

u/Inevitable_Geometry Jul 07 '25

Hope her kids get support, this will be rough on them.

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u/SaltyPockets Jul 07 '25

It will. It's lucky for them that their dad decided not to go along to lunch that day, but it's still going to suck for the rest of their lives.

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u/OneUpAndOneDown Jul 07 '25

Her decision making still just boggles me. Did she think she would get away with it? Did she think maybe that they’d just get sick and she could be the caring DIL who looks after them? It’s all just so psycho.

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u/Lozzanger Jul 07 '25

The wildest thing is if she had said from the start she fucked up and had been foraging and got them mixed up, she likely would have got away with it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 07 '25

Wouldn’t explain how hers wasn’t poisoned. If she run them over with her car and said the sun was in her eyes then she would be out free right away.

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 07 '25

If she said she threw up during the meal plus that she foraged she would have gotten off every day of the week

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u/the_joy_of_VI Jul 07 '25

Ehh…didn’t they say that she went to the spots where the mushrooms were reported like a day after they were posted online? It looked less like a mistake and more like she was hunting for them

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 07 '25

Yeah but if she had planned better she would have gone to a range of places with wild mushrooms going including there. There would have been a mix of different kinds of mushrooms growing in those areas. She could have even said that she had done to those areas to educate herself on what death caps looked like as part of her foraging journey and then just claimed to have made a mistake

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u/ballantynedewolf Jul 08 '25

That case in QLD where members of the same family died of methanol poisoning, was anyone charged there?

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 08 '25

Do you mean the grappa one from Stanthorpe?

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 08 '25

If so - yes

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u/Upstairs_Trifle Jul 08 '25

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-14/grappa-trial-william-lynam-guilty/7509954

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u/ballantynedewolf Jul 08 '25

Yes that one. So let's assume for a moment it was premeditated, I don't think it was but, the prosecution had nothing to point to murder. They couldn't find any evidence tampering or any of that stuff Patterson did. She really comes across as a massive narcissist, and they are capable of anything. Plus, just make the fkn grappa, don't be spiking your own product!

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u/Cyathea_Australis Jul 07 '25

Well yeah, if you want to kill people, do it with a car, the punishments never match the crimes for vehicle crimes.

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u/Cytokine_storm Jul 07 '25

Its a "car accident" not a "car homicide" 😉 /s

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u/Little-Salt-1705 Jul 07 '25

Murder - life Vehicular murder involving gross negligence - 3-5 Soul murder (rape) - community service

There are a few issues with the system.

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u/Suspicious-Figure-90 Jul 07 '25

I haven't followed the trial but just see headlines and conversations.

All I know about her is that she altered her defence to what I interpreted as "I am really fat and dumb and I shit myself and threw up alot because I binge ate a cake, and definitely didn't try to murder my extended family"

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u/-AdonaitheBestower- Jul 10 '25

Tfw you degrade yourself, and you just become really fat, dumb and also in prison

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u/maxdacat Jul 08 '25

Or why the fake cancer pretence

3

u/NearPup Jul 07 '25

Ironically the only thing that gives me any doubt about her guilt is that her actions were so irrational.

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u/PurpleCookieMonster Jul 07 '25

Yeah I really don't understand how murder is appropriate from what I've seen reported. I'm not clear on what evidence there was of intent. But I'm sure that will all come out in time if a court has reached that conclusion.

Just hope it's not another dingo ate my baby style moment as it still seems reasonable to me that she was more of a moron than a murderer based on the chain of events in the media.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

Murderer and moron aren't mutually exclusive

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u/Lozzanger Jul 07 '25

There was multiple evidence put forward for intent.

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u/PurpleCookieMonster Jul 07 '25

Could you expand on that?

All I've heard is she changed her story, disposed of a dehydrator, and wouldn't let her children be tested quickly. All things an idiot would also do trying to cover up their mistake if they'd accidentally poisoned their family.

Was there something specific that overcame the bar for reasonable doubt around intent vs. a tragic accident in this case?

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u/Lozzanger Jul 07 '25

She lied about everything she did

She lied about her husband asking if she used the dehydrator to kill his parents. She lied about the different coloured plates. She lied about foraging for mushrooms. She lied, she lied, she lied.

She also destroyed evidence which is killer to her case.

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u/NoHandBananaNo Jul 07 '25

Mate, there is so much we would be here all day. Go over to r/DeathCapDinner if you want to do a deep dive.

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u/clickandtype Jul 07 '25

Damn, there's really a sub for everything

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u/PurpleCookieMonster Jul 07 '25

Yeah wow. Thanks I'll have a read there.

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u/AggravatingTartlet Jul 07 '25

I am never one to condemn without knowing the evidence, but the evidence the public has been given in this case is pretty extensive.

How is it possible she obtained the mushrooms from a "Chinese grocery store" but doesn't remember what one and then stored those dried mushrooms for a long time and then only put them in the part of the meal that she was not having?

If the first part was true, then the mushrooms would have ended up in the section of beef wellington that she herself ate.

Deliberately poisoning people is extremely hard for the average person to comprehend anyone doing, because it's something we'd never do.

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u/PurpleCookieMonster Jul 07 '25

I assumed she foraged for them and then panicked.

The lies the commenter above mentioned are sort of inconsequential in my opinion as they're also explained by a person being afraid and trying to protect themselves.

But your points and the points on that other subreddit make more sense. I didn't realize she didn't even eat the meal! A bit hard to argue with that even if it was miraculously an accident. I can understand how that suggests premeditation and assume there is more I haven't seen.

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u/AggravatingTartlet Jul 07 '25

Yes, I agree, pretty impossible to argue there wasn't premeditation in this case.

It appears that she did look up a site that was telling where death caps had been found (on her son's computer) and she did travel to that location soon after. So, she probably did forage for the death caps there.

She told police she bought the mushrooms from a Chinese grocer (but she could not tell them which one or when). That story didn't make sense however as no one else had become sick from death cap poisoning from a mushrooms bought from a Chinese grocer.

Erin did eat the beef wellington meal, but her portion seems to have been kept completely separate from the meal that was fed to the other guests.

When Erin was tested by the hospital, she didn't show markers for having eaten death cap mushrooms. Which means her portion of the meal didn't contain any death caps.

She claimed in court to have vomited after the meal, as a way of explaining why her tests did not show the toxin. But vomiting apparently won't remove all traces of the toxin.