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03-11-2023
Bureau Report + Agencies
MELBOURNE: An Australian woman has been arrested over the suspected mushroom poisoning deaths of three people.
The trio had fallen ill after attending a family lunch in the Victorian town of Leongatha in July. A fourth person was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
The woman who served the lunch, Erin Patterson, was taken into custody on Thursday. She has not been charged.
Ms Patterson, 49, has strongly maintained she is innocent.
Victoria Police said the woman would be interviewed by detectives and a search warrant had been executed at her house.
Gail and Don Patterson, the parents of Patterson’s ex-husband were guests at the lunch along with Gail Patterson’s sister Heather Wilkinson and her brother-in-law Ian Wilkinson.
The four were taken to hospital on 30 July reporting violent illness, police say.
Within days the Patterson couple, both 70, and Ms Wilkinson, 66, had died. Wilkinson, 68, later recovered after two months of treatment.
“This milestone marks a moment of immense relief and gratitude for Ian and the entire Wilkinson family,” his loved ones said in a statement in September.
Erin Patterson has said she herself was taken to hospital after the meal due to stomach pains, and was put on a saline drip and given medication to guard against liver damage.
She has said she served a beef wellington pie using a mixture of button mushrooms bought from a supermarket, and dried mushrooms purchased at an Asian grocery months earlier.
“I am now devastated to think that these mushrooms may have contributed to the illness suffered by my loved ones,” she wrote in a statement in August.
“I really want to repeat that I had absolutely no reason to hurt these people, whom I loved.”
Mushroom poisonings may range from benign symptoms of generalized gastrointestinal upset to potentially devastating manifestations which include liver failure, kidney failure, and neurologic sequelae. There are up to 14 described syndromes, which manifest depending on the species, toxins, and amount ingested.
Mushroom poisoning is usually the result of ingestion of wild mushrooms after misidentification of a toxic mushroom as an edible species. The most common reason for this misidentification is a close resemblance in terms of color and general morphology of the toxic mushrooms species with edible species. To prevent mushroom poisoning, mushroom gatherers familiarize themselves with the mushrooms they intend to collect, as well as with any similar-looking toxic species. The safety of eating wild mushrooms may depend on methods of preparation for cooking. Some toxins, such as amatoxins, are thermostable and mushrooms containing such toxins will not be rendered safe to eat by cooking.
