Lingering questions in the mushroom mystery

Samantha Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. Almost a fortnight after three people died from suspected mushroom poisoning in Victoria details about the fatal lunch are still emerging. The woman who cooked what’s believed to be the killer meal has now produced a statement for the police which adds even more intrigue to the story.

Today, investigative reporter Dan Oakes, exclusively obtained the statement, on what we now know and the lingering questions that have captivated us. Dan, we wanted to get you on to talk about this case that you’ve been looking into because it’s so intriguing and it seems to have people talking and wondering what’s going on.

Dan Oakes: It has. It’s the story that’s sort of gripped the attention of the country. And yeah, in the middle of it is Erin Patterson.

Samantha Hawley: Who’s Erin?

Dan Oakes: Well, she’s a lady from Leongatha, which is a small town in South Gippsland. Now she’s dealing with the fact that she prepared a lunch that it appears may have killed three people, including her parents-in-law, and left another man in hospital in a critical condition.

Samantha Hawley: Yeah, it’s a tragic story. She spoke actually after she was stopped outside her home by journalists last week.

Erin Patterson: I’m devastated. I love them. And I can’t believe that this has happened. And I’m so sorry that they have lost their lives… I just can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.

Samantha Hawley: And that’s audio there from News Corp Australia. So the case centers Dan around this family lunch. What else do we know about that lunch?

Dan Oakes: So it was on the 29th of July, and at that lunch were Erin Patterson, her parents-in-law, the parents of her estranged husband. That’s Don and Gail Patterson and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, and her husband, Ian Wilkinson. Ian Wilkinson is the only one in that quartette who is still alive.

The lunch has taken place, and maybe 24 hours afterward it’s become clear that you know, there are some significant issues arising from that lunch. The Department of Health contacted Erin Patterson at that point and said, you know, we have a suspicion that it might have been that lunch you prepared. And essentially everything’s just progressed from there.

Samantha Hawley: So Ian, he’s a local pastor. He’s still in critical condition in hospital. Dan, the interest in this exploded, didn’t it, when police did say that the symptoms were consistent with mushroom poisoning?

Dan Oakes: Yeah, that’s correct. And a couple of days after these three people died the head of the homicide squad gave a press conference in which he explicitly referred to Erin Patterson as a suspect in the case.

Reporter: Is the 48-year-old a suspect?

Dean Thomas, Victoria Police: The 48-year-old… Yes, she is. And she is because she cooked those meals for us, for those people that were present. Now, again, she hasn’t presented with any symptoms, but we have to keep an open mind about this that it could be very innocent.

Dan Oakes: I mean, that grabbed my attention straight away because I was a crime reporter for quite a while, and it’s quite unusual for police to come out and do that, say immediately afterward that someone is a suspect.

Samantha Hawley: Yeah, right. And that was Detective Inspector Dean Thomas. So Erin is a suspect, according to police, because she cooked the meal, which was a Beef Wellington. And Dan, she was the only adult at that lunch who didn’t fall ill.

Dan Oakes: Well, Sam, that’s not strictly true. And that’s one of the misconceptions that sort of circulated immediately after lunch. But we got hold of the statement last week that Erin Patterson had provided to the homicide squad last Friday. And in that statement, she says, no, that’s incorrect, that she did go to the hospital after lunch, I believe, on Monday.

So the lunch was on Saturday. She went to the hospital on Monday, she was discharged and sent home. But then she went back to the hospital and was transported by ambulance to Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne and was there overnight.

Samantha Hawley: Okay. So, Erin, she’s always maintained her innocence and she’s said that to the journalists that were at her house.

Reporter: Police say you’re a suspect. Do you have anything to say about that?

Erin Patterson: I say I didn’t do anything. I loved them and I’m devastated that they’re gone.

Samantha Hawley: Now, as you mentioned, we have this written statement from her that she sent to the police. And you obtained that this week. You got a copy of it. I gather, Dan, you’re not going to tell us how you got your hands on that, but what else did we learn from it?

Dan Oakes: Well, yeah, look, the first thing that she addresses in the statement is that when the police first asked to talk to her, she essentially Googled criminal lawyers and found one. And she says that that lawyer advised her to give a no-comment interview to police, which she now acknowledges was the wrong thing to do and she bitterly regrets. It’s almost like she wrote this statement with the intention of point by point, rebutting the various things that had been speculated on.

She also, in the statement, gives the first account that we’re aware of where the mushrooms came from. And she says it was a combination of button mushrooms from a major supermarket chain that we’re not mentioning because there’s no suggestion at all that that supermarket chain was selling poisoned mushrooms. But the other mushrooms in the dish she says she got from an Asian grocery in Melbourne and they were dehydrated, a pack of dehydrated mushrooms that she had had sitting around for a long time and then just decided to use.

News report: The ABC understands police searched the Koonwarra transfer station on Friday and removed a food dehydrator from the premises. Today detectives visited the tip again.

