A woman in Australia who cooked a meal using mushrooms suspected of killing three people was arrested Thursday and charged with murder, authorities said.
Erin Patterson, 49, has maintained that the deaths after the beef Wellington lunch at her home in Leongatha, in the state of Victoria, were a tragic accident. Now police have charged her with three counts of murder and five of attempted murder—with some of the charges relating to earlier incidents.
Following the July 29 meal, four people became violently ill. Gail and Don Patterson, the parent’s of the accused’s ex-husband, both died in August while receiving treatment in hospital. Heather Wilkinson, Gail Patterson’s sister, also died, while Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson survived after becoming critically unwell.
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Simon Patterson, Erin’s former husband, had also been invited to dine at the meal but was unable to make it.
Police previously said the victims’ symptoms were consistent with those seen in patients who have consumed death cap mushrooms, an extremely toxic variety of mushroom thought to be responsible for the vast majority of mushroom-related deaths around the world.
Authorities say that three of the attempted murder charges against Erin Patterson concern separate incidents which took place between 2021 and 2022, in which an unidentified 48-year-old man also allegedly fell ill after other meals.
After her arrest Thursday, police officers and sniffer dogs searched Patterson’s home. She was taken to a police station for questioning.
Patterson maintained her innocence and shortly after the deaths told reporters she had been “devastated” by the loss of her relatives. In a written statement to police reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, she added: “I really want to repeat that I had absolutely no reason to hurt these people whom I loved.”
“Over the last three months, this investigation has been subjected to incredibly intense levels of public scrutiny and curiosity,” Victoria Police Detective Inspector Dean Thomas said in a statement. “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.”
In Patterson’s statement, she also claimed the mushrooms used in the suspected fatal Wellington were a mixture purchased from a well-known supermarket chain and an Asian grocery store in Melbourne. She said that she too required hospital treatment after eating the dish, and that her kids—who were not present for the meal—ate some of the leftovers the following day. She says her children don’t like mushrooms so she scraped them off before giving them part of the Wellington.
Patterson also admitted in the letter to having lied to investigators about when she’d disposed of a food dehydrator. She initially told police she’d ditched the appliance “a long time ago” when in reality she only took it to a dump after the alleged poisonings.
