August 9, 2023
"Death caps — which taste delicious according to people who have mistakenly eaten them, and survived — look similar to other nonpoisonous mushroom species...."
"Approached by reporters outside her Leongatha home this week, [Erin] Patterson said she’d made the meal for 'the best people I’ve ever met' and was devastated by their deaths. 'I just can’t fathom what has happened.' She declined to say what was on the ill-fated lunch menu, or whether she had eaten it. Police say her children were given a different meal than the adults.... 'I can’t believe that this has happened and I am so sorry that they have lost their lives,' a tearful Patterson told reporters. 'I didn’t do anything, I loved them, and I’m devastated that they’re gone.'... [T]he lunch party host’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, nearly died last year from what he described as 'serious gut problems.'... [H]e said he collapsed at home and spent 16 days in an induced coma, undergoing several operations, mostly on his small intestine...."
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31 comments:
a tearful Patterson told reporters
She's that sad she was found out. That's my opinion of her tears.
A good question: Why is the Post giving her a platform, making her famous?
She is a beguiling character, no doubt.
This is why international conventions that outlaw poison gas are sexist. Rockets bearing big bombs are fine, but poisoning...
It took a whole page of comments before someone mentioned Donald Trump! Without a confession, I don't see how they can convict her.
Foraging can kill, idiots…
The Beguiled...
There are only two mushrooms I will gather in the wild and eat, Morchella americana, the common morel, and Calvatia gigantea, the giant puffball. I can identify both, but I must be exceedingly careful. There are inedible and even deadly lookalikes. There's the highly toxic Gyromitra esculenta that resembles the black morel of the Pacific Northwest. And newly erupted puffballs can be confused with young death caps. The giant puffball is the most reliably identifiable fungus in North America, and the most delicious in my opinion. They are just approaching their peak season now. Look for them this weekend if you've had a good rainfall lately, but leave them in situ for a week or ten days to enlarge for safety's sake.
It's possible Mrs. Patterson gathered death caps thinking they were puffballs, though I've never heard of a puffball fungus in Australia, and it's the wrong time of year Down Under for edible puffballs. (That's a big problem with gathering wild mushrooms, many species are cosmopolitan. Fungal spores can cross oceans as easily as a suburban backyard.) However, the incident involving her husband suggests she knows far too little practical mycology to go gathering, or she's just another serial poisoner.
Did the guests know that she foraged the mushrooms? Because if I knew that I was being served mushrooms that had been foraged by a non-expert there is no way I would eat them. In fact, I'd probably be pretty reluctant to eat them if they were foraged by an expert.
Possibly she'd been reading Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" ...
She should have just made them each a cheeseburger. . . . .
The Phantom Thread, with Daniel Day Lewis, comes to mind. As does the visiting professor of Chemistry at my university who poisoned himself with what he thought were edible mushrooms at a party he hosted for the rest of the Chemistry faculty. Knowing the man to be a bit of a blowhard, everyone else abstained from his self-cerified-safe morsels, picked that afternoon on a walk around the campus lake. We students only found out about it because he missed a lecture, having had his stomach pumped the night before our class.
rehajm said...
"Foraging can kill, idiots…"
When in doubt, buy em at the supermarket.
My late brother, who was the only person whos word I'd take on edible mushrooms, used a microscope to compare micillium against known edible micillium. That is the only way to be absolutely sure.
Why the hell is she talking to reporters? She should be talking to a lawyer, and only a lawyer.
Bwa-ha-ha
That is some impressive use of the passive voice. They just died, lord knows how or why!
I can’t believe that this has happened and I am so sorry that they have lost their lives,' a tearful Patterson told reporters. 'I didn’t do anything
Did she feed them poison mushrooms or not?
Glad I have never liked mushrooms.
She's either really bad at identifying mushrooms (I guarantee I'm worse), or she's a would-be serial killer, given her husband's prior illness. So it seems to me. J'accuse, irresponsibly, without evidence beyond the blog excerpts.
These were her in-laws and her mother-in-law’s sister - all deceased now. The sister’s husband is awaiting a liver transplant. She and her 2 children are fine. Her ex was violently ill a year ago and cancelled coming to this meal at the last minute.
I wondered whether the lady’s ineptitude at distinguishing edible from poisonous mushrooms could have led her to (accidentally) developing an immunity to the death cap’s amatoxin. Here’s what two minutes of Googling found me:
That may work with (fictional) iocane powder in The Princess Bride, but almost all real poisons don't work that way. For example, you aren't going to become immune to the amatoxins in death cap mushrooms by having a nibble everyone [sic] once in a while.
This reminds me a bit about a mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers where a person noted for his knowledge of edible fungi is found accidentally poisoned by a death cap mushroom included in his stew. His son doesn’t believe his father could have made such a foolish and fatal mistake, and eventually a college professor with whom he is acquainted establishes that the amatoxin in the skillet is a racemic mixture of left and right optical isomers (therefore made in a lab, not by nature). I was an undergraduate taking organic chemistry at the time, so the story resonated with me.
BTW, did the police test the serving dishes for amatoxin residue? It’s the left optical isomer, correct?
"All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once."
-Terry Pratchett
But, but, but, they were organic, FREE-RANGE mushrooms.
Why didn't she eat the mushrooms? Why weren't her kids given the mushrooms?
If she thought they were "safe"?
I checked the 1st batch of comments, and its not here yet. Old joke I like.
Man is out with a woman on a first date
She asks if he was ever married, Yes, but she died. Oh my! So sorry. What did she die from? Poison mushrooms. Oh my, that's terrible. So you stayed single?. Nope got married again...but she passed too. WOW that is so sad, what from? Poison mushrooms again. Well thats a coincidence. But now you stayed single? No, married again alas she died, this time a crushed Skull...So sorry for you, but how did it happen
She wouldn't eat her mushrooms.
There are dark shades of "Arsenic and Old Lace" in this story. Seems like we'll need Colombo to solve the case.
"I didn't know the gun was loaded." is an insufficient excuse also.
I clicked on the mushroom tag. 13 months (and a day) ago there’s a photo of a death cap - 3rd one down.
Interesting that the (note: not ex-) husband didn't attend. Did he set her up? Or was it just typical of the inconsiderate bastard to stay alive and mess up her plans for inheriting the in-laws' property?
I'm placing bets on Leongatha Lucretia.
Spouse automatically gets a deceased partner's estate in this particular jurisdiction. They don't even have to be married. A few months of co-habitation is enough.
Kids often won't eat mushrooms, so I'm not shocked they had something else. Chicken nuggets and chips probably.
Why she didn't eat them? Well that's a different matter.
Craig Mc says “Spouse automatically gets a deceased partner's estate in this particular jurisdiction.”
That puts an extra wrinkle into the story. She’s wealthy. She invested the inheritance she received from her parents (how did they die?) into rental properties. In fact her ex lives in one of her houses.
.She says she bought the mushrooms at a local shop.
This is both a tragic event and a really fascinating story.
1. So her ex, as I’ve been calling him, is not really her ex but her estranged husband.
2. She’s now missing (she supposedly left for Melbourne to consult with her lawyers) and since the police confiscated her phone, her lawyers have no way to contact her.
3. Why didn’t she eat the Beef Wellington made with the poisonous mushrooms? Possible excuses - she was to nervous to eat, she was busy serving dinner to everyone, she didn’t want to die.
"She says she bought the mushrooms at a local shop"
I find it difficult to believe a shop would sell mushrooms of uncertain provenance.
As an aside: My family engaged in foraging. Both of my dad's parents were off-the-boat from Italy and so he grew up foraging for mushrooms, berries, edible plants as well as hunting and fishing. He passed that on to his kids and possibly escalated the tendency--we were members of the Spokane Mushroom Club and went on frequent forays. Over time, we consumed dozens of mushroom varieties and never had even a slight stomach ache from it. My dad called poisonous mushrooms "three steppers" as that's how far you get after eating one.
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