Dan Oakes: Early in the piece, there was a report that police had seized a food dehydrator from the local tip. And when the police asked Erin Patterson about that initially, she told them that she had dumped the dehydrator at the tip a long time ago. In the statement, she admits that that that’s not true, that she dumped the dehydrator at the tip after this fatal lunch occurred.

She claims her estranged husband said to her, ‘Is that what you used to poison my family?’, which sent her into a panic and she says led to her dumping the dehydrator. So she admits that she lied, but says that basically, it was brought about by panic.

Samantha Hawley: Okay. Very intriguing. All right. So, Dan, what about this Asian grocery store she mentions in this statement? Have police looked into that?

Dan Oakes: Well, yeah, police are being very, very tight-lipped about this. The Department of Health, according to Erin Patterson, told the Department of Health immediately about these dried mushrooms. And she claims that before police seized her phone, she was sent photographs by someone at the Department of Health with packets of dried mushrooms in them, which very closely matched her description of the packet that she had bought.

So, look, so far, you know, as far as I’m aware, there’s been no recall of products. There’s been no public announcement about a particular store. There’s been no store raided or cleaned out, which suggests that, yeah, they still haven’t located the supposed source of these mushrooms.

Samantha Hawley: And Dan, there are also these reports that her husband fell ill last year. What are they all about?

Dan Oakes: So there were reports early on which appear to have been ripped from, you know, a Facebook post that Simon Patterson, her estranged husband, made last year that he’d spent two weeks in hospital last year, severely ill with, you know, what’s described as stomach or intestinal problems.

Samantha Hawley: And that doesn’t mean anything necessarily, but it does add to these questions that everyone seems to have about this case. And Dan three people have lost their lives and this happened in a very small community. And that’s been hard for that community, hasn’t it?

Dan Oakes: Yeah, Look, it’s a beautiful, beautiful part of the world. South Gippsland I was down there a couple of weeks ago myself, the locals. Yeah. They’re struggling, with what’s happened.

Leongatha resident: To lose such people that were so giving and so many pillars of the community. And yeah, so I think that’s been very difficult.

Leongatha resident: Devastated, absolutely devastated. He and Heather were soul mates. They did everything together.

Leongatha resident: I sat here crying. I’m going, it just can’t be true. And I’m praying hard for Ian to survive.

Dan Oakes: Ian Wilkinson, who’s still alive, was a pastor at the church in Korumburra, which is a nearby town, very close to Leongatha. Yeah, it can be very disconcerting for those people.

Samantha Hawley: So there’s no confirmation, Dan, that mushrooms are behind the deaths in this case because police are still waiting on toxicology reports. But police did say the symptoms of those who fell ill were consistent with having consumed death cap mushrooms.

Reporter: Have we confirmed what type of mushroom it was that they consumed?

Dean Thomas, Victoria Police: No. And again, we are presuming at this point it’s mushrooms. The symptoms that these people presented with are that of death cap mushrooms. And again, you know, we’re working closely with the Department of Health…

Samantha Hawley: What is it that makes these mushrooms so deadly?

Dan Oakes: From what I understand, the main and most serious effect is liver failure or serious liver damage. In her statement, Erin Patterson says that when she did go by ambulance to the hospital in Melbourne, they gave her what she describes as a liver protection drug. Also early in the piece that was reported that Ian Wilkinson was waiting for a liver transplant. Now, there’s been some reports that that’s now no longer the case. But yeah, from my understanding, the main and real danger with the death cap mushrooms is the effect on the liver.

Samantha Hawley: Doctor Jonathan Karro, he’s at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. He was telling 7.30 that even one of these mushrooms can kill an adult. So they’re incredibly poisonous.

Dr. Jonathan Karro, St Vincent’s Hospital: The patient will often be okay for a few hours, four, five, or six hours, and then will develop profuse, really heavy watery vomiting and diarrhea. And over the next few hours that will progress to liver failure and potentially death.

Samantha Hawley: This case has kicked off a lot of concern about the dangers of mushroom foraging, hasn’t it? Reminding people that actually, you have to be careful with mushrooms?

Dan Oakes: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like up in up in New South Wales, but down here foraging for mushrooms is quite popular and it seems to be growing in popularity every year. Maybe that’s something to do with, I guess, you know, TV chefs talking about foraging mushrooms, but you know, every year, yeah, there are warnings to people. You’ve got to be careful.

Samantha Hawley: So it’s not hard to see, Dan, why there’s so much interest in this case. It sort of reads like something out of a novel. What comes next then, in this investigation?

Dan Oakes: Well, yeah, that’s the big question. And as I said, the police aren’t talking. As far as I know, Erin Patterson doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. So I think she’s just sitting there waiting. She said that she did collect the remains of the meal and gave them to toxicology people at the hospital. And everyone is waiting with bated breath to see whether this just quietly fades away and Erin Patterson’s completely innocent or, you know, goes in the other direction. We just don’t know. But I would assume it’ll become clearer in the days to come.

Samantha Hawley: Dan Oakes is an investigative reporter with the ABC. This episode was produced by Veronica Apap, Nell Whitehead, and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. To get in touch with the team, please email us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening.