Woman accused of killing 3 people with toxic meals with mushrooms for trial in Australia

An Australian woman accused of murdering three people with a Beef Wellington of toxic fungus meat He faces the trial on Wednesday in a case that has caught global attention.

Erin Patterson, 50, is accused of three murders, including his parents, and an attempt to murder.

She has He declared himself innocent to all aspects.

Patterson is accused of organizing a lunch of July 2023 in which the baked dish of pastry and beef served, which the police said it was tied with poisonous fungi.

His parents in the law, Don and Gail Patterson, and the wife of a local shepherd, Heather Wilkinson, died in the days after food.

Wilkinson’s husband, Ian, recovered after almost two months in the hospital. The BBC had reported during its hospitalization that a liver transplant was waiting for.

Patterson was arrested in November 2023, the BBC reported.

Patterson will be tried in the courts of Law Valley of Latrobe in Morwell, south of Melbourne, one hour by car from Leongatha, where he ate the supposedly fatal food.

On Tuesday a jury of 15 people was selected and will be reduced to 12 through the vote as the verdict approaches.

Judge Christopher Beale told jurors that prosecutors had abandoned separate charges against Patterson claiming that she had also tried to kill her separate husband.

Judge Beale urged the jury to “disappasitely” weigh the evidence in the case, using their heads and not their hearts, BBC reported.

The trial is expected to be executed for six weeks and will begin with statements to open the Prosecutor’s Office and the defense, each side giving a summary of their case and detailing the witnesses and evidence they plan to trust.

The case reached the headlines worldwide, which caused a series of podcasts and a documentary television series about the Australian transmission service Stan.

The Supreme Court of the State of Victoria has imposed strict guidelines on informing about the case to ensure that Patterson receives a fair trial.

While the court is open to the public, the case will not be televised.

What are the fungi of the death cover?

Police say that the symptoms of the four sick family members were consistent with the poisoning of Amanita Phalloids wild, known as Death cover fungi.

The fungi of the death cover sprout freely into wet and warm parts of Australia and are easily confused with edible varieties.

According to reports, they know sweeter than other types of fungi, but they have powerful toxins that slowly poison the liver and kidneys.

The death limits are responsible for 90% of the poisoning of lethal fungi worldwide, the BBC reported. In 2020, a series of poisoning in Victoria killed a person and hospitalized seven others.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that Erin Patterson had written in a statement that he had cooked a dish of res when for lunch with mushrooms bought in an important chain of supermarkets and dry fungi in an Asian edible store.

She wrote that she had also eaten the food and then suffered stomach and diarrhea pain.

His children, who were not present at lunch, ate some of the remaining meat from Wellington the next day, the BBC reported. However, fungi had been scraped from the plate since they don’t like them, he said.

In:
• Australia
• Murder
• Poisoning