Woman charged with murder over suspected death cap mushroom poisonings
An Australian woman has been charged with murder over the suspected mushroom poisoning deaths of three people.
Erin Patterson was arrested on Thursday morning and police have spent the day searching her home east of Melbourne.
Ms Patterson, 49, had served the family lunch after which the trio, who included her former in-laws, fell ill. A fourth person survived.
Toxicology reports suggest the victims consumed deathcap mushrooms. Ms Patterson maintains she is innocent.
She has said she did not intentionally poison her guests at the lunch in the Victorian town of Leongatha on 29 July.
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. Mr Wilkinson, 68, was taken to hospital in a critical condition but later recovered after two months of treatment.
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.”
Her children, who were not present at the lunch, ate some of the leftover beef Wellington the next day. However the mushrooms had been scraped off the dish as they do not like the fungi, she said. (Sources: BBC News)
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