The Mushroom Murderer: Erin Patterson’s Deadly Family Lunch and the Trial that Shocked the World.

[EPISODE 137] The Mushroom Murderer: Erin Patterson’s Deadly Family Lunch and the Trial that Shocked the World.

[00:00:00]

Kyle Risi: in the small town in the Latrobe Valley, On the menu was a painstakingly prepared beef Wellington with creamy mash and green beans.

Adam Cox: That Sounds, really tasty.

Kyle Risi: Not this one. Because Within a week, three of them would be dead and one would be fighting for their life.

On the surface, this looks like a tragic case of food poisoning.

But the twist is that Erin, was completely fine .

Adam Cox: that obviously seems suspicious to me.

Kyle Risi: Heather, asked why Erin might have eaten her lunch on a different color plate to everyone else.

Doctors quickly suspected that the cause of the realness was down one of the deadliest mushrooms on the planet.

Did Erin Patterson knowingly poison her in-laws?

Four days after the lunch, she had paid for entry to the local tip. CCTV confirmed Erin dumping several items, including a food dehydrator that matched the manual that they found in a house.

Adam Cox: Oh my [00:01:00] God.



Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your ring master for this week's episode.

Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the replacement guard dog for this week.

Kyle Risi: Okay, where's the other guard dog?

Adam Cox: He died. So this could be a permanent role if you do. Well, it could be. It's a trial run. Oh, no. What happened to him? Poor, [00:02:00] lucky. Uh, we just old age. Oh. So, um, but I couldn't find many dog costumes.

Um, like

Kyle Risi: So you have to dress up as a dog.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Um, I found a poodle costume and that I'll just have to do,

Kyle Risi: it's not that intimidating though. Is it a poodle costume? Yeah. Guys, if you are new to the show and you wanna support us, then the absolute best way to support the compendium and enjoy exclusive perks is to join us over at Patreon because signing up is free and you get access to next week's episode a whole seven days before anyone else.

Adam Cox: And for as little as $3 a month, you'll become a fellow freak of the show unlocking our entire back catalog, including classic episodes such as,

Kyle Risi: Ooh, got Milk. That was like one of the first like serious documentary ones that we did. Do you remember

Adam Cox: serious? It was good. It was, I found out why they kept talking about cheese and rap songs.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Like now that we know about government cheese, we hear it everywhere. Yeah. People [00:03:00] like, oh, I'm gonna get my government cheese. And like before I didn't even know what that meant. Now I'm like, Uhhuh, I know when you know, you know, when you know, you know.

And as a special thank you, our Certified Freak team members now receive an exclusive compendium key chain. All you gotta do is just DM us with your address, either on Patreon or on Instagram, and we will send one straight to your door. So we can always be dangling there. Right near your crotch.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Crotch. Yeah, crotch. Okay. That's enough. And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite app and leave us a review. Your support really helps others find us and keeps these amazing stories coming.

Kyle Risi: So today, Adam, on the compendium, we're diving into an assembly of intoxicating mushrooms, deception and irreversible loss.

Adam Cox: Some deadly mushrooms.

Kyle Risi: Mm does that ring any bells?

Adam Cox: Well, there has been something in the news.

Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Tell me more. Is it

Adam Cox: recently, did she get sentenced [00:04:00] very

Kyle Risi: recently? She's

Adam Cox: just been sentenced. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is the mushroom murderer, or, well, the, yeah. She used mushrooms

Kyle Risi: and Yeah. And she murdered people. Yeah.

Adam Cox: I wasn't so, yeah, I wasn't saying that she killed mushrooms.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, there's poor mushrooms. No, this is a real serious case, Adam. Okay. Because it's so fresh in my mind. Adam, on the 29th of July, 2023 in the small town of Leon Gartha in the Latrobe Valley, about 80 miles southeast of Melbourne, or as Australian listers always keep reminding us, it's Melbourne.

Yes. It's never been Melbourne. Melbourne. Hey, it's pelt Melbourne. Just like Bournemouth.

Adam Cox: Don't make them angry, Kyle.

Kyle Risi: They understand, they get so angry, but they always follow up with like a L or like a smiley, laughy face. So they're rolling you into false sense of security. Like they're like, ah, it's fine. It's fine, but they're gonna stab you. Yeah. I love Melbourne. I, this is such a shame we didn't get to spend that much time in there because the suburbs around it are apparently really incredible. I listen to, one of my favorite podcasts on the planet [00:05:00] is, uh, Tony and Ryan, which is an Australian podcast.

Mm-hmm. And they live in the Melbourne area. And just when they talk about kind of going out to the different restaurants and stuff that they go to, where they go to get their kind of chai latte or whatever, I want to go back and I want to experience some more of the restaurants and the food that Melbourne, ah, see I got it there. Melbourne has to offer.

Adam Cox: Yes. It reminded me it was very European familiar familiarity to it. And we went to that restaurant which had the best food we had in Australia.

Kyle Risi: Was it Collin Street?

Adam Cox: It was

Kyle Risi: like a, an an Asian fusion restaurant.

Yes. And it was just incredible. And they had that big massive ice crusher on the bar Uhhuh, and we were like, it looked like a torture device. Like you put your nuts in there and they crush 'em. But actually they're like, oh, it's too shave ice down for cocktails. I'm like, oh, I see. I get it. Yeah. But that was incredible. It was, the food was just amazing. Yes. I can't remember what the place was called.

Adam Cox: Dunno, but it was really good. I remember us thinking this was very good food.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's so strange when you go to Australia culturally, it is so [00:06:00] diverse because of course we visited Melbourne, we visited, Sydney, and we visited Cairns.

And just the culture between the different, the, the vibes of living. It's just so different. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And like Melbourne, when we went there, it was quite cold at the time. Surprisingly cold.

Adam Cox: Yeah. We just come from Cairnes, which was 30. Yeah. So, and muggy. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Good trip. So, Adam, back to the story in Leon, Garth in this little town, 80 miles south of Melbourne, a seemingly ordinary family of five gathered around the table for lunch.

On the menu was a painstakingly prepared beef Wellington with creamy mash and green beans.

Adam Cox: That sounds, really tasty.

Kyle Risi: Not this one. Oh, the next morning, four of those lunch guests would be violently ill, and within a week, three of them would be dead and one would be fighting for their life. Amazingly Adam Doctors quickly suspected that the cause of the realness was down to death cap mushrooms, a [00:07:00] mushroom so rare in Australia, yet one of the deadliest mushrooms on the planet.

What baffled doctors most was how this mushroom even ended up in that meal and now there was a serious fear. It had somehow slipped into the Australian grocery supply chain. If that was true, Adam, a potential national catastrophe was about to unfold.

Adam Cox: Isn't it amazing how just a mushroom, a tiny little mushroom Yeah. Can do so much damage?

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Oh, when you find out what the mushroom does to your internal organs, it's horrific. It's awful.

Adam Cox: Why would nature develop something like this?

You

Kyle Risi: know? at the same time, I know it's not native to Australia, but this is Australia. So it's like while you're in Rome, yeah, it just kill a bunch of people. If animals can kill you,

Adam Cox: so can the plants.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. But as investigators scrambled to locate the source of the contamination, suspicion began to turn towards Erin Patterson, the seemingly loving daughter-in-law who prepared the meal.

Because while her family members were in critical condition, Erin herself [00:08:00] was completely fine. On top of that, Erin was also reluctant to help authorities trace where she had purchased the mushrooms from her increasingly suspicious behavior and the revelation of a widening rift within the family made investigators wonder if something more sinister was happening here.

Did Erin Patterson knowingly poison her in-laws? I mean, the, the second you throw in in-laws

Adam Cox: it's a yes, it's a yes. We do not want them carrying around for Christmas dinner again.

Kyle Risi: So you've obviously heard of the story before.

Adam Cox: Yes.

Kyle Risi: What else do you know about it other than she's been sentenced?

Adam Cox: Well, I'm guessing she's found guilty. Mm-hmm. So she did it, but did she knowingly do it? That's the bit I'm not too sure about.

Kyle Risi: That is what they had to prove in court. But the thing is, though, by the end of that year, Erin was arrested on suspicion of murder. And from there the case spiraled into one of the wildest true crime stories in recent history.

So, Adam, today i'm gonna tell you about the infamous 2023 mushroom murders. This case is still really [00:09:00] fresh in everyone's mind. The trial only recent wrapped up and Aaron has since been sentenced to life prison. So yes, I'm a little bit late to the party, but as you know, I'm not a massive fan of covering stories before all the information is widely known, especially in the current kind of age of social media.

I think I had kind of was researching the Idaho murders. Mm-hmm. That was a story that unfolded a kind of on social media, but there was so much speculation. The swarm of online activity surrounded the case even before the trial began. Just ended up injecting a huge amount of speculation into the known facts, making it incredibly hard to tell an accurate story.

Adam Cox: Sure. But that just reminded me, does that mean now that p Diddy's been sentenced? Mm, we can now do p Diddy.

Kyle Risi: Well, as soon as those case files get released, there's gonna be just a huge amount of, podcasts coming out about it. So

Adam Cox: we will be one of the first a hundred to do that.

Kyle Risi: The first 1 million exclusive take on the P Diddy P Diddy story.

Yeah. No new facts whatsoever. But I'm [00:10:00] glad I waited because now that the trial is over, all the evidence in the case has finally been unsealed. this is pretty typical nowadays because a lot of this information is deliberately held back to protect the integrity of these trials, making sure that jurors aren't swayed by the media coverage.

And there's just so much of it nowadays with these true crime stories, but since Aaron's sentencing, all that information has now finally been revealed, and it adds so much depth to the story, Adam.

So today on the compendium, I'm gonna tell you what happened in July, 2023. We'll look at Erin's strange behavior immediately after the lunch and the early investigation.

But we're also gonna dive into Erin's past because even though she's been found guilty, her motive is still unclear.

Erin still denies doing this deliberately, and I think it's a motive that's actually the most fascinating aspect of this case, because at trial, prosecution didn't need to prove a motive at all. All they needed to do was prove that she did this.

But I think. Her story there hides the clues as to why [00:11:00] she did this. And for a time many people speculated it was money related, but all the evidence pointed to something else.

Something that tells us about who she was as a person. And I suspect this was either a revenge killing or possibly not an intentional killing at all, but an attempt to make her family want her again

Adam Cox: by making them really ill.

Yes. Essentially. But the risk of this, I don't know.

Kyle Risi: Well, the risk of it was that they all got killed.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm interested to know more.

Kyle Risi: So let's kick off with the events that unfolded on the day of the 29th of July, 2023.

On that day, 48-year-old Erin Patterson was finalizing her plans for Saturday lunch set to take place. At 1230 Sharp, her guests were her in-laws. Don and Gail Patterson and Gail's sister Heather and her husband, Ian Wilkinson, who also happened to be the pastor of the church that they all attended on a weekly basis.

So that gives you a sense of they're [00:12:00] type of family. They are. Right. They're quite religious. Yeah. Right. They're gonna have good moral compasses.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Think

Kyle Risi: YYY. Yeah. I mean, there are some exceptions when it comes to religious people, but this is Australia when it comes to religious fanaticism, I don't think is as on a par with what we see in America.

Adam Cox: No, I just mean like, you know, they all seem quite nice except for her.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. She, at this moment in time seems quite nice.

Adam Cox: Is her husband there then?

Kyle Risi: Well, at first glance, this seems like a typical family gathering, but for the Pattersons, the family dynamics made this gathering a little unusual because missing from their table. Was Simon Erin's estranged husband simon, of course is Don and Gail's, son.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: Their marriage to broker down over the last couple years, which put a massive amount of strain on Erin's relationship with her in-laws. So the fact that they were now sitting together without Simon breaking bread felt odd to everyone at that table.

Adam Cox: Is this something they did before then, or was quite common?

Kyle Risi: She will say that this was a very regular occurrence. It wasn't. Ah, but that's not to say though, that Simon wasn't [00:13:00] invited to this lunch. In fact, Aaron fully expected Simon to be there.

However, the evening before Simon texted Aaron to say that the whole arrangement was making him feel very uncomfortable and so he would not be coming.

Erin eagerly exclaimed that she'd put a lot of effort into the lunch even going as far to source the very best cuts of rib eye for the beef Wellington that she was making, and insisted that Simon, please reconsider.

She also reiterated that the purpose of the lunch was to share some very concerning news about her health and that she was actually wanting the whole family there to discuss it.

The goal was to make child arrangements while she underwent treatment for this condition that she had.

Simon replied that despite her reasoning, he still wouldn't be attending, but he was happy to discuss her health issues another time.

Adam Cox: Okay,

Kyle Risi: so disappointed Erin went ahead with her plans and just before noon, dawn, Gail, Heather, and Ian all arrive for lunch.

Gail brought with her an orange cake as a contribution. Remember that, that's important. They [00:14:00] chatted, Erin gave Heather an Ian a tour around the house since. This was the first time that they'd ever visited Mm-hmm. So again, she will maintain that this was a regular thing, but the fact that Heather and Ian had never been to the house says otherwise, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. If the marriage is broken down over a couple of years, or they've been separated a couple of years aside from maybe a few messages or whatever, or like picking up the kids from school, I'm guessing they didn't really hang out that much.

Kyle Risi: No, exactly.

So at 1230 they all sat down to eat. As they ate, Erin told them that she'd been diagnosed with cervical cancer and that she'd be undergoing treatment. So shocks and saddened Ian led a prayer for the group. They all agreed that they'd do everything that they could to support Erin with what was about to come.

So while the lunch ended on a somber note, they all left kind of feeling hopeful for Erin and the kids. Do you know what I mean? So these aren't bad people. Yeah. Their relationship is broken down, but she's still a family member. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So they can put those differences aside.

Adam Cox: She's the mother of the grandchildren.

Kyle Risi: Right. Exactly.

But Adam, by the next morning, [00:15:00] Don called his son Simon. He said that his mother, Gail, had become very sick overnight and that he wasn't feeding very well either. He explained that he had called for an ambulance, but he also had just spoken to Ian and Heather, who were also terribly sick, and he asked Simon if he could drive them both to the hospital.

Simon agreed. He picked Ian and Heather up who were clearly struggling, and they made their way to the hospital on the way.

Heather, despite her awful state, turned to Simon and asked him why Erin might have eaten her lunch on a different color plate to everyone else. She said the four of them had all eaten off gray plates, whereas Erin had used an orange color plate with flowers on it, and she wondered if Erin simply did not have enough matching plates.

At first. Simon put the strange question down to, obviously he had this confusion and dehydration, but he tried to satisfy curiosity saying. Yes. Basically. Even though the truth was that he had no idea.

Adam Cox: Yeah, it's, that's an interesting point. So I'm guessing that's a [00:16:00] very big clue. Mm-hmm. About what's to come.

But you know, you go around your parents or like a family dinner and they don't have enough plates. So you, they do get out.

Kyle Risi: But you have quite a big family though.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But it is usually you give the guests the nice plates and then you keep back. Sure. The slightly worse ones that you would have. Yeah.

So it could seem normal.

Kyle Risi: but they're considering this small amount of people, I guess four plates. You do buy plates and set of four. It infuriates me that you go to Market Spencer now and they come in sets of form. Like I want six. Yeah. Six. Six. I grew up with six plates. I won six plates. Six forks.

Six knives. In fact, when we bought our cutlery, they came in sets of four. So we had to buy two bundles. So we had eight and eight's too much. they know what they're doing. I know Fuckers.

So at the hospital, doctors initially assumed the family had food poisoning, likely from the beef that they eaten, right? Safe assumption to make, I'd say.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: But as the morning went on, all four patients started to rapidly deteriorate. When the test results came back, they showed that their livers were now starting to fail, and that several of their organs were now weakening.

So [00:17:00] concerned. Doctors decided to rerun the symptoms through their diagnostic resources.

Suddenly all the signs started pointed to something far stranger poisoning from death cap. Mushrooms to them, though, Adam, this just didn't make any sense. For one death cap poisoning in Australia is extremely rare. There's only ever been four deaths that have been recorded.

But also, death caps are highly seasonal with a very narrow growing window. Earlier on in the year, the fact that this was now the end of July made this. almost impossible, especially that such a poison could have even have happened.

Adam Cox: Okay. So it's out of season for this type of mushroom. Mm-hmm. So someone or what they're suspecting would've held these back? Yeah. Okay. That's it.

Kyle Risi: Still the evidence was there. So skeptical as they were doctors followed where the data led at the hospital overseeing Don and Gail's care was a very concerned doctor called Chris Webster.

He told Simon that if four of them were sick, then anyone else who ate the meal was [00:18:00] likely to be very sick too, and was vital that they came in to be checked.

Adam Cox: So he knew that it was death cap mushrooms. Was there a, there wasn't a machine that obviously said this is the symptom,

Kyle Risi: it's, yeah, I guess they ran it through their diagnostic machines going, the livers are failing. These organs are failing. They've got gastro entit to whatever it is, and they've gone, well, the signs are likely to be death cap mushroom poisoning. And they're just like, but it doesn't make sense. But they have to follow what the data's saying. Right, because this is critical.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But it sounds like it's so rare, like for them to be able to spot this.

Kyle Risi: That's what's amazing about this is that they were quickly able to just go, we suspect it's death gap mushrooms. They don't know at this moment in time. It could still easily be the beef.

Adam Cox: Wow. This doctor really listened in class.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Australians are

Adam Cox: good.

Kyle Risi: So Simon calls Erin, he explains what's happening and he asks how she was feeling. She tells him that she'd woken up with a bad stomach, but otherwise she felt fine, but still given the condition of the others, she agreed to come to the hospital.

When Erin arrived, Dr. Webster immediately drops everything. His thinking is that if this [00:19:00] is death gap mushroom poisoning, then timing is critical.

So he examines Erin. She tells him that apart from having an upset stomach, she felt fine. She just suggested that all she needed was an IV to rehydrate after having all the diarrhea. Okay,

so Dr. Webster then calmly and carefully explained that at this point they suspected the course to be death cap mushroom poisoning, and while she felt fine, now her condition was likely to worsen over time, even potentially be fatal.

He then asked Erin about the ingredients that she used in the lunch, and at first she was cooperative, but then. When he asked if she'd used mushrooms, her demeanor shifted and she started to grow increasingly anxious.

But at first though, Adam, he assumed that this was simply the realization of how serious death cap mushroom poisoning was, and also concern for herself and for her in-laws, right?

Mm-hmm.

But as he continued, he noticed that her anxiety seemed to center on the mushrooms. She grew more and more evasive about where she'd gotten them from. Still at this point, that detail didn't [00:20:00] matter. The simple confirmation that mushrooms had been used gave him enough confidence about the treatment that he needed to administer, right?

Sure.

So it goes off to make a few inquiries. While he's gone, Erin's anxiety escalates again. She starts to insist to nurses that she wants to discharge herself, telling them how she now felt completely fine, and that there was no reason to stay. And at first they urge her to stay. They were saying like, your condition is going to only get worse.

Still, Erin insisted that she had errs to run that just could not wait, but she promised that she'd be back in 40 minutes.

Adam Cox: That doesn't sound like someone is taking this advice seriously.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. 100%. Yeah. This is why this behavior's really strange in the CCTV footage that was shown at the trial, you see Erin shaking her head.

Nurses are trying to convince her to stay, and in the end they have no choice. They have assigned discharge forms and after that you see her press the door release button and she just walks out.

Adam Cox: That obviously seems suspicious to me.

Mm-hmm. Because it feels like she's, now, she knows that they're onto her. And she's gonna go and destroy some evidence.

Kyle Risi: That's what we think this [00:21:00] happened. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So when Dr. Webster finds out what's happened, he's extremely concerned. Like for him, Erin is the only connection to confirming the cause and ensuring that the in-laws are given the right treatments.

Two of them at this moment in time are now in comas. So even waiting 40 minutes just felt dangerously tight to him. Mm-hmm. When 40 minutes had come and gone and Aaron was still not back, he calls the fucking police.

Adam Cox: What does he say? Like there's a woman out there who I think's gonna die, or is he going, yes, I suspect something's off?

Kyle Risi: No, not because he suspects foul play at all. It's at a genuine concern for Aaron and the in-laws at that stage. Their instincts were telling them that this could possibly be the mushrooms, but it could still be the beef. They still don't know, but if it was death caps that Aaron had bought from the supermarket, Erin was the only key to tracing the source and preventing a potential public health crisis.

Mm-hmm. Two hours later though Erin does finally return back, she tells the nurses that she was late because she'd fallen asleep, but she reassured them that after waking up, she was now completely fine. Okay.

[00:22:00] To put their minds at rest, Adam, she then tells 'em that she even fed her kids the leftovers from the lunch, and they too were completely fine.

So there was nothing for them to worry about.

Dr. Webster is like, you fucking what he tells her. It was vital that she now bring the kids in immediately if they'd eaten that lunch. So realizing that she's fucked up, she said, actually, because the kids don't like mushrooms, she actually scraped that off before giving it to them

Adam Cox: uhhuh.

Kyle Risi: He then explained that at this point, the mushrooms are only a suspicion. It could still easily be anything else in that food. Either way, it was vital that the children came in right now.

Adam Cox: Yeah, and I would've thought even if you scraped mushrooms off, that's like, it's contaminated, right?

Kyle Risi: Yes. That's what they're gonna find out, but she's not gonna know this. Right? So she continues to protest. She says that she doesn't wanna scare the kids unnecessarily.

Adam Cox: Or look after our kids or make sure that they don't die.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. She basically says that she doesn't wanna scare them, especially since they felt fine.

Dr. Webster looks in the eye and says, do you want scared kids, or do [00:23:00] you want dead kids?

Adam Cox: Yeah. You tell her. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So in the end, she's got no choice. She has to bring 'em in. a little while later, the kids arrived at the hospital. The doctors checked them out. Erin was right. They're all completely fine.

Meanwhile, Don Gale, Heather and Ian have all stopped responding to treatment so the fact that Erin and the kids were completely fine, just didn't make any sense?

Adam Cox: No. Like, and for her to be so confident that they were fine.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

So Dr. Webster then presses Erin again about where she bought the mushrooms.

She said that she'd used a mix of button mushrooms, karate mushrooms, and dried portini mushrooms. The fresh ones she said came from Woolworths. The dried ones she said came from an Asian grocer, but she couldn't remember which one, only that she bought them months earlier for a carbonara that she never made.

Apparently when she bought them, she smelled them. They smelled two pungents. So instead she just sealed them in a plastic container and put them in her pantry.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. So she's blaming an Asian grocery store. Yes.

Kyle Risi: So Dr. Webster decides to [00:24:00] consult Professor Rhonda Stewart. She's the director of infection prevention at the Montage Health facility there.

So Rhonda comes to speak to Erin directly and just like Dr. Webster, Erin is really reluctant to give any useful information.

All Erin says is that she followed a recipe from a Tin Eats cookbook that she had purchased and that because the lunch was so special she'd stuck to it. Exactly.

That wasn't true. We'll come onto that later.

Again. She said that she couldn't remember which grocer that the dried mushrooms came from. Only that it was somewhere in Glen Waverly or Mount Waverley or Clayton or Oakley. She just couldn't remember. She said that she'd been driving her kids around a lot that summer. So it could be in any one of those different places

Adam Cox: I feel like.

Don't get me wrong. When you like go shopping for food mm-hmm. Um, like you go to Tesco, when would you have bought a can of baked beans? Well, anytime or whatever. Yeah.

But something, when you go to a specific market, I feel like, you're being questioned about where did you get this specific product from?

I feel [00:25:00] like you would have like an idea of, oh, it's gonna be one of these stores that I would get this type of product from.

Kyle Risi: Because it's so unique. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It wouldn't be in amongst the sea of just kind of repetitive grocery shopping kind of trips that you make. You've gone to an Asian grocer.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And so you would be able to narrow it down to at least like one or two?

Kyle Risi: I think so. Yeah.

So Rhonda then asks Erin to check her bank statements for purchases from around about that time. Erin replied that wouldn't work because she always paid in cash, but she did remember the packaging. It was a clear plastic packet with a handwritten label on it, saying a hundred grams or whatever.

That's helpful.

Rhonda was like, great. We need that packaging. Erin is like, oh, I threw that away months ago after decanting them into the container and putting them into the pantry.

So it's strange that she can remember the packaging down to the minute detail, even though she no longer had it, but she can't remember the shop that she bought them from.

Mm-hmm. Again, strange. Right?

Then Rhonda asks a very [00:26:00] specific points of question, have you ever been foraging for mushrooms? And Erin Point blank says, she didn't even know what that meant.

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: In the end, Rhonda begs her to go home. Think about where she might have bought them, saying that even if you just narrow them down to a few streets, that would help massively.

Meanwhile, Rhonda dispatches a public health officer to go around every single Asian grocer in all the suburbs that Erin had mentioned, where they photographed all the shop fronts, they took pictures of the packaging that they used, they noted that anything, anything that was unique about those stores.

They package them all up together. They send them all off to Erin via text, just in the hope to jog her memory. Right. She doesn't recognize a single one of them.

What's so infuriating is just how slow she responds to any of the texts or calls that Rhonda makes to her. Like her family members' lives are literally on the line, and Erin's answers are, Hmm.

I don't know. It could be, doesn't ring a bell. And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Rhonda just in that moment just want to shake her, you know? Know [00:27:00] what I mean?

Adam Cox: I know. 'cause you, anyone in this situation I, well, this is how I would react, is you would go out hunting yourself like, I'm gonna go driving down these doors to, yeah, jog my memory, find out where it is.

She doesn't do any of that. So yeah, this is very suspicious behavior to me.

Kyle Risi: it is really impressive to me how Rhonda just manages to stay so professional in that moment in time. Still, you get the feeling of how, just how frustrated Rhonda is in her messages. In one of them, she literally begs, Erin, please call me.

Where did you get the mushrooms from? Can you tell me what else is in the meal? You said you use shallot. Where did you get them from?

Erin's typical response was, sorry, busy with the kids. We'll get back to you tonight. She never does.

Adam Cox: No, that's not the right response.

Kyle Risi: By now, there was nothing more that they could do for Gail, Heather in Ordon. If confirmation of death caps had come earlier, doctors would've been able to arrange a liver transplant for them, but now they were so sick that it just wasn't viable.

Don does receive one, but it's really close to the wire and it's not even clear if he'll even survive the [00:28:00] surgery.

In the hospital during one of Heather's more lucid moments again. She asked Simon, was there a reason why Erin had eaten off of a different color plate? But still, Simon doesn't have an answer.

But this is now the second time that Heather has brought this up, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah, she's clocked. Something's not right.

Kyle Risi: Adam, on the fifth day, that's the 4th of August, both Gail and Heather pass away.

The next day, Don's transplant fails and he inevitably dies too. So

Adam Cox: three of them have died.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Ian, however, he's still hanging on, but Adam barely. In the end, doctors are forced to put him into a medically induced coma just to kind of try and preserve some of his organ function. By now, the news of the deaths were starting to attract media attention.

But on the surface, this looks like a tragic case of food poisoning. But the twist is that Erin, the woman who prepared the meal, was completely fine. Right?

There wasn't any kind of explicit accusations at this point, but the circumstances made this just a really irresistible story to the press. [00:29:00] Mm-hmm.

So naturally they start gathering outside of her house. Erin arrives home after being out somewhere, and the journalists start asking her all sorts of questions, specifically about the lunch that she's made. Right. They want to know what was in the lunch.

She doesn't answer any of the questions directly, but she's happy to be there because she gives a very obvious, very carefully staged monologue towards the cameras.

She's talking about how devastated she was by all of this, how Gail and Dawn were the best people she's ever met. She was saying that Gail had been like the mother that she never had because she had lost her mother four years earlier, and now in the middle of all of this, her kids lost their grandmother.

Adam Cox: She's the mother that she never had for four years, basically.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. I guess so. Maybe she had a strange relationship with her mother throughout her life.

Adam Cox: Oh, okay. Yeah. Fine.

Kyle Risi: So during this weird monologue when she has like a moment of pause journalists, then quickly jump in again. Can you tell us about what you used to cook the meal with?

And Erin just ignores him again. She just launches into another [00:30:00] kind of chapter of this weird monologue about how devastated she is. She's crying, but Adam, there's no tears. She's doing like a lot of eye rubbing. At one point she checks her hand to see if it's wet.

It wasn't.

Adam Cox: She really should have practiced this.

Kyle Risi: She should. I think she did. But you, she can't force the tears. That's the weird thing. But also her body language is just so incredibly stiff. Like she stands upright, just facing the camera the whole time. Her arms are at her side.

Honestly, Adam, this reminded me of a Susan Boyle kind of moment standing on the Britain's Got talent stage, facing forward, ready to kind of like give her performance, right?

Mm-hmm. Really stiff and like nervous and stuff.

This isn't the behavior of someone who's devastated at the thought that she's accidentally poisoned a family. You'd expect someone to kind of just crumple in on themselves, rather than just standing to attention. Right. Yeah.

Adam Cox: Like the guilt, like if it was an accident, and she didn't know that she'd done this, then obviously it's a terrible thing to have happened.

Yeah. But you'd expect to see Gil. You'd expect to see that more visibly, I guess, of her.

Kyle Risi: It's just weird. Like all the [00:31:00] components of this monologue speech mm-hmm. Are there, but they just don't quite add up. Basically, again, in another brief moment of pause, this gives journalists one more opportunity to ask about the meal.

When they do, she just shifts her composure altogether. The teary expression just immediately vanishes, and then she turns, walks away and goes back into the house, when this broadcasts, there is just this overwhelming sense that this whole thing was staged and that something was up. But no one's kind of really saying it.

They just know.

Adam Cox: It's always like the journalists that will clock onto this though, they're like, hang on. Do you not think that's a little bit weird? She didn't say that. Like, keep asking. Yeah, because they're poking the bear, obviously. Probably a bit suspicious. Mm-hmm. What's happened, and I guess this kind of now media attention just now is a bit of a, I guess, a rolling snowball.

Kyle Risi: That's right. I mean, this is the moment that this entire saga breaks into the public discourse. People begin speculating online, sleuth start digging into a past. They're sharing kind of old photographs, and very quickly the internet builds this very sinister picture of the case [00:32:00] and who she was.

So it looks dodgy, right? Mm-hmm. What I wanna do now is, tell you a bit about Erin and Simon because at the very end of the trial, even though she's found guilty, we have no sense of her motive.

But if we look at her history, I think it starts to piece together the why for us.

Adam Cox: Is she trying to get back at Simon then?

Kyle Risi: Let's have a look. So to kick off, it is fair to say that Erin is very much the kind of person who believes that she's literally smarter than anyone else. She carries herself with this sort of condescending edge. She definitely revels in this idea that she's an academic.

She's got a degree in like business accounting. She's also qualified as an air traffic controller of all things. Very weird. But neither of those things are the things that she's actually working in at this moment in time still, she always acts like she knows better than everyone else.

She definitely believes that she can talk the talk, which she uses to try and influence the people around her, how she's always been.

Erin and Simon first met in the early two thousands at a council job that they both had. Erin was working in animal management of all [00:33:00] things, like she's an academic, why not go into business accounting? Do you know what I mean? Or air traffic control where you can possibly earn a lot more money. I don't know. I

Adam Cox: was gonna say that's quite well paid, isn't it?

Air traffic control. Yeah, I

Kyle Risi: imagine so. Yeah. But she's not using her degrees, Simon, however, he's just working as a civil engineer. I don't mean to say just he's working as a civil engineer. It's, it's good work. It's humble work. It's important work.

So soon after meeting, they start dating, and in 2006, both their lives changed dramatically when Erin's grandmother dies and she inherits $2 million from her estate.

Adam Cox: Wow. Yeah. Thanks grandma.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Not surprisingly. Simon proposes very soon afterwards.

Oh,

Adam Cox: Simon timing, come on.

Kyle Risi: And they get married.

So with this windfall, they decide that they're gonna quit their jobs. They decide that they want to travel around Australia in a camper van, which is just the dream. Oh my God. They have no financial worries. They're leading this new, adventurous life. Literally. They have the freedom to just do whatever they want.

But very soon after this, Erin decides that she actually wants [00:34:00] to start a family. And so they decide to relocate to Victoria to be closer to Simon's family. And there she shares the wealth man. They give a bunch of money to Simon's siblings as interest free loans so they can all buy their own houses.

Erin grows very close to the family. She credits Gail with teaching her the importance of simply enjoying motherhood instead of worrying over every single detail. Of course, the money's gonna help too, you know?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Like you, you only say that when you haven't got worry about money. Yeah, exactly.

Kyle Risi: That's where Erin finds her place in this family. She sees herself as this financial backbone. The reason why they're all relatively comfortable, you definitely get the sense that Erin roots her purpose in being that integral financial cog in this family machine.

However, by 2015, Erin and Simon begin to drift apart. And even though they're separated now, they are still very much on good terms.

Divorce just is not on the cards for them.

But although they're separated, Erin is still invited to all the family events. They go on [00:35:00] holidays together, often paid for by Erin, and for all intents and purposes, they still act like a very close family.

Adam Cox: Okay. I mean, that sounds quite nice that they're still able to be amicable, get on. I mean, they've got kids, so I'm guessing they're doing that to make it easy for the kids.

Kyle Risi: That's right.

Adam Cox: But then they've only got $2 million, so that's not like a enough to retire. Forever, I would've thought. But obviously you can get comfortable. Probably pay up the mortgage. It depends if you're

Kyle Risi: investing it, which is what they're doing.

Adam Cox: Ah, okay. I see.

Kyle Risi: But then in 2019, Erin's mother dies and she inherited even more money. Wow. This time a beachfront estate worth like 900,000 Australian dollars, with like a significant amount of cash. She uses that money to buy additional properties, some of which she puts in Simon's name.

Remember, they're separated here. And the reason's very clear, even though they were separated, Aaron always held onto this hope that one day maybe they would reunite.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But they're separated. He's probably out, you know, with missed new boobs. So I don't know. But Okay, fair enough. [00:36:00] She's holding onto that hope.

Kyle Risi: Sure. It's about the connection that they have. Right. But then in 2022. Things take a turn for the worse. When Aaron discovers that Simon has declared himself as separated on a tax return that his accountant has filled out on his behalf,

Adam Cox: I mean that's true.

Kyle Risi: What this means though is that from a legal standpoint, Aaron is set to lose some of a government funding specifically around childcare.

Erin is furious, She confronts Simon. Simon is just as annoyed as she is. He insists that this is just simply a mistake by his accountant and he promises to get this fixed, but Erin's response is, don't even bother. If that's how it's gonna be, fine, bring it on. I'm gonna take you for child support.

And that's exactly what she does. What she doesn't realize is that in doing this, she's about to make things a hell of a lot worse for herself. 'cause now that child services are involved, Simon is instructed to stop paying for school fees and any medical costs for the kids directly, and that [00:37:00] everything should now go through the monthly support payments to Erin.

But here's the kicker.

The amount of child support she gets isn't up to her. It's something that's determined by the government. And as it turns out, the new revised amount is just $40 per child per month, nowhere near the amount to cover the children's private school fees.

So Erin is basically completely screwed herself over, and someone's reaction is basically, well, I'm just doing what child services are telling me to do.

Adam Cox: Why is it that low? That doesn't seem right.

Kyle Risi: Adam, the reason is because on paper, Erin is a wealthier one. Ah, I see.

So Erin threatens to pull the kids out of private school unless Simon agrees to cover the shortfall. His case manager tells him not to do that, and so he doesn't. And so Erin follows through. She pulls the kids out of private school.

This ends up setting off this endless back and forth of fighting. Erin tries to rope in. Don and Gail hoping that they will put pressure on Simon. But in the end they remind her that [00:38:00] she's the one who's created the situation and that for the sake of the grandchildren, they're not getting involved.

Adam Cox: Yeah. It does feel like she's now putting her own interests, ahead of her children's. Mm-hmm. And she's being a bit petty. But how long have they been separated now? So quite a reasonable amount of time.

But I'm getting the sense from her. She's probably jaded and pissed because of all the support that she's giving them over the years. I feel like she's probably just saying, just give me a bit more money to care for your kids.

Kyle Risi: It, I can tell you now, it's not about the money at all. She is wealthy. She can do this. We're gonna come onto it later on after we go through the trial, where we go through what I think the theory is around why she's done this. Mm-hmm.

And I think by then it'll be very apparent. Okay. But the thing is though, to Aaron at this moment in time, it looks like his parents are taking Simon's side, which only deepens the sense of exclusion from the rest of the family.

Because around about the same time invitations are going out for Gail's 70th birthday. Family members all mentioned that they've received theirs, but Erin [00:39:00] hasn't. So she thinks she's not invited. But in reality, this is purely just a miscommunication because Don and Gail assume that Simon's invitation covered her as well because it had done for so many years.

Right? Even throughout their separation, Simon obviously tries to smooth things over, and Gail and Don, they reiterate to Erin directly. Of course, we want you there. Of course we do. But by this point, Erin feels snb. She sees this as proof that the family are siding with Simon and that in her mind. It's especially insulting given how much money that she's given them over the years.

Right?

Adam Cox: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. She must be annoyed considering what she's done for that family.

Kyle Risi: She roots our identity in being this integral cog in this family where she can supply something. Right. And now that's been rejected and financial kind of crutch or financial support, a big thing.

So all of this happens in October of 2022. Nine months later in July, 2023, Don Gale, Heather and Ian are all poisoned. That seems to be the only [00:40:00] animosity that existed between Erin and Simon's family up until the mix up with the tax return.

Everything just seems to be fine. Yes, they're separated, but they're still longer terms. Right.

Adam Cox: So what was that duration between the tax return and then their deaths?

Kyle Risi: I think probably about A year and a half maybe.

Adam Cox: Okay. So when Erin was saying like, oh, we get together all the time.

Mm-hmm. That was true like over a year or two years ago. If that was perhaps quite common that they would at least meet up for family, get togethers, birthdays. It's possible. It's

Kyle Risi: possible. Yeah. Simon is saying, no, we didn't and certainly Heather and Ian never came over 'cause that was the first time at the house.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay. But it seems like there were, they were a bit closer than they were now. For sure. For the last year and a half. It does sound like it wouldn't have happened.

Kyle Risi: So going back to just before Erin's kind of Susan Boyle, Britain's got a talent moment outside of the house. Up until that point, the story looked like a tragic accident.

A dotting daughter-in-law who had unknowingly cooked a meal for her in-laws accidentally contaminating them with deathly kind of death cap mushrooms. And [00:41:00] now three of them were dead.

But then people start honing in on the details.

So to remind you first, remember, we have the awkward circumstances around the lunch itself.

Her relationship with Simon obviously had deteriorated badly. That meal was always going to be tense, right?

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: Then you have the fact that after the lunch every guest fell violently ill, this is suspicious enough for Heather to question why Erin had eaten from a different colored plate.

You then have Erin's evasive behavior at the hospital, insisting that she can't remember where she'd bought the mushrooms from before, suddenly growing, very agitated, and then just charging herself from the hospital. finally the cherry on the top is the odd stage press interview outside her home where she seemingly is suddenly devastated, it's all completely at odds with how she'd behaved up to that point.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: But now suspicion is building towards Erin. So investigators decide to probe a little bit deeper. They pay Erin a visit specifically to test the leftover lunch. [00:42:00] That is still in her bin.

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: The test results come back and they find traces of death cap toxins in the food, not only in the mushroom paste but also in the beef itself.

The toxins had literally seeped into the meat. What's interesting is that Erin had claimed that she gave those leftovers to her kids after scraping off that paste. Yet her kids were completely fine.

Adam Cox: So it was a separate beef Wellington then.

Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. The presence of the toxins was enough for police to hand the case over to the homicide squad on the 3rd of August, 2023, who then issued a warrant to search her house.

There they found the recipe book Tin Eats, which she claimed to have followed to the letter because of how special the lunch was going to be.

They also noticed that the recipe was for one larger beef Wellington. However, the scraps in the bin. Showed that she had made five individual Wellingtons. Ah, Erin's explanation was that she couldn't find a single beef tenderloin [00:43:00] large enough, so she had to improvise, which obviously raises the first eyebrows because if this was an intended poisoning, targeting Dawn, Gale, Heather, and Ian.

Then the five individual beef Wellingtons meant that she kind of could safely eat the meal as well without having a fear of being poisoned. 'cause she can't share the meal from the big one. Can she?

Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. Although that would still make me nervous that she has obviously carved or put aside. Her beef Wellington, which hasn't got the def cap mushrooms, and then she's got the four, which do that would still make me worried. Like You're gonna contaminate something? Yeah. Or how she's prepared them. Unless she's done completely like separate times of the day.

Kyle Risi: But this also explains the reason for the different color plates.

Adam Cox: Oh yeah, of course. Exactly. She put her one, which wasn't contaminated on the orange plate.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Next police comb through Erin's electronics. On her tablet, they find photos of kitchen scales with dried mushrooms being weighed in them.

Forensics test those scales which come back positive for death. Cap [00:44:00] toxins on the same tablet. They also find photos of a food dehydrator with mushrooms laid out on the inside.

Adam Cox: Okay. That doesn't sound like she's bought them from a store.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. Like if they're dried mushrooms, wiping them back in a dehydrator. Yeah.

Without telling Erin that they've seen these images, investigators then asked if she owned a dehydrator. She flat out says no. So they pressed her further and they say, then why do you have a dehydrator manual in your house?

To which Erin responded, I like to collect appliance manuals.

Adam Cox: Oh, shut up. I mean, actually, to be fair, I can believe my mom saying that. Yeah, I know. So maybe I do need to watch out this Christmas.

Kyle Risi: When I was writing that, I was like, it's possible. I've seen, I know some doll people, we could be one of those people one day,

Adam Cox: but yeah, that's still a very weird thing to say, like especially if you don't even own the appliance. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: exactly. So next VECA is look through her bank statements, and they saw that four days after the lunch, she had paid for entry to the local tip.

CCTV [00:45:00] confirmed this. And in it you see Erin dumping several items, including a food dehydrator that matched the manual that they found in a house. Oh god, Erin, when they test it, it comes back positive for death. Cab mushroom tracers.

Adam Cox: I mean like how you expect this to look? Yeah, I don't, I dunno.

Kyle Risi: Here's the thing. Erin claimed that she bought the mushrooms dried from an Asian grocer. So why was she even using a food dehydrator? Why were they seen in that dehydrator?

Adam Cox: So obviously they tell her that, hang on, we think you're lying. We found your dehydrator.

Kyle Risi: Oh, they don't tell her.

Adam Cox: Oh, they don't. They just

Kyle Risi: let her dig Adam. Okay. So the next day police bring Erin in for questioning. They wanna understand why everyone was so critically ill while she and the kids seemed totally fine, Erin reminds them that she had been sick, and the reason the kids were fine was because she had scraped off the mushroom paste before serving it to them.

At this point, she has no idea that the meat itself has also tested positive for death cap toxins, right? So she doesn't know this. They're not gonna tell her. They then press her again about [00:46:00] the dehydrator that she'd previously denied owning. This time they show her the photographs from the tablet, and she says that maybe she'd owned one a long time ago.

Of course, the pictures were timestamped, but the investigators don't let on that they know what their timestamp is. They wanted to basically see if she'll continue digging herself into a hole.

They also find screenshots detailing symptoms of cervical cancer that she had taken from a Google search that she had done right? So she got the results up, she'd like screenshotted it, and that was in her library.

Adam Cox: So she hasn't got cervical cancer.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's safe to say she doesn't, so Simon knew that the lunch was to discuss obviously her health situation, but he didn't know that obviously it was this type of cancer.

And before Donna died, he told Simon that Erin had told them all that she'd been diagnosed with cervical cancer. So this seemed to track with the screenshots that they had found on her tablet. Right.

In the interview, they asked her what was the purpose of the lunch hoping that she would mention the cancer. Instead, Erin claimed [00:47:00] that the lunch was just a typical family gathering that they did all the time. But Simon was like, that's not true. In fact, the lunch was so out of the ordinary that it was one of the reasons that he chose not to go.

He said it was strange even that he'd invited Heather and Ian to be part of a discussion about her health. At that point, they'd never ever been to the house before. It's Dodge. Right? Totally.

Eventually, investigators rather than kind of steering her towards talking about the cancer diagnosis, they just directly ask her. Erin flat out denies telling them that she had cancer.

Adam Cox: What? Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. But what Erin didn't know at this point was that investigators had found Gail's calendar, and that in June there was an entry that said Erin St. Vincent's Hospital. That same day investigators found a text to Erin from Gail, asking how the appointment went.

Erin replied, it was okay, I need a biopsy and an MRI scan a week later. Gail, [00:48:00] then text again asking about how the MRI went this time. Erin responded a lot to digest. Talk to you more about it when I see you both. Then Gail's, next entry in her calendar was lunch at Erin's with Heather and Ian dated the 29th of July, 2023.

Adam Cox: Okay. So she had kind of been leading this then drip feeding. Something was up.

Kyle Risi: Yep, for sure. So it looked very much like this lunch was tied to Erin's supposed diagnosis. Right.

Adam Cox: And I guess they can just easily ask her doctor, find her medical records. Exactly. And find out whether she had it or not.

Kyle Risi: She believes 100%. She can talk her way outta it. She She has this grand sense of how intelligent she is. She's an idiot. Yeah. So investigators show error in the text and the calendar entries, to which she says, oh, I was worried about cancer because it ran in my family. I must have just mentioned it to Gail in passing, which doesn't seem like that was just in passing when you consider the text and the calendar entries, et cetera.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Like, oh, I think I might have cancer. I'm gonna go get checked.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. [00:49:00] So wild. All of this was enough though for investigators to search her house again.

This time they seized a number of items, including multiple phones and her computer. When the forensics review her phone, they found that it had been factory reset four times. Two of those resets happened after the lunch. Strange enough, right? Mm-hmm. The third took place while the police were searching her house.

Ah, Erin was supposedly on the phone to her lawyer, which is risky, and so she reset her phone during that moment, right the fourth time. Adam was done remotely after the phone had already been seized and booked into police evidence. That is stupid.

Adam Cox: I swear if I was gonna like bump someone off, I would be smarter than this. Yeah. You think I feel like I would, but I dunno. Maybe you're in that moment you think like, I've got this covered.

Kyle Risi: That's exactly what she thinks. She thinks she can bullshit her way out of this. So when investigators search Erin's computer, they [00:50:00] pull her search history, right?

She's dumb enough to not even clear her search history, one of which was a search for where do death cap mushrooms grow in Sland. Sland is basically the region of Victoria where she lived, From that search, she then accessed an article titled Death Cap Mushrooms from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, which cited various sightings of the mushroom posted on the iNaturalist forum. Back in May, 2022. So a whole year before the poisonings took place.

From then on, that iNaturalist website was visited repeatedly between May, 2022 and June, 2023. one month before the poisoning actually happened.

So just for context, the iNaturalist website, if you're not familiar, is basically like a public science forum where people can share sightings of like plants and wildlife. In this case, the posts were from members of the public, essentially warning others that mushrooms have been spotted in the area, and to be basically careful.

The post of most interest to the police though, was from a woman [00:51:00] called Christine Mackenzie. She's a retired poison specialist who had spotted these mushrooms on a walk, and in her post she included photos and a warning to be cautious, especially when out walking with your dogs. Right?

Adam Cox: Sure.

Kyle Risi: So now to investigators, it looked very much like Erin had forage the mushrooms herself and lied about buying them at an Asian grocer. I mean, we kind of knew that anyway, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah,

Kyle Risi: yeah. You very much get the sense that this is what investigators suspected the whole time. They just needed proof because if death cap mushrooms had contaminated the food supply. There would've been more cases, especially since Erin claimed that she'd bought them months and months earlier.

Right. But you also get the sense that they knew, because by this point, weeks had gone by and there'd been not a single public announcement from health authorities warning these mushrooms might be in these supermarkets because if they genuinely believe that those warnings would've been out there right.

Adam Cox: Straight away, like to protect everyone and yeah, like this has been a couple of months, like there would've been [00:52:00] multiple deaths since then.

Kyle Risi: Meanwhile, investigators were also speaking to Simon talking about their relationship, and this is where they discovered something very odd between 2021 and 2023,

simon had fallen ill on three separate occasions from suspected food poisoning. One of those times was so bad that he had to be hospitalized, which suggests that Erin had been at this game for a while, and by 2022, based on her online activity, she was now searching for a more permanent solution to this rift between Simon and her family.

Adam Cox: So it sounds like she was trying to bump off Simon a while ago. Mm-hmm. And mainly directed at him

Kyle Risi: by the sounds of things possibly. I mean, he was supposed to be at that meal, but let's put a pin in there because again, we're gonna come back to it later on and we're gonna talk about like, what does those poisonings mean? Because there's a couple details in there that actually suggests something else.

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: And also we are not even sure whether or not she did try poison. It's just weird that within a space of what, two years he's come down with food poisoning that many times. It's strange, right?

Adam Cox: I mean, if it's a result of [00:53:00] her cooking, then you Sure.

Yeah.

Kyle Risi: But if it's not, then that's weird.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Food poisoning that often. Does he have a history of that?

Adam Cox: Maybe he just likes eating out of the same dodgy food truck. I dunno.

Kyle Risi: Possibly.

Then something happens that Aaron was hoping wouldn't happen. Ian Wilkinson wakes up from his coma. Oh. And he starts talking about different colored plates. Oh, so he survives. He survives, yeah. Yeah.

Adam Cox: And he'll be able to tell everything like, oh yeah. About the cancer and everything, right?

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So by the 2nd of November, 2023, he investigate the arrest. Erin. She's charged with three counts of murder, five counts for attempted murder, one, for Ian. Mm-hmm. Simon, including the one on the 29th of July. Even though Simon had canceled, she was still hoping that he would attend, and so she prepared his meal for him.

Adam Cox: Really?

Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Erin's trial for murder began on the 30th of April, 2025. It ran for 10 weeks, and because of the public interest, it was meant to be held in Melbourne, sorry, [00:54:00] Melbourne. But Erin insisted that it'd be held closer to home in her kind of community of Morwell because the court in Morwell was so tiny.

Seats had to be kind of balloted out to kind of just make it fair to kind of the journalists and people who wanted to attend.

So across Morwell, all the hotels and the Airbnbs, they were booked solidly. One of the local cafes decided to capitalize on this case by serving mushroom toasties.

Adam Cox: Oh my. That is, I mean, yeah, in some ways there's marketing,

Kyle Risi: but the thing is though, it's so Australian. Do you know what I mean? Like it's their humor. It is.

Adam Cox: So, but then people died here. True,

Kyle Risi: true. That's true. Bad Australians. Yeah. But at the same time. I'm not holding Australians to account for that.

Adam Cox: No, but at the same point, I'm surprised this lasted 10 weeks. 'cause I feel like in a week I'd be like, yeah, she's guilty. Yeah. Send her, lock her away.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So just before the trial, the prosecution decides to drop the attempted murder charges relating to Simon, largely because obviously the defense's objective was to establish reasonable doubt, right?

Mm-hmm. So, without any hard evidence of those poisonings, [00:55:00] prosecutors were worried that it might weaken the core murder charge. So they didn't want to take that gamble, because if they present that, and there's even just a minute kind of doubt in those other poisonings, they could be like, well, we can't prove everything so she's not guilty.

Mm-hmm. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So the prosecution's argument was simple. Erin deliberately, for, for the death cap mushrooms, she dried them in a food dehydrator and use them to make a paste for her beef Wellingtons with the intent to kill them.

The defense's argument was equally simple. This is all just a tragic accident.

What made this trial so fascinating though, Adam and so unusual, is that things don't look good for Erin very, very quickly. And it's not surprising, right? Like it's looks like a slam dunk.

It's so bad that her defense team decided that the end of the trial she should actually take the stand, which is something that almost never happens. And when it does, it's like a blatant lash resort. Usually in the hope that the defendant, will try and humanize herself to the jury.

Sure.

When she does take the stand, it was by far, to me the most interesting [00:56:00] aspects of this trial. So we're actually gonna lead with Erin's time on the stand and branch off to the other testimonies. This isn't gonna be like a chronological account of the events of the trial, Mm-hmm. We're gonna start with Erin. We're gonna stick with Erin because she's an idiot.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm interested to hear what she says, but I dunno if I was her solicitor or lawyer.

I would just think there's no way how the hell am I gonna try and like prove this? They get,

Kyle Risi: they get to that and then they think that they have a strategy and then she fucks it up again. And it's so interesting because Erin clearly has this weird belief that she can talk away outta this, but she also wants to have the last word.

And as a result, rather than answering questions directly, she launches into these long-winded rambles trying to kind of come back at something else that someone else has said like three kind of days earlier. Uh. And everyone's just like, what? What's that got to do with the question that's just been asked? Right? Okay. It's just weird.

She also comes across very strange, like she's often very over polite. One minute she's trying to show everyone how sweet and lovely she is, but then the next she'll kind of like switch into being [00:57:00] really condescending and arrogance, even dismissive of questions.

But then other times she'll just like instantly cry she'll realize that the effect wasn't working and then she'll just instantly stop.

Adam Cox: What Crocodile tears as well.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: She also has this odd habit of like standing up whenever the jury enters the room, which you just don't need to do. So to the jury it looks like she's trying to manipulate them.

Adam Cox: Yeah, and

Kyle Risi: it's very obvious, but also Adam, the bullshit on the stand to the complete horror of her lawyers. She would just like randomly kind of bring up details that were never in her official statements.

Journalists in the room would then quickly go off and fact check them in real time and then discover that she was lying. And then within 30 minutes it would be then leaked into the headlines and they would popping off all over the internet all while Erin is still on the stand.

Wow. It's mental. Yeah.

So things were looking grim for her before she even took the stand. So when she did, it only just gets a lot worse.

The prosecution's key questions were, [00:58:00] why did Erin lie about having cancer? Why did she lie about where she got the mushrooms from? Why did she pretend to be poisoned at the hospital? And why did she dump the dehydrator at the tip then deny ever owning one.

So let's start with the cancer. 'cause that's quite interesting. As you know, the only surviving witness of the lunch is obviously in Wilkinson.

When he wakes up, he explicitly says that Erin told them that she had been diagnosed with cancer. And Simon's testimony about Dawn's words before he died backed that up completely. And so do, of course, the text and Gail's kind of calendar entries, right?

Yeah.

On the stand, Erin is of course forced to admit that she had lied to Gail and Don. She is forced to do that a bunch of times, She was like, okay, yeah, I lied about it.

Adam Cox: It's like if she lies about that and she's admitting it on the stand. Exactly. And how can you trust anything she says

Kyle Risi: Exactly. And the reason why she's forced to kind of admit that is because, as you said earlier on, there's no medical records to back any of that up, right? Mm-hmm. Because they check, of course they're gonna check, [00:59:00] but she gives two reasons for the lies.

First, she said that she liked the attention that Don and Gail gave. She claimed that she craved their attention because she felt rejected by the family after her and Simon had split up. I get that. I get it.

But it's still dark that she lied about cancer though. That's, yeah. Inexcusable. Her lawyers then have to remind the jury after she's like forced to admit that she's lied. Is that, yes, this is a cruel thing to do, but this does not make her a murderer.

Which is true.

Adam Cox: That okay on that by itself.

Kyle Risi: Sure.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: But wait till you hear some of the other assertions that the lawyer makes. 'cause they just is just so bad.

The second reason Erin Gibbs was that after initially telling Gail that she had cancer, she did book herself in for an operation, but had been too embarrassed to admit what it was really for, and so she just kept them believing that she had cancer.

Adam Cox: What did she put herself in

Kyle Risi: for? She explained. All of her life. She had struggled with her weight and she had lived through years of emotional abuse and bullying. And this [01:00:00] basically impacted her so much that she ended up turning to bulimia, eventually realizing that there was an option, she decided to book in for a gastric ban surgery, but was too ashamed to tell anyone.

And so, like I said, she continued to let people believe she had cancer, but either way, she would still need help with the kids while she recovered. So she needed to have this lunch to discuss the care of the kids.

Adam Cox: Okay, so that's the cover story for that. So did she actually get a gastric van?

Kyle Risi: before we get onto that, the lawyers then uses bulimia to explain why she wasn't sick after the lunch. She said that Gail brought with them a orange cake that they didn't eat apparently, and that when they all left, she ate the whole thing, purged all up, therefore, expelling the toxins.

Okay.

The whole courtroom is like, oh. But the thing is though, it seeps into your system really quickly. So some people kind of argue that that's not the case, but I don't know at this point. But the point is that she purged it up. So it could be an explanation, it

Adam Cox: could be, but do we know that she [01:01:00] has bulimia

Kyle Risi: the prosecution come back with not so fast.

They asked her where this procedure was scheduled to take place and she said the Enri Clinic in Melbourne, sorry, Melbourne, and apparently it was supposed to be at the end of September where she was booked in for a pre-op assessment. That revelation comes out of literally nowhere, right? Even her lawyers look nervous because they didn't know the name of this kind of clinic before. They've never heard it before. So she's thinking on the spot here.

Exactly. Reporters in court immediately start fact checking this. They quickly discovered that the Enrich Clinic didn't even perform gastric band surgeries at all.

So when the prosecution break to verify this, they realized that the reporters had already done all the work for them, and within 30 minutes, this was all over the news that she was basically lying.

Adam Cox: That must be really handy for the, the prosecution. I don't

Kyle Risi: think that they're allowed to even do this.

Like the fact that they're sneaking this intel out of the court during session is probably a

Adam Cox: big faux par. I thought so. And also if the, uh, jury see that, because I know, I think their phone's confiscated, but there's still ways that they could then see [01:02:00] that news.

Kyle Risi: And they do break, and I think they do get to go home potentially when the jury aren't kind of like working.

So, I don't know. It's a big risk. And this is the reason why a lot of people can appeal, because they can argue that the jury would've been kind of contaminated or kind of infiltrated by members of the public or whatever.

So when Erin is confronted about this, prosecutors also point out that gastric ban surgeries aren't something you just book.

Right? They require a GP referral and without that, she couldn't have possibly been on anyone's waiting list. Erin then clarifies, oops, silly me. The appointment wasn't for gastric band surgery. It was a consultation for liposuction, a procedure that the clinic did offer. So she turned 180. I understand. I mean,

Adam Cox: she should have just said that in the first place.

Kyle Risi: She shouldn't have lied at all. Then

Adam Cox: you could have been a bit like, yeah. That's why she was kind of maybe ashamed, you know? Mm-hmm. But still, yeah. I dunno. How long does it take to recover from lipo?

Kyle Risi: Who knows? I don't know.

Adam Cox: Surely not months of chemo if you had cancer.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly.

So none of this looks good [01:03:00] at all. Not just the lying about the gastro ban, but also lying about having cancer. Remember? It wasn't that long ago in Australia that everyone was gripped by kinda the whole Bell Gibson cancel ice. Mm. Do you know what I mean? It's really raw and I wouldn't be surprised if the jury didn't look at this too kindly, but then came the question of whether she was even sick after the lunch at all.

'cause Erin's official statement to investigators was that the next morning she was so unwell that she had to stop at a service station toilet because she couldn't wait to get home.

They even managed to pull the CCTV footage from that service station, which confirmed that yes, she did stop at the service station, but when she went to the loo, she was in there a total of nine seconds.

Adam Cox: Oh my God. I mean, did she really, did she do this to kind of lay the foundation, or did she just like, oh, I went to the toilet and so therefore,

Kyle Risi: probably just thinking on the spot.

Adam Cox: Nine seconds.

Kyle Risi: Oh my. Do you [01:04:00] wanna know what she says? What does she say? So to this, Erin says, oh, that's because I'd pulled over earlier on the roadside and pooped into a dog bag.

When I went to the service station, that was me discarding the bag. Okay, so let's just pause on that for a second, right? Mm-hmm. Because this is one of the details that the internet will never forgive her for, right? They'll never let this go.

Basically, Erin had woke up that morning with diarrhea, yet she still planned to take her son to a flying lesson, which had been booked.

He apparently saw how sick she was. He even offered to cancel. But Erin insisted that she was fine. By the way, it turned out that that flying lesson was canceled anyway, Due to poor weather. But on the way.

She then pulled over, used a dog bag with surgeon, like precision to poop into, we know from the poop cruise episode, I was just

Adam Cox: thinking like, it's not easy to poo into a tiny nail bag. It's

Kyle Risi: not. We tried after that episode, it's impossible, and then went to a service station to bin it. That's grim enough, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: But here's a real kicker. [01:05:00] The thing that sead into the Internet's collective memory is that morning before setting out. Erin decided to put on brilliant White trousers.

White trousers.

Adam Cox: So not only was the flying lesson canceled, she still went out in white trousers even though she was shitting herself. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: and I know it's a silly thing for the internet to hold onto, but what this says is that Erin was carefully managing her appearance rather than being overwhelmed by this illness that she was trying to convey to the court. But that just ends up undermining her credibility and empathy altogether.

Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Absolutely. I do think like she is quick on her feet to come up with an excuse, but she just does not think things through, does she?

Kyle Risi: No. Remember, she didn't get bail, so she spent all that time in prison. She could have thought about all these different responses before the trial, and yet she did not.

Adam Cox: I think she probably was so arrogant enough to think that she already had the [01:06:00] right story.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I believe that 100%. So now's the big question. Why did she lie about where she got the mushrooms from?

Remember Erin insisted that she bought them from an Asian supermarket, but the investigators pointed out if she'd bought them months earlier, why hadn't anyone else fallen sick in the public? Even like health officers searched every grocer in the area and they found nothing. So how could that be?

Unless she was lying,

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Well, it turns out that Erin's memory was a little slippery on the stand because she admitted that she had foraged for the mushrooms and suggested that she might have accidentally stored the wild ones in the same plastic container that she'd bought. The store bought mushrooms from, which she said would explain how they ended up in the beef Wellington, but the prosecution was like, if that was true, why had nobody gotten sick up until this point if you bought them months earlier?

Mm-hmm. To which answered. I don't know.

Adam Cox: I don't know. But you used them. Yep. Mm-hmm. Then you would've got [01:07:00] sick.

Kyle Risi: So this sudden shift going from flat out denial to admitting she'd forage, was just this major turning point in this trial.

The prosecution reminded her that Rhonda Stewart had asked her outright if she'd been foraging for mushrooms, and Erin had denied even knowing what the word meant.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Erin said, well, actually Rhonda asked if I'd ever been mushrooming not foraging, and that she didn't know what that meant. But police, doctors and Ronda herself all testified that the question was crystal clear. Have you ever been foraging for mushrooms? And every single time Erin said,

Adam Cox: no. Yeah. Like what is she thinking? Why do they keep asking me if I've been mushrooming? Yeah. Like so stupid.

Kyle Risi: Do you mean foraging for mushrooms? Like

Adam Cox: where'd you get these mushrooms from? Yeah. Oh, outside. Not from an Asian supermarket.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. She's also forced to finally admit to owning a dehydrator. Mostly because like she had no choice, right? Bike. The manual was literally found in her house. And also CCTV had caught a dumping one at the fucking tip. Oh, that's a

Adam Cox: dehydrator. Oh. [01:08:00]

Kyle Risi: Erin explained that during the COVID Lockdowns, she had used a dehydrator to dry mushrooms and other vegetables. Mostly vegetables, but mushrooms were included to dry them out, to grind them up. Then bake them into brownies in order to get more vegetables into a kid's diets,

Adam Cox: basically. Gross. That's a terrible thing to do as a mother. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: so that was actually true, She was a member of this Facebook True Crime group where several of the other members, including Erin, had started chatting in these private kind of group messages.

And they all testified that Erin had previously shared photographs of her using the Dator to dry out vegetables. And apparently sneak them into her kids' treats, which honestly I found hilarious.

She was basically like really dead set and like, I want my kids to eat healthy. So she's sneaking vegetables into brownies, but at the same time she's still putting sugar in their bloody body. So what's the point?

Adam Cox: That's why I thought it was stupid. That's why I thought like, and also she's lying to her kids.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: What a betrayal.

Kyle Risi: [01:09:00] I can never trust her again. The murders I can understand, but the vegetables,

Adam Cox: yeah. How dare you spoil a brownie? That's just unfathomable.

Kyle Risi: So Erin was now claiming that she had been into motion foraging since lockdown five years earlier.

Investigators then pointed out that in all that time, never once did her family or her kids ever recall her ever going out foraging at all. Plus, out of the 500 books that they seized from a house like books that covered literally every single imaginable interest that she had, not a single one of them was on foraging for mushrooms.

the first time the concepts of foraging ever appeared on the record was when she Googled, where do death cap mushrooms grow in Sland? That was the first, and that was in 2022, not during lockdown.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: So when asked why, she never mentioned any of this during the investigation, her answer was I wasn't asked. Oh God. But mushrooms were central to what was happening. Why didn't she think [01:10:00] this was worth mentioning? Everyone was mentioning we think it could be death cap mushrooms. Why didn't you not mention any of

Adam Cox: this?

That's the thing. Like why she should be concerned about her family, right? Yeah. And so therefore, she would give them all the information. Now, the only thing I can buy is if she did know that she had done this and was trying to cover up because she didn't want to get found or, thought to have murdered her family.

But it was an accident. But I feel like you should have just come clean about it at the beginning.

Kyle Risi: Well, she does have an answer for that because when she was asked why she'd dumped the dehydration after everyone got sick and then denied only one, she claimed that while she was at the hospital, she had, she had casually mentioned the dehydration, hiding mushrooms in her kids' meal why bring something up from five years earlier in a casual conversation like this? I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, she says that upon hearing this, Simon snapped back at her saying, is this what you used to poison my parents? And so she said that she panicked, worried that the kids might be taken away from her, and as results, she just dumped the dehydrator.

Adam Cox: Interesting.

Kyle Risi: Simon completely denies this conversation. Oh. He [01:11:00] said, this is a massive leap to go from hiding vegetables in brownies to me, accusing her of poisoning. My parents, like at that point, he didn't even suspect that she had anything to do with this.

Adam Cox: I think it's slippery slope. When you're secretly getting ingredients in brownies, it leads to murder. I'm afraid. It does.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. From

Adam Cox: brownies to murder. It's possible.

Kyle Risi: We've all seen it happen. The prosecution basically ends up tearing into this. They argued that if Erin was innocent and if she truly thought that she might know what had caused the family's illness, why didn't she do everything that she possibly could to help doctors?

Instead, it was clear that she took active steps to cover her tracks, refusing to cooperate and actively conceal evidence, basically. Yeah. Which is true. It's a fucking fair point. The defense then counter this by reminding the jury about hindsight bias. They argue that nobody knows how anyone will react in a crisis, which is true.

And they say that in Erin's case, she was simply reacting outta concern for her kids, which I can get. It's a solid argument, but it [01:12:00] just, nothing else stacks up in everything else that she's done.

Adam Cox: I feel like these lawyers have gone through the law book and they've got right to the back and they've gone. Right. If all else fails, yeah, we'll just use this argument.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Trust me, it's not gonna work. So then the prosecution bring in a fungi expert. This is a guy called Dr. Tom May. Is he a fun guy? He is a very fun guy.

He explains how dangerous, so not that fun because he explains so very dangerous.

He explains how dangerous death cap mushrooms are in Australia, but also how highly seasonal they are, right? They only appear between March, April, and May. But also he explains how fragile they are and how like the second you pick them, they deteriorate. within hours. The prosecution argued that Aaron's window for harvesting them would've been within those three months. right? Likely after she clicked on the iNaturalist article in May of 2022. Remember the poisonings happened in 2023, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. So she has just missed the season in May 22. When am I gonna start foraging?

Oh, it's gonna be next year [01:13:00] by the time I do this.

Kyle Risi: Very intuitive. Yes. He said that the reason the murders didn't happen in 2022 are likely because the growing season had already ended and that she couldn't get hold of any. He then said that she likely then sat on the idea for an entire year until April, 2023 when Fresh S Sighting started to appear on the iNaturalist website and then seize her opportunity to pick them, dehydrate them, and then store them to be used in July.

That sounds really plausible to me, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. She really should have started this cancer storyline back in 22. She wanted this to like to pull this off.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. All of this was, of course, circumstantial evidence, Adam, but. If it could be proved that she actually did pick those mushrooms, then this wasn't a tragic accident.

It was then, in fact a long-term premeditated murder, which just makes us worse, right? Mm-hmm. They can prove that she'd been to those sites. So what's the proof?

Adam Cox: Surely her phone signal or wherever her phone is. You're so

Kyle Risi: good at this. Yeah. Supposed to go, I dunno, Kyle,

Adam Cox: I mean, I'm solving this case.

Kyle Risi: So the [01:14:00] prosecution then bring in a digital forensic expert who walked the court through Erin's phone, GPS records, here's the thing about these posts on the iNaturalist website forum the people who post these posts will often include descriptions of the area. They'll kind of include photographs of the mushrooms and sometimes exact GPS coordinates.

From where they found those mushrooms? Mm-hmm.

On the 28th of April, 20 23, 10 days after the first sighting post for the season, Erin's phone traveled from her house to that exact location of that post.

She stayed there for an hour.

Adam Cox: Oh, an hour. I thought she was literally gonna be there 10 minutes. Literally like picking up a few and then heading back.

Kyle Risi: No, she was there for an hour. Then on the 22nd of May, 20 23, 1 day after another sighting, her phone was then seen again traveling to the same coordinates from the post. This time it's say there 43 minutes. Here's the kicker.

After that second trip, her GPS records shows that she stopped at an [01:15:00] electrical store where she purchased an item matching the price and the description of a dehydrator found in the tip.

Adam Cox: Oh, so she didn't have the dehydrator when For her kids?

Kyle Risi: She might have bought a new one. Yeah. Who know? I dunno. I dunno. Although I

Adam Cox: guess she does want one, which is specifically for these mushrooms.

Kyle Risi: Whether or not it's another one, or it's the same one, who knows. But she bought this dehydrator. Weird, right? They can't prove that she's bought this, but the things match up, right? It's all circumstantial evidence.

So basically the assertion is, was it that she had picked the mushrooms in April? The first post that got released, realized that they spoil very quickly, then went back in May when the second post was posted, and then bought a dehydration on the way back in order to preserve them to make sure they didn't spoil.

That makes sense.

Of course. When confronted by this, Erin said that she didn't remember going to either location. Of course she's gonna say that.

But then came the phones, prosecutors highlighted the painful lengths that forensics and experts had to go to in order to [01:16:00] pull together a map of her movements, and that's because she repeatedly reset her phones, but was also constantly swapping out two SIM cards between those four phones.

Okay.

So first they talked about the different times that she'd reset these phones, right? Including the fact that she'd remotely reset one of them after it had already kind of been in police custody for some time when she was asked why she did this. She said she wanted to see if officers were silly enough to have left the phone. Switched on.

Adam Cox: No, sorry. That's stupid.

Kyle Risi: Now, can you imagine, Adam, how that mocking tone towards the police who are investigating the deaths of her in-laws and going to every length that they can to sort this out would go down with the jury?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah. That's just not gonna go down. Well, no, and to think that people would buy that shoes actually concerned for her in-laws. Yeah. With that kind of statement.

Kyle Risi: Crazy. But next came the phones themselves, right? Four [01:17:00] of them were constantly being swapped around between two different sim cards. As I said, Adam, it is such a tangled mess. I cannot go into what they said in court because it's too confusing for me.

But put it this way, the jury has to be given a flow diagram. ' cause of how complicated the swapping and the switching around and the using and the kind of shelving of these phones were, it was mental. But the point is, this behavior with these phones was a deliberate attempt to cover something up.

Adam Cox: I was gonna say like, I don't even need to see a flow chart. Yeah. In fact, why are you swapping your sim sim card? Who does that in and out? Uh, location. She

Kyle Risi: comes up with all these different explanations. Like she kind of gave one to her son and blah, blah bl. She wasn't hiding one of them. She does this all the time. It, it's just bullshit. She does this all

Adam Cox: the time. It's

Kyle Risi: just bullshit. So during the investigation, she was asked to obviously hand over her phone. Right. When I say, give me your phone, you're gonna give me your daily driver, right?

Adam Cox: I imagine this is like when Monica asks Phoebe for her phone and Phoebe pulls out like this eighties cell phone.

She's like, this is your current phone?

Kyle Risi: Yes. My [01:18:00] current phone.

So like I said, investigators asked to hand her a phone, but the one that she hands over isn't her daily driver. So when pressed about this, she said she had given them the phone that contained. Her main sim card, and so to her, that was her main phone. I dunno if I buy that, I can see some logic in there, but everyone knows that nowadays, it's not about the sim card.

It might have been maybe in early two thousands, but now with smartphones it's the smartphone you're using, right? Regardless of the sim card.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: And basically she says that she wasn't trying to hide her phones when the police searched her house. One of the phones was just casually sitting on the windowsill. If they didn't take it, that was completely on them. So when I say, gimme the phones and we're gonna search your house, if I'd pick it up, like I'd, that could be your son's phone. I we're not interested in your son. Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah,

Kyle Risi: who knows. Finally, when she was asked why she swapped the sim cards so often, she said it was because she was becoming increasingly worried about Simon's behavior, especially after he had accused her of poisoning his parents at the hospital.

Which of course we know as a conversation [01:19:00] that Simon Vehemently denies even happened.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Which brings us now to Erin's relationship with Simon, Don and Gail. Erin didn't really have that many friends in her life, When her relationship with Simon finally deteriorated, she was left really isolated.

The only real connection that she had were those members from that Facebook group on that true crime forum that she had joined. Many of them were brought in to testify and they all said that they routinely swapped case theories around kind of the group that they're in.

But also the conversations were more personal too. They shared recipes. They even talked about Erin's attempts to kind of sneak vegetables into a kid's diet, but they also talked about Erin's relationship with Simon and their in-laws.

They all knew about the child support saga. They said that Erin regularly complained about Simon's kind of parents and how they were enabling him, refusing to hold him accountable.

In one message she wrote are one of these people, meaning obviously Don and Gale have any capacity for any self-reflection [01:20:00] at all. She said that they never stopped to ask even for a second why she had kicked Simon out so many times throughout the relationship or why their marriage had even fallen apart to begin with.

And she wrote that Simon's behavior was learned from them and now she was sick of their shit.

Adam Cox: Okay, Don, if I buy that or if she's just needing someone to vent to or moan to.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. The thing is though, Erin explained that these were just vents and she just needed a listening ear. She says that without them, she'd basically just be talking to the goats, which is a very Australian thing to say.

Adam Cox: I feel like she did need a friend. Mm-hmm. I feel a little bit of sympathy 'cause maybe if she did have a friend, they would just go like, just get on with your life.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Remember Erin said time and time again how much she loved Don and Gail. Right. Even calling Gail the mother that she'd never had.

Oh, yeah. Yet on the stand, Simon said that while his parents, aunt and uncle were all dying in hospital, Erin never once asked how they were. she knew what was gonna happen. Yeah, exactly. She's guilty. Of course, Erin denies this, but by [01:21:00] then she'd been caught in so many lies, Adam, that she was, 'cause remember, she was forced multiple times to admit outright to say the words.

I was lying again and again. Remember this case wasn't about whether or not she'd poisoned her in-laws. It was about whether or not she knowingly did, we know that she'd poisoned them, but was a premeditated, and to determine that so much of this case comes down to credibility in your character,

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: The lies had mounted up to such a degree that the jury just couldn't trust anything that she was saying. It got to the point where the defense had to just remind the jury that Erin is not on trial for being a liar. She is on trial for knowingly poisoning her in-laws, and he was right.

But Adam, the case does, to a degree, come down to credibility and those lies, you just cannot ignore them. Right?

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So one final example that really quas her credibility comes down to her very selective memory. Remember, she was able to describe the packaging from the grocer in vivid detail, [01:22:00] but she couldn't remember like where she got them from. Well, later when she takes a stand while she was being questioned about something like completely different, she then just randomly goes off on this kind of unrelated tangent where she's like, oh, and by the way, when you were questioning X Witness they got this date wrong.

It was actually X, Y, or Z.

Adam Cox: Okay? Just trying to make out like, oh, she does know what's going on, kind of thing.

Kyle Risi: What this points out and probably not intentionally. Is that a show that when it suited her, she was capable of being very precise? Yeah. But when it didn't, suddenly her memory fails her.

And this is something that the jury notice.

Ah, yeah. I didn't think of that. At the end of the trial, the jury asks to consider three things in kind of the death of the in-laws. Were Erin's actions conscious and deliberate. Did Erin intend to cause death or serious injury? And is it clear that Erin was not acting in self-defense?

Three questions. And so before the jury kind of retired to deliberate, this looks like a fucking slam dunk. Erin has come across so poorly, [01:23:00] she'd been caught in so many lies and contradictions both objective and the circumstantial evidence against her just felt really strong.

So when the jury ended up taking seven days, what?

Yeah, the media was just awash with all the speculation that maybe the jury was divided on whether or not she was guilty or not.

Adam Cox: Or were they just enjoying the five star luxury they'd been put up in? I

Kyle Risi: think that would be like a Best Western. Oh, okay. In the small town in Morwell.

Adam Cox: But if like the judge is sitting, I'm sitting in the jury box with my fellow jurors and he's saying, you know, you need to go decide.

I think I'll just look at him and going, do we need to, yeah. Should we just say now?

Kyle Risi: But Adam, the thing is that that was just online speculation.

But it turns out they weren't. They'd actually decided pretty quickly, but they were only meeting like a couple hours a day plus this was also split over the weekend. So when they finally returned, basically Erin was found guilty on all counts unanimously. Like there was no question,

Adam Cox: I reckon that they were, they went into that room and they were like, we all think she's guilty, but should we drag this out a few [01:24:00] days?

Because like, we quite like the breakfast. They've

Kyle Risi: been here 10 weeks. Why would you wanna do that? True. I'd be desperate to get home.

Adam Cox: But 10 week, I'm still surprised it took this long. This feels like it should have been solved within a week or two. But I guess there's just so many lies or bits of evidence and things they had to go through to at least quash.

Kyle Risi: and the thing is though, there were so many witnesses that they brought in, it went on for 10 weeks. By far the most interesting aspect of this case was when Erin took the stand. Hence why we led with that. Really? Mm-hmm. But so much more happened in between.

So it was just wild.

On the 8th of September though, 2025, she was sentenced to three life sentences, plus 25 years for three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

Her sentence was to be served concurrently and that she would not be eligible for parole for a minimum of 33 years. By which time she'll be 81 years old.

And actually, Adam, this will be one of the longest sentences ever handed down to a woman in the state of Victoria in Australia. And her sentence was also the first ever to be [01:25:00] broadcast live in Victoria, purely based on the public interest that it attracted.

Adam Cox: Wow.

Kyle Risi: Crazy, isn't it? I just, I don't

Adam Cox: get why she. Did this really, at the end of the day, mm. Like to kill people. She's now just ruined the rest of her life. Her kids' life.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, her kids' life. But also think about poor Ian. Fair enough. Gail and Don, they die together. So that's, it's tragic. But I feel bad for Ian.

He's lost his wife for 50 years. And also these kids as well, they've lost their grandparents and grand auntie and uncle. Mm. And Simon. It's awful. Yeah. But when you watch from the documentaries, Don and Gail, they were so beloved in the community. So it reaches far beyond that in terms of the pain that she's caused.

It's horrible. At sentencing, the judge, by the way, in Australia, they call them justices. I don't call them judges. A little small note. I just, I was like, what is a justice? But apparently that's a judge.

Oh. Or the equivalent of. But anyway, the justice pointed out that it was clear that Erin had [01:26:00] meticulously planned this, which I think is very clear, right? Almost a year in the making.

But he also noticed her complete lack of remorse. She basically lured Gail, Dawn, Heather, and Ian on the pretense that she had been diagnosed with cancer, which was sick in itself.

He also described the devastating impact this had on Simon and the children and on Ian, as I said, who'd lost his wife of 50 years.

But as of now, Erin is serving her sentence in the Dane Phyllis Foster Center, one of Australia's most notorious women's prisons. And ironically. Reports have already surfaced that inmates are outraged, that Erin has been given a job handling food in the, in the prisons of the, the prison kitchens I would never eat.

Adam Cox: I feel like that's ironic, but yeah, I don't want to be eating from her.

Kyle Risi: No, definitely not. And yet. After all of this, we still do not know what her motive was. It is clear that this was likely a whole year in the planning. Right? That's a long time to hold onto a grudge.

She had plenty of time to stop, reflect, and [01:27:00] change her mind, but yet she didn't.

Like I said earlier on in the beginning, the money was a motive, but it's very clear that Erin was financially stable, right? She was in fact the one giving her money away. We know the rift, obviously in the family, started with Simon's tax return where he listed himself as separated, and as a result, Aaron lost out on government benefits.

So I can understand why money might seem like it is the motor there, but I don't think it was about the money at all. I think it was about what the word separated on that form symbolized. For Erin,

even though they were no longer together, Erin and Simon maintained this really close relationship. So seeing the word separated on that form felt like a rejection to her.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I can see that because she's helped this family for so long that's now official and maybe it seemed like closure to her being like not part of the core family anymore.

But once it's not about the money. Is she pissed that she has given all this money away? [01:28:00] She doesn't feel appreciated.

Kyle Risi: 100%. That's exactly what I think. I don't think that Erin foresaw how things would play out from here. Right. I don't think she knew that at all. I think things just spiraled and that spiraled into the child support disputes into the family tension.

It bred resentment. And I think when she didn't receive that birthday invite for Gail's 70th, she felt like that was the ultimate rejection Right. This time from the whole family. Yeah. And Erin, I think, is someone who's terrified of rejection.

She's not close to her own family so I think she's always scanning for it, always kind of bracing against rejection and to prop herself up. She's leaned in on this belief that she was the family's kind of financial keystone As long as she held the purse strings, paying for houses, paying for holidays, that she wouldn't be pushed away. And the truth is they never ever did push her away. I think this is all just in our mind. Right? I believe Simon when he says that that tax return was a mistake. And I believed him when he said that he was gonna try and [01:29:00] fix it. But Erin was like, no.

And also I believe him when he says that missed birthday invitation was just a miscommunication because Erin's parents came up to her and said, of course we want you there. But by then to Erin,

' cause of the sphere of rejection that she always feared was so close by. I think that she just saw this as proof of rejection, but also in gratitude for everything that she felt that she had done for the family financially. Yeah.

Adam Cox: I think so. I think she just, her pride had been hit a little bit.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. And here's the thing, I don't know if she intentionally wants them dead. It is possible that she just wanted them sick enough for them to need her again. We know that she's poisoned Simon before. But here's the interesting thing, it's Erin who nursed him back to health each time he got poisoned.

Adam Cox: Really?

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So was it revenge or was this just a twisted attempt to kind of win the family back

Adam Cox: if that is the case? I think she would've shown more remorse as like, oh, this has gone too far. Yeah. Two, would she have not gone [01:30:00] to their bedside to look after them? I, yeah, I don't, yeah, these are all

Kyle Risi: really great points.

Adam Cox: I don't buy that, actually.

Kyle Risi: I think there's a possibility in both of those though.

Adam Cox: No, not

Kyle Risi: for me. Just based on the type of person that she was, I think that she could have wanted them dead. But also based on how deeply insecure she comes across between the lines. I think it is possible that maybe this was her way of making her in-laws dependent on her again.

I mean, you can still want to control over people, but not care about them.

Adam Cox: Okay. So you can go and give them food poisoning. She could have mushed up some raw chicken in that beef wellington, whatever. she chose to get death cap mushrooms. Which are so poisonous. Yeah. No, there's only one way that that really ends.

Kyle Risi: Possibly, possibly. That. Those are just my fear. No, not possible.

Adam Cox: She's in prison. We know this is premeditated.

Kyle Risi: Okay. So we know what you think then. 'cause that was my next question. Hey Adam, what do you think?

Adam Cox: She's a bitch.

Kyle Risi: And Adam, that is the story of Erin Patterson, the mushroom [01:31:00] murders of 2023.

Adam Cox: Is it weird that I really fancy beef Wellington now?

I

Kyle Risi: do

Adam Cox: Fancy a beef

Kyle Risi: Wellington, but, um, I'm not, not from, not from Erin. No. I don't think she's giving anyone beef Wellington anytime soon. But, but what an awful story, eh. Mm-hmm. And it's a story that really kind of captured like the public's interest for quite some time since it happened.

Adam Cox: It's just so wild when you hear that kind of, uh, poisoning, and such a horrific death.

Mm-hmm. And the fact that just comes from. Mushrooms. Yeah. You just don't think that, that could kill you, but yeah. They just shut down their organs.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So the liver goes after them, the kidneys, it's horrible.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Horrendous way to go.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. What I'm always so amazed by is like, I know like a lot of the stories that we cover typically come from America, but do you know what a close second is?

Adam Cox: Australia. Australia, yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: They have some wild stories and some really great ones. One of my favorite ones is the IMU Wars. I really enjoyed doing that one. You did the shark arm murders. Bell Gibson, of course. Yeah. This one. I'm sure there's like [01:32:00] several others

Adam Cox: Yeah, I'm sure there's some other countries which have some wild stories.

They're just not in English. I think

Kyle Risi: it's just 'cause we have a love for Australia, right? We have such an interest. But also when we were planning on going to Australia, 'cause of how excited I was, I listened to so many podcasts and followed so many influences on Instagram that. Majority of my feed are Australian influencers One of my favorite, and I can't remember his name, I don't remember their names, but they pop up, is this guy that he was on, I believe home in a way. Like he's an old actor from home in a way. Really handsome. He's just recently got engaged to his girlfriend. But Nick Carter, I think Nick.

Nick something. Nick Hunter, Nick Carter. But anyway, and that's how I found out about Tony and Ryan as well. Ah, the do go on podcast I got from just obsession with everything Australian. And that's where a lot of these stories come from.

Adam Cox: Now I think you've got the Mushroom Lady to add to that session.

Now

Kyle Risi: we've got the Mushroom Lady. People heard about that one all over the world and yeah,

Adam Cox: very good. Good story.

Kyle Risi: But yeah, well done. Tragic note. So shall we run the outro [01:33:00] for this week? Let's

Adam Cox: do

Kyle Risi: it. That brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

We hope you enjoy the ride as much as we did.

Adam Cox: And if today's episode sparks your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people like you discover the show

Kyle Risi: and for our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget, the next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon. And as always, it is completely free to access.

Adam Cox: And if you want, even more than join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next. We'd love for you to be part of our growing community.

Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday and until then, remember, justice may come, but grief never fully leaves the table.

We'll see you next week.

Adam Cox: See ya. [01:34:00]