Erin Patterson Mushroom Murder Trial Live Latest News: Jury hears details about another death cap mushroom death in Australia

The jury was told another woman died of death cap mushroom poisoning last May.

The woman picked some mushrooms in the garden in the front yard of the house in April.

She prepared and used mushrooms in a dish and then ate them by her and her son.

The woman had previously introduced mushrooms to her son and asked if they were safe and could have a meal.

My son recalled that the mushrooms were white in color.

She and her son had the meal but were not sick.

In May, the woman picked mushrooms again to cook for herself and her son.

At about 2 a.m., the woman went to the bathroom.

Her son checked her around 3am or 4am, and she said she had been vomiting.

The son felt sick at around 6 a.m. and they called an ambulance and were taken to the hospital when the court heard the woman later died of death cap poisoning.

The coroner made some findings, and the Ministry of Health contacted Dr. May to ask how they should respond to these suggestions.

Among them is a discovery that requires more public health information about the dangers of eating wild mushrooms.

Dr. May agrees to “extra public awareness.”

Doctors also recommend annual warnings to the public.

Dr. Tom admitted to the jury that “the public has poor ability to identify wild mushrooms.”

Wearing all the black and glasses, Patterson stared forward, listening attentively to her legal team cross-examination of fungi experts.

The doctor may also agree with the defense suggestion that “it takes a long time to accurately learn how to identify mushrooms in the bushes.”

World-renowned mushroom experts agree that the appearance of the death caps vary and have smooth hats including green, pale yellow, white or brown.

He said the death cap may or may not have spots, white or light-colored stems, white ills and cups, and is not always visible.

Dr. May said the ring stems are not always visible.

“I’ll look for all these traits (to identify the death caps),” he said.

Dr. May said that determining the mushroom is a death cap, he needed a specimen or sample for spore printing and DNA testing.

He also agreed with the defense suggestion that “the death cap mushroom is not possible to be identified in sight alone.”

Dr. May said if he went out with naturalists, he said he could spot mushrooms informally and said “that’s a death hat.”

The expert said he needed more discoveries and evidence when formally identifying the death cap of the Victorian Poison Information Center.

Dr. May said he could also exclude mushrooms as death caps by seeing only a certain number of traits.

“Sometimes, if I can only see some features, I can rule it out as a death cap,” he said.

Dr. May said he has identified about 30,000 mushrooms, including the death cap he posted to Inaturalist.

Dr. Camille Truong, a research scientist at Royal Botanical Gardens, told the jury that Dr. Laura Muldoon of Monash Medical Center (pictured below) asked for help to identify mushrooms because four Patterson’s lunch guests endured mushrooms in the hospital.

Dr. Truong, a mushroom expert and colleague for Dr. Tom May, said she emailed photos of the leftovers on July 31.

She also told the jury Dr. Muldoon that the patients suffered from suspicious mushroom poisoning.

Dr. Trunn said she asked where the mushrooms came from, and it was a “supermarket and a Chinese store.”

According to her information at that stage, patients are unlikely to consume death cap mushrooms because they have to be picked in the wild and cannot be cultivated.

Meanwhile, the jury learned that the leftovers had been sent to the Royal Botanical Garden for testing, but Dr. Trun had left work due to communication errors.

A receptionist rang Dr. Truong and told her the package had arrived, so she asked a colleague who was still working even after the center was closed for a day, if she could bring the package to her home.

Dr. Trunn said she carefully examined the food, which was shipped with two large blue zippered bags using a home microscope.

The doctor said she found no traces of the death cap mushroom during the test.

Dr. Truong refrigerates the food and brings them back to work, where she checks them again, but still finds no evidence of the death cap.

She told the jury that she only found regular mushrooms found in supermarkets.

Dr. Trunn said that later that day, an employee of the health department collected food.

Under cross-examination, Dr. Truong agreed that the samples were difficult to identify because they were chopped, cooked and admitted that she could not rule out the death cap.

Supermarket mushrooms are unlikely to make people sick because they are highly regulated and cultivated, doctors say.

She also said, “It is impossible to sell death caps even in a small store” because deadly fungi cannot be found in “large amounts.”

Chief Defense Barrister Colin Mandy KC suggested that samples of mushroom fragments found in tested foods may be ghost mushrooms or oyster mushrooms.

Dr. Truong disagreed, but later admitted that she discussed with Dandenong Hospital staff the possibility that mushrooms could be mushrooms in food, including ghosts and oyster mushrooms.

Dr. May told the jury that he had identified more than 30,000 images of the inturalist, but only if he had enough data.

The defense showed a series of images of different mushrooms posted on the Inaturalist, and doctors agreed that most people grew in Gippsland Towns, including Moe and Traralgon.

Mushrooms include rosewood mushrooms, which he said he didn’t know if they were edible. He said he didn’t believe it was toxic, but wasn’t sure.

Dr. May said the rosewood mushroom looks similar to the death cap.

The defense also showed him the image of the mushroom family of honey mushrooms, which he said was not toxic but bitter and was not usually used in Australian cooking.

DR May also identified images of fluffy parasol mushrooms, which he said are toxic to humans and cause symptoms related to the stomach.

The defense suggested that the mushrooms shown to the doctor may exhibit similar characteristics to the death cap, experts agree.

Dr. May also shows images of mushrooms in the same group as the Death Cap.

He said the mushroom is a “red flag” “in the genus Amanita” because it may be poisonous, but he did not know whether it is edible or toxic.

The defense also showed the doctor an image of the spring field-covered mushroom.

Dr. May said spring pastorals grow in Gippsland and it is well known that children can grow in private home gardens because they can grow in private home gardens.

Erin Patterson, a 50-year-old accused mushroom murderer, witnessed video evidence recorded by her two children.

Patterson is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, after serving them a deadly meal filled with death hat mushrooms, becomes exciting after seeing video evidence of her son and daughter.

Patterson is also charged with attempting to murder Heather’s husband, Rev. Ian Wilkinson, who survived lunch after spending weeks in the ICU.

The court heard that Patterson’s estranged husband Simon was also invited but did not attend.

Witnesses told the jury that Patterson had eaten a smaller and different colored plate, and her guests had eaten from four grey plates.

Patterson told authorities she bought dried mushrooms from an Asian store in the Monash area of ​​Melbourne, who asked not to be named, but the health inspector could not find any evidence.

The health department declared death cap poisoning “isolated” to Patterson’s deadly lunch.

Several witnesses, including Simon Patterson, Ian Wilkinson and other family members, provided emotional evidence to the jury.

Medical staff have told the jury that the dying lunch guests and Ian Wilkinson suffered fearful symptoms.

Patterson’s movement in the hospital, her sudden departure incident was also aired in court this morning.

Mycologist Tom May (pictured below) is an internationally recognized fungal expert who told the jury yesterday that death cap mushrooms can only be found near oaks or trees within the oak family.

Dr. Moos is a mushroom expert and the main fungus research scientist at the Royal Botanical Gardens, and he said the death cap has a “symbiotic” relationship with the oak.

Mushroom experts will continue to answer questions this morning after cross-examination, saying that the color of the death cap is mostly orange, but may be white or brown.

He said they changed their appearance when they matured.

Dr May told the jury that the death cap mushrooms – science called Amanita phalloides – were believed to have been accidentally introduced to Australia from Europe and was first discovered in Victoria in the 1970s.

He said mushrooms are “relatively short” in the wild due to wet conditions and insects.

Dr. May said the death cap won’t last longer due to insect infections that the fungi “constantly works” on mushrooms.

Dr. May said there are many publicly available online databases containing information about death cap mushrooms.

Inaturalist is Australia’s largest public citizen scientist app for uploading information about fungi, he said.

Dr. May told the jury that you need an account to post information about wild mushrooms, but you don’t need an account to view “precise location information.”

He said you can easily find the location of certain species. ”

The jury heard that the death cap was found in the lake on April 18, 2023.

The doctors said death cap mushrooms were found in parts of New South Wales and Victoria in the bill, including the Gippsland towns Outtrim, Loch and Morwell.

In Victoria, the jury told the jury that in Victoria, the Melbourne Metropolitan Melbourne’s metropolitan Melbourne is spread across the Dandenong Mountains and to the west to Gisborne and Bendigo.

Dr. May said cases involving death cap mushrooms occurred when people mistakenly ingested deadly fungi.

Dr. May, who published a book in 2021, told Jury Toxins Found in Death Caps that can be found in other mushrooms.

In 2023, a poisoning involved a Chinese tourist who ate mushrooms, got sick, went to the hospital, showing early signs of organ failure, but left the hospital a week later.

Among the other 24 reported cases of wild mushroom poisoning, the patient developed gastric symptoms, but no organ damage was involved.