Australian woman charged with murder in mushroom-poisoning case

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Police in Australia have charged a woman who served guests a meal allegedly containing death cap mushrooms with three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. She also faces another three charges of attempted murder in connection with incidents in 2021 and 2022, police said.

Erin Patterson was hosting her former in-laws and another couple for lunch on July 29 at her home in Leongatha, a town in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria, when she served them a beef Wellington pie believed to contain death caps, one of the most poisonous varieties of mushroom.

Don and Gail Patterson, the parents of Ms. Patterson’s former husband, Simon, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, died in hospital days later. Heather’s husband, Ian, survived after a long hospitalization; he was discharged in late September.

Police raided Ms. Patterson’s home early Thursday morning, searching the property with technology-detecting dogs, which can sniff out devices such as USB drives. After the search, Ms. Patterson was arrested and taken in for questioning.

In a statement, Victoria Police said she had been “charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.”

Two of the attempted murder charges are in connection with the July 29 lunch, while the others stem from three incidents in 2021 and 2022, when a 48-year-old man, whom police did not identify, allegedly “became ill following meals on these dates.”

“Today’s charges are just the next step in what has been an incredibly complex, methodical and thorough investigation by homicide squad detectives,” Victoria Police Detective-Inspector Dean Thomas said, acknowledging the “incredibly intense levels of public scrutiny and curiosity” surrounding the case.

“I cannot think of another investigation that has generated this level of media and public interest, not only here in Victoria, but also nationally and internationally,” Det.-Insp. Thomas said. “I think it’s particularly important that we keep in mind that, at the heart of this, three people have lost their lives. These are three people who, by all accounts, were much beloved in their communities and are greatly missed by their loved ones.”

In an earlier statement to police, Ms. Patterson said she prepared the meal using a mix of button mushrooms from a local supermarket and dried ones bought at an Asian grocery store in Melbourne months earlier. Guests fixed their own plates, and she took the last one, Ms. Patterson said, adding that she was herself briefly hospitalized after the lunch.

“I am now devastated to think that these mushrooms may have contributed to the illness suffered by my loved ones,” Ms. Patterson said. “I really want to repeat that I had absolutely no reason to hurt these people whom I loved.”

But suspicion has hung over her ever since, leading her to complain that she was being “painted as an evil witch” by the media.

Her former husband was due to attend the fatal lunch, she said, but told her “prior to the day” that he wouldn’t make it. In the statement, she appeared to reference media reports that he spent two weeks in hospital last year with a severe stomach illness, saying she had nursed him for three weeks before deciding to finally end their relationship.

Death cap mushrooms, or Amanita phalloides, are responsible for as much as 90 per cent of all fatal mushroom poisonings. The incredibly toxic fungi originated in the U.K. and Ireland but have spread around the world. They grow in the wild, including in urban areas, and can easily be mistaken for field mushrooms by inexperienced foragers.

Death caps have been found growing in Western Canada, and in 2016 a three-year-old boy died in British Columbia after eating one.

While a danger to foragers, it would be “impossible” for death cap mushrooms to enter the commercial supply chain, the Australian Mushroom Growers Association said in August, adding that store-bought mushrooms are subject to “rigorous supplier standards.”