Canadian True Crime - The Mushroom Murders with Australian True Crime [1]

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

A special collaboration with Australian True Crime podcast | It’s one of Australia’s most sensational criminal cases in recent memory, drawing intense media attention, public fascination and endless speculation. Today, the case is known around the world as the “Mushroom Murders.” In this episode, Kristi is joined by Meshel Laurie of Australian True Crime, who followed the case closely and attended the sentencing hearing, to look beyond the headlines at what happened, how the case unfolded, and why it captured so much attention. Find Australian True Crime on your favourite podcast player.Watch Australian True Crime’s episode about the Mushroom Murders on YouTube.Watch Kristi in conversation with Meshel Laurie about the murder of Connie Grandinetti.Part 2 will be available to all tomorrow.Look for early, ad-free release on CTC premium feeds: available on Amazon Music (included with Prime), Apple Podcasts and Patreon.Canadian True Crime donates monthly to those facing injustice. This month we have donated to Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime , who offer support, research and education to survivors, victims and their families. You can learn more at crcvc.ca.Full list of resources, information sources, credits and music credits: www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes/214 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Canadian True Crime, a completely independent project funded mainly through advertising. To listen, add free and early, subscribe to our premium feed on Amazon Music Included with Prime, Apple Podcasts, and Patreon. This podcast often has disturbing content and course language. It's not for everyone. Please take care when listening. Hi there, and welcome to Canadian True Crime. I hope you're well. Today, I've got something a little different for you, a special treat. I'm often asked about whether I'll cover a case from another country one day, like Australia. And I typically say no, because, well, this is Canadian true crime. But it's been more than nine years since I started this show, and I'm making an exception, a deep dive into one of Australia's most high profile and talked about cases, certainly in recent years, with a very special guest.

One giant mystery. I think it has all the elements of a sort of Shakespearean tragedy. Three people are dead and one man is fighting for his life. As police launch a homicide probe. After a suspected mushroom poisoning in South Gippsland in Victoria. This is the insidious nature of the poison. It is the most horrible way to kill someone. These people suffered for so many days. A community in mourning tonight.

Victoria police are investigating where the foul play was involved. The Victorian Department of Health starts to get involved. They ring around the doctors and one doctor says she reckons they came from Woolworths. And they have to treat that seriously and go, is it our biggest supermarket chain selling poisonous mushrooms in the vegetable department? Erin Patterson wove a tapestry of lies. Can you tell us about the meal that you cook?

It's a tragedy what's happened. I'm so devastated by what's happened. She just looks like a normal lady like all of us. Any lady you'd see at Netball, and the things that she said that day were suss. Police say you're a suspect. Do you have anything to say about that? Yes, I say I didn't do anything.

I love them. And I'm devastated. They're gone. This morning, police arrested Aaron Patterson. I just got to believe it. Can you tell us where the mushrooms came from? So, our special guest, Australians listening, would have recognised her voice. Her name is Michelle Laurie.

She's a well-known stand-up comedian. She's authored several books. She's a longtime broadcaster on TV and radio. When I lived in Brisbane in the mid-2000s, Michelle co-hosted the top breakfast radio show I listened to every day during my commute. For the Canadians, think Jesse Crookshank with a bit of Jan Arden maybe. Michelle is funny, candid, sharp, and she also hosts one of Australia's top true crime podcasts, Australian True Crime. our sister podcast, if you will. We decided that I would bring a Canadian case to Michelle.

She chose the murder of Connie Grandinetti from Alberta, and she would bring an Australian case to us. I chose the mushroom murders because I know Michelle followed the case very closely. She lives in the same general area where it unfolded and attended some of the trial and sentencing hearing. This is actually the first time she's unraveled this case from beginning to end in a deep dive format like this, and she's a master storyteller, so I'm absolutely thrilled to introduce her to you. I was curious about a couple of things, so I've got a few questions to ask

Michelle before we launch into the Mushroom Murders case. I'm very excited to welcome Michelle Lorry. Hi, Michelle. Hello, how are you? It was a lovely intro. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me. Now, I started reading your book, CSI Told You Lies, and in the intro, you go into how you started Australian true crime. And I think that we have a really similar origin story about how we started a podcast. You said all the exact same things that I say when I'm asked, which is, you know, how podcasts changed my life as a busy person. For me, I was a mom and listening to podcasts just turned everyday chores into me time,

you know, folding the laundry, making lunches and the crappy jobs you have to do as part of being a parent. jobs, right? And so you can turn that time into fascinating and fun times. Exactly. And you immediately went on to talk about the impact of serial. Was that your first true crime podcast as well? Yeah, because we launched this one very soon after that. I think it was my gateway podcast, but in terms of doing a full true crime podcast, before that, I was just doing an interview podcast called the Nitty Gritty Committee and I found myself skewing towards true crime guests. So it started off really broad and then I ended up just because I found them the most interesting booking and rebooking old coppers and people who've written books about crime and things like that.

So it became, it was a natural progression and then I thought, I wonder if I could just do this. And I did that. And it's like 10 years later and I'm still really into it. Like you launched in March of 2017. I was January of 2017. So it was a zeitgeist, wasn't it? It was like there was something in our brains, a lot of people around the world that just went, I'm just really into this.

And I'm not ashamed of it. And this is what keeps me interested, keeps my brain working. I want more of this in my life, more of this kind of content. And we all did it about 10 years ago. We're still doing it because people still like to listen. Yeah, true crime hasn't got any less popular. But one thing I also read is that. you know, when you first started, you had a level of scrutiny that you didn't anticipate.

And you have been scrutinized before, you know, been a public figure for several decades. But you didn't realize the kind of questions that would come up, you know, about the way that you tell stories about crime and punishment and who those stories belong to and why are you telling them. Like, what was your perspective going into it? And then how did that change? Well, I think my intention was really pure. And, you know, over the course of my career, it was actually over three decades, believe it or not, I feel like I've tried a hundred things thinking that they might be popular and they might be a great career move. And none of them have worked like this. And this was never meant to be a career move. This just was genuine passion.

It was a hobby. It was something, even though I was so busy and so tired. I had little kids as well, I worked early in the mornings, all those things. I found the time and squeezed this in because I felt it nourished me in a way. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that's why it's so successful, actually, because it really is the purest self-expression I've ever been involved in. Yeah.

I love it because I talk to people, victims, families of victims, police, investigators, offenders. Sometimes we speak to offenders. So I get to just hear their stories, help them tell their stories. they've all got their own reasons for wanting to tell their stories, but it's really rewarding to be able to help them do it. And so the scrutiny, I think, mainly really honestly comes from a certain sector of journalism. I think there's a certain sort of gatekeeping sector of journalism. Right?

Yeah. And they're like, what are you doing here? Like, how dare you? Yes, yes. And they try to make it out. And I've noticed it's actually infiltrated popular culture too. Now on movies and on TV series, there's often some lame ass who does a true crime podcast if you haven't noticed that yet.

I am that lame ass. No, and this is the least lame thing we do, babe. And like, you know, we're not apologising. I'm not apologetic about the fact that I didn't study journalism. Like, it's 2026. That's not the world we live in. Yeah. They can be so high and mighty about true crime.

Oh, true crime. And I say to them, what is a newspaper, if not true? crime. Right. What is the nightly news, if not true crime? Like, they're trying to be these gatekeeping purists about who should tell these stories. And that's just not the world we live in anymore. And I know that you and I both take it very seriously. We're not kind of sitting around drinking wine, joking about murder. I'm a bit weird about those ones. I, you know, I think we've all got our levels. We've all got our judgments and I don't like those ones. but I like what we do.

What about the ones doing makeup while telling a true crime story? I actually really love Bailey Sarian, but you know, I just noticed a couple of days ago there's a story about Bailey Sarian taking a break, signing off social media because of the feedback is a polite way of saying it. The pressure, the, you know, the hate, I guess is the word. And I've always found her attitude towards what she does really good. I think that she's, okay, yeah, she's doing makeup. It helps that I love makeup, so it is two things that I love.

What about Muckbang true crime? You know, the YouTube videos where they're picking out on an entire table of food while telling a true crime story. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I'm just like, my kids have showed it to me the first time. I was like, no, this isn't real. And they said, oh, mate, it is real.

But again, I suppose I'm being a bit of a gatekeeper, but I think these are real stories we're talking about. These are real people. These are real issues that are ongoing in my country and your country. And that's my attitude towards it. I think I feel like we're contributing to the discourse in a positive way. That's a difference to me. Yeah.

I mean, I've been through the exact same thing. And it really affected me because I'm a very introspective person as it is. And so when I receive feedback, I always like internalize it and think, okay, well, how can I use this feedback to improve or whatever? And doing that with listener feedback is one thing. But in the early years, I had some really negative interactions with a couple of journalists who approached me and basically told me that I have no right to be doing this. And they're coming at me from a place of authority.

So I've already got major imposter syndrome. And I remember one of the worst ones was a former. journalist turned university comms lecturer. He's deleted his tweets now, but I don't mind speaking about this because I'll never forget. One of his students on Twitter basically said, I like listening to this podcast, my podcast. And then this guy took great umbrage to that, ranting about how I'm unethical and how I'm picking the bones of journalist work. That's exactly what he said. And questioning whether I donate back to causes, which I do. But I'm like, Are journalists donating back to causes?

Does anyone expect them to? That's my point. Exactly. Exactly. And usually, I mean, journalism, and this is sort of where we came from with this podcast initially, by its very nature, is about moments. And we're about what happens after the moments. Right. You know, okay, so there's the headlines, there's the big moments in this story.

But what about everything in between? What about all the human stuff in between those huge moments? So really, I think we can work together. Absolutely. And it's like you really have to come up with like your own personal reason and your why, your mission about why you're doing this and what you're hoping to achieve out of it. And, you know, I did the same type of thing.

At the end of the day, I realized, you know, I'm not stealing from journalists work. I'm amplifying it. I'm citing it. I'm contextualizing it, directing people back to it long after the day that it was published, that moment, like you said. Yes. And we're also able to do things that journalists might not be able to do if they're fitting into like a three-minute segment or a TV hour.

We can incorporate more perspectives because we don't have a time limit. That's it. And we can really make sure that the victims and the survivors have made all the points that they want to make because we don't have somebody there telling us. us to cut it off or whatever, you know. Yeah. I mean, these days with online news as well, they're expected to come up with how many stories a day.

Right. You know, so, yeah, they haven't got time to go in depth like we do. And as I say, that's what I mean. I think it's a great marriage, actually. You know, we're always quoting their work. I'm sure you are as well. We speak to journals, nothing but respect for great crime journals. Yeah.

But we can fill in some gaps that they can't. Absolutely. Yeah. And for a while there, I actually assumed from those negative interactions I had that all journalists must have felt the same way. So I really tried to keep a low profile so that I wouldn't upset anyone else because I couldn't see what the problem was and what their problem was. But then, you know, over the course of the years, I met a bunch of journals who were actually normal and rational. And I realized that those awful grumpy ones were just a really small but vocal, subsection. Well, it's kind of laughable to me now. Like, not long ago we asked a

journal to come on the show and got a very snippy reply. I don't do podcasts kind of thing. And I mean, it was laughable. We just laughed. We were like, oh, okay, gidey, 1995, whatever. You do you, boo, you know. Get with the program. Right. Okay. So now in Australia, journalists want to do podcasts. Now we're, you know, that's the sort of direction and people come to ask and ask for advice and how to get started and all sorts of things. So, and we, we will highlight their shows. You know, there are some amazing podcasts by journalists about the mushroom murderer who, who will talk about shortly. So yeah, I mean, that's, there's no point fighting the tide. We are the tide. Yeah, exactly. I guess for me, because I come from the marketing

in communications field. And so I don't have any prior anything in social media broadcasting anything. It was completely from scratch. So it was like a whole new world. So not only was I, you know, the target of these journalists, but also I was learning how to deal with all of this feedback that was coming in that I, I don't know, it's like I never really thought much about it. I didn't intend on the podcast being a thing.

It was just like a, I wanted to teach myself how to, how to, how to, to create a podcast and let's go. And then all of a sudden, I'm getting all this feedback. I'm like, oh, I want to make it better. But at some point, you have to like cut it off and go, you can't please everybody. And I've come the opposite way. I've come, I started in stand-up comedy. So I've probably come from the MMA version of, you know, media, from the bare-knuckle boxing

version of media. So from where I'm sitting now, it's pretty genteel. It's pretty, you know, I'm definitely very good. good at ignoring feedback. Put it that way. Good for you. I always think that Jerry Seinfeld said the best thing about feedback. He said when you work in the entertainment industry, you get incredibly positive feedback and incredibly brutal, negative feedback. And the most important thing to remember is neither of them are true. Don't get carried away with the very good feedback and don't get carried away with the very bad feedback. Yeah. I don't think you can do what we do and subject yourself to all

of that noise. And I find with young performers, particularly with young comedy performers, that they're so fixated on what they always say what they will say to me. They'll always say, oh, if I use that joke, they'll say I'm doing this and they'll say I'm being performative and they'll say it. And I'm like, who's they? Oh, social media. Yeah. And so it's so inhibiting. They're not even waiting for the feedback. They're trying to second guess it and then editing themselves before they even get out the gate. Yeah. So yeah, don't do that. Thank you. Very, very wise words there. And I didn't realize we had so much in common. Okay. So what you are here to talk about today, Michelle, is the infamous mushroom murder case. And you're from the same, or you live in the same

city where this happened, the same state. Tell me about it. Well, it is my favorite at the moment. And I know it's, again, it feels gross to describe a true crime story as a favorite. But what I love about true crime is the stories, the personal stories, the relationships, the family stories that you hear about because we don't know what goes on in other people's families. And I think we all think our family's a bit crazy. And I'm not going to say this family's crazy, quite the opposite. This is a family of people who seem really beautiful, like really beautiful salt of the earth people, but relationships push us in extreme emotional directions. So that's what entices me to this story. There's a lot of good people in this story.

It takes place mainly around the small country communities of Leongathar and Coram Borough. So they're about an hour and a half out of Melbourne where I live and where I'm sitting right now. This is a beautiful part of Australia. It's that very, it must have been when British settlers came to Australia. I think they looked at this area and went, okay, I can get my head around this bit. Not the desert bit, not the rainforest bit. I don't understand any of that. It's scary. But this bit looks like home. It's green rolling hills, beautiful, you know, four seasons, all that kind of stuff. And there's dairy farms there. It's a pretty well-heeled part of the world. It's pretty, I found one article online that they called it prosperous. And I thought, yeah, it

He's prosperous, prosperous and stable, it called it. About 10,000 people that live in the towns and out of the towns. And it's beautiful. And all the characters in this story give the impression of being prosperous and stable. As I say, it proves that you just, you never know what's really going on in relationships. In 2023, Erin Patterson, who's our protagonist, she was 48 years old. She's roughly my age. So there's a lot that I feel like I relate to Erin about. There's a lot I don't. But when it comes to being a 50-year-old single mum, I get that, you know, I get the things that she was worried about. I get the things that she didn't like about herself.

I get, I understand the feeling of, God, my life's half over, you know, probably more so. What have I done with it? What do I have time left to do? Looking at yourself in the mirror and not liking what you see, you know, these are all universal themes. But this is what's not universal is over the course of her life, Erin had in her. inherited several million dollars, first from her grandmother's estate and then from her mother's estate. So Erin was, if nothing else, independently wealthy. I'm talking at least she got two

million from her grandmother's estate and then more from her mother. So it's a substantial amount of money. And Erin is nothing, if not smart. This woman is a very intelligent woman. She plowed it mostly into real estate. Eventually, she built her forever home in Lee and Gathar. She also bought a townhouse in Melbourne. And what I love and envy and admire about the townhouse is it wasn't like a rental property or anything like this. This was a three bedroom, two bathroom, bolthole for when she and the kids wanted to spend a weekend in town. Wow. I know. Isn't that fabulous? It's like an hour and a half from her house. But she thought, no, sometimes the kids and I want to go to stuff in Melbourne and I don't want to drive all the way home and I don't want to stay in a hotel. So they had a whole other

house in Melbourne. And it just sat empty the rest of the time? Yes. Wow. Maybe in the school holidays, they'd come in for a week, but it's just sitting there for when they feel like being in town. It's fabulous. But she was also very generous. She gifted about $800,000 to her husband's siblings, 400 each, to help them buy homes. Oh, well, when I say gifted, they were loans, but they were no interest loans and there was no schedule for repaying them. So, I mean, that's incredibly generous, I think. But she was a really big part of this family. This is Simon, her husband's family, the Paterson's. Now, Erin's family, we don't know a lot about them. We sort of got windows, peaked through windows into this relationship during the subsequent trial. She talked about her

mother weighing her every night at the dinner table. So obviously putting a lot of pressure on her about body image and things like that. She also mentioned almost in passing that her parents didn't attend her wedding. And when a lawyer asked her, where were your parents? She said they were on a train in Russia. They were on holidays. Then they just didn't cancel or reschedule their holiday to be at their daughter's wedding. They have two daughters, these parents. One of them was getting married. they didn't show up. And she has a sister who is also an academic. They're not in touch. And the sister never, ever showed up to support Erin in any way through the subsequent drama. So that's Aaron's family. Do we know how Aaron's family got their wealth, their money? I'm assuming it was

generational because, I mean, and also her mother was an academic. Her mother was a professor in English, I think, or something like that. So academics don't make a lot of money. I don't know her father did. But as I say, her grandmother left a $2 million estate and $2 million just to Aaron. So I'm assuming another $2 million to the sister and then some to her mom and then her mom passed it down to her. So it seems like it's from the way way back in Aaron's family. Simon's family by comparison, well off. You would call them comfortable, but not as rich as Aaron's family, but so beautiful. The Paterson's are these beautiful, very crucial. Christian devout people from the country.

Simon, as devout as any of them in their church, they're members of the Coromborough Baptist Church. Simon's uncle Ian is the pastor of that church. And they're just really sweet, good people living their lives quietly in this beautiful part of Australia. You know, nothing to see. Just really nice people. Next, Michelle lays out the bizarre set of circumstances that likely led to the murders back in a moment.

We're back with the Mushroom murders case. Here's Michelle Laurie. So Erin and Simon met at work and they both worked at the council, a council in Melbourne. They met, they got married, they had their kids. But there was always, they were sort of breaking up and getting back together a lot, even from the very early days of the relationship. I'm still going to refer to him as her husband. though, because they never divorced. They separated for good in 2015. So Simon went and lived in

Corrumbara near his parents, near the church and all that. And Erin and the kids, two young kids were in Lee and Gathar in her dream home. They still communicated constantly and they even went on holidays together. This is what I mean about never really knowing what's going on in a relationship to the rest of the world. This looks like the most incredible separated couple you've ever met in your life. Like a conscious uncoupling type situation. Absolutely. They're doing great with the kids. They're both parenting, both involved and even, yeah, choosing to spend their holidays together. Overseas holidays, holidays to Tasmania, like, you know, good holidays. Aaron could afford them. But things were definitely shifting by 2022, 2023. And you won't believe the catalyst.

I believe the catalyst for all of this. Simon's accountant. is doing Simon's tax return and makes the fateful decision. I guess he ran it past Simon. Simon didn't see any problems with it. So they decided for the first time to declare that Simon was single. Right. He was separated. This turned into an amazing, incredible shitstorm because he didn't run it past Erin first.

Okay, so that's its own issue. It seems to be now in the final washup, knowing everything we know, it feels as though the fact that he didn't talk to Erin about that was a really big deal to Erin. But secondly, there were financial implications because, as much as I can figure out, as a wealthy single mother, Erin was eligible for less tax benefits and government payments than she was when both her and Simon's finances were assessed together as a married couple. Maybe he was a tax offset for her. I don't know how it worked, but I know that the minute the tax department got this form that said that they were no longer cohabiting, they were no longer a couple,

it changed things for Erin and she'd lost money. She was going to lose money in this deal. Simon was required to submit a child support assessment as part of his new separated status. And after weighing up his financial situation next to errands, the tax office advised him that the amount of child support he should pay her was $40 a month. Oh my God. So when this came out in court, I can't tell you, you know, when there's a big court case going on in town, it's like the way we listen to podcasts sometimes or the way we watch TV. We're doing other things.

We're not giving it our full attention. So all of a sudden, so many, I was sitting there getting my nails done and the lady next to me just kind of turned to me and said, can you believe that Simon Patterson was told he only had to pay her 40 bucks a month? And like every woman in town, every woman in the country was furious and suddenly saw, Simon as a villain in this story, you know, it really changed public perception. But actually, it wasn't his doing, it wasn't his decision. He kind of got caught up in one of those things. I don't know if you've ever filled out a form for a government agency. And suddenly, the next thing you know, it's changed everything in your world. Suddenly you need a new driver's

license, a new passport, a new, this is kind of what he got trapped in. His accountant said, I reckon I could get you a better deal if we say, admit that you're single, that you're separated. Simon said okay, and then it just unleashed this whole drama. And so the tax department, the family court, Simon's accountant, they're all saying to Simon, this is fair. This is what it is. She's a millionaireess. You're a working dad. You're not living with her anymore. You're not sharing finances. This is how much we've determined you should pay her. And on top of that, very specifically, they said to him, and don't give her any extra money. Don't be tempted to pay a bill here or there or whatever because they said to him, that's when things get murky.

This was the advice he was given. That's when things can get a bit out of control. Trust us. We've seen this millions of times and the best thing you can do is stick with our assessment and then everybody knows what's going on. Now, for example, after one of the children had a surgery in 2022, Erin did what she normally did, which was she paid one bill and she sent the anesthetistus bill to Simon to pay. he had to tell her, look, unfortunately, I've been told specifically not to pay bills on an ad hoc

basis anymore. She hit the roof. And you can tell I can read in her texts, in her emails. She's shocked. This is not the system they had. She thinks it's unfair. And we get that. We can understand that. But he did send her a form. He said, look, I rang them, I asked them about this. They said, can you fill out this form and send it to them and then they'll assess how much I should pay. And, you know, so he's in no way trying to shirk his responsibility or get her or the kids out of his life. He's trying to do the right thing, which is very much the Patterson way, it seems to me. That's the way he was raised. And that's the kind of guy he is. As I say, Erin infuriated. So she starts messaging his parents. And I think a lot of us have been here as well, where she's not.

not happy. You know you're a grown woman. You know it's ridiculous that you're dobing your partner into his mom. But you feel like this could be the only way you can get some sense in this situation, this man who suddenly lost his mind, right? So she starts WhatsApping Simon's parents and saying things like, you know, how do you feel about this $40 a month routine? Do you think that's fair? Do you think that's reasonable? And, okay, that's the minimum. but what's stopping him paying more money? Is he a deadbeat dad now? Did she say that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Deadbeat dad. She accused him of being a deadbeat dad to his parents, right? So it's all very embarrassing. And his parents are very, like, conservative, formal church people. They just didn't want to be involved. And they said to her, this is, you guys are in your 40s, your late 40s. Like, you need to work this out.

We cannot get involved. but that made her angrier, and she felt rejected. She started to feel as though this family that she loved, that she had taken on as her own family, they had always been incredibly loving and supportive of her, were rejecting her. They were siding with Simon, is the way that she saw it. And that's a really important element of the story. And it got to the point where Simon and his dad Don really, I'm going to say demand it. They very strongly told Erin to stop including them in the drama because they said Simon's

mum, Gail, who was at this stage in her late 60s, her health was not great and they were worried it was genuinely going to impact her health. So they said, please stop including us in your drama. Well, again, the rejection that she felt is palpable. It's palpable as she talks about it. Especially since she doesn't have her own family to have a relationship with. And guess what? She doesn't have any friends either.

This is the other thing I have in common with Aaron. Massive true crime fan. Massive. Oh. So she has this group of Facebook friends that she met in a true crime Facebook page and where they were kicking around theories about this specific crime. And then over the years, a small group of them branched off and became, you know, friends, online friends.

And they chatted a lot. So there's maybe four women who have. never met her personally, but they're really her lifeline. They're her friends and they're the ones that she vents to often, and often very unflatteringly regarding Simon's family. She described them as a lost cause in some of these messages. She wanted nothing more to do with them, she said. And at one stage, she told one of these ladies, I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing, but it seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to get involved in their son's personal matters are overriding that. So fuck them. I mean, a lot of us have written

fuck them about our in-laws to mates in messages, but I think this is, again, really quite deep-seated for Erin, because she loved these people. She knew they loved her. And this is a pretty long relationship by this stage, 15 years or so of her life, really invested in these lovely people who she feels have cast her out. Did she really expect them to side with her? over Simon, though. Look, yeah, I know. To us, ridiculous, but there's a lot of that in this story. And a lot of, again, a lot of the general public going, oh, no one would do that.

But we have to put ourselves in Erin's very particular kind of brain. And I think