Mushrooms and motive

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Last week saw the verdict in Australia’s most intriguing court case of the year – the Mushroom Murders. Erin Patterson, a mother of two children, who lived in a small town near Melbourne, was convicted of murdering four of her in-laws and attempting to murder a fifth. She invited them to lunch and served them Beef Wellington. Beef Wellington is a delicious meal consisting of a fillet lathered in a pâté of mushrooms and then baked in short crust pastry. However, the mushrooms she used where deadly poisonous death caps. It’s one of my favorite dishes when you use edible mushrooms, but I’d think twice about it after this story.

And a strange story it is. Erin invited her estranged husband, Simon, and five members of his family to lunch. She told them she’d received a serious cancer diagnosis and wanted their input on what to tell the two children. Everyone seemed to agree that while there had been disagreements and unpleasantness around the separation, on the whole Erin, Simon, and her in-laws got on reasonably well. There was some friction between the couple over a tax filing, but nothing a good lawyer wouldn’t have been able to cope with. Erin could afford one. She’d inherited a considerable amount of money from her parents and grandparents. In fact, she’d loaned some of it to three of Simon’s siblings - interest free - to buy their houses. Simon was supposed to come to the lunch, but cancelled the day before. Erin was very upset by the late cancellation and asked him to reconsider, but he didn’t pitch, which almost certainly saved his life.

Erin and Simon in happier times

In any case the lunch went ahead. Shortly afterwards, the guests all became ill and started exhibiting alarming symptoms. Erin called Simon, and the guests were taken to hospital where four of them subsequently died. One survived after a liver transplant and seven weeks of hospital care.

Erin said it was all a horrible, tragic mistake. She also claimed that she had been ill as well, but had eaten less than the others and, as a result of an eating disorder, had thrown up the meal. The surviving guest commented that she'd eaten off a different color plate. The children (who were not at the lunch) had leftovers for supper and were fine. (She said they didn’t like mushrooms and she’d scraped them off.)

A variety of strange behaviors followed the episode. Erin did attend the hospital complaining of pain and diarrhea, but refused to be admitted. The police discovered that she owned a mushroom dryer that she dumped after the lunch. Initially, she claimed not to have one. She said the mushrooms for the lunch were from an Asian grocer (but she couldn’t recall which one) and subsequently said they must have been mixed with mushrooms she foraged for years ago. She claimed that she became a forager of wild mushrooms during Covid and so went out on her own. No one recalled her speaking about it, even her children had no recollection of her doing so. She accessed websites about poisonous mushrooms, claiming she needed to recognize them in order to avoid them when out mushroom hunting. She wiped her cell phone, but records showed that she had visited areas where the poisonous mushroom Amanita phalloides had been identified.

In the event, her variety of lies (including the cancer diagnosis), contradictions, and the circumstantial evidence was enough to convict her. There was just too much for it all to be coincidence or misunderstanding. Legal experts asked about the trial commented with surprise that it took the jury nearly a week to reach a unanimous verdict. The case seemed overwhelming to them.

However, one thing was missing. No one has suggested any believable motive for the murders. In fact, the prosecution opened their case saying that they did not intend to offer a motive. The defense pushed that, but the prosecution shrugged it off. Legally, there’s no need for the prosecution to offer a motive. All that is required is that the prosecution shows that there was intent to commit murder.

I listened to a psychiatrist talking about the case and motivation on a podcast. He said that people (and the courts) are very bad at thinking about and identifying motivation – even their own. He suggested that something dramatic happened in Erin’s life around three months before the murders, about the time when she purchased the mushroom drier. (No one knows what that event could be, because apparently no one looked that closely.) He suggested that was the point when she started to formulate a plan. It was a plan that never really came together, leaving multiple holes that she had to try to fill after the event.

As crime writers and readers, we always expect motives and believable ones at that. The whole point of a crime novel is to understand the characters, their motivations, and how that leads to their actions – particularly the antagonist. Our work in progress is all about motive. The police struggle with the case precisely because they can’t find out what that motive is.

I think that’s what occupied the jury during that week of deliberations. They were looking for motivation. What could have caused this woman to commit this horrible crime? She had money. No motive there. She had ups and downs with her in-laws, but there seems to have been no real hatred and even affection in some cases. Simon said in court that she was particularly fond of his father, yet he was one of the victims. It’s been suggested that the in-laws were just camouflage for the real object, which was to kill Simon. But again, why? She was essentially rid of him already. She could have moved away from the small town where they lived, started a new life somewhere else. And, in any case, why go ahead with the crime when he failed to arrive?

Something is missing. I don’t think the jury found it, and I don’t think the police really cared about it. Probably we’ll never know.

The case has an intriguing premise, but it could never make a good novel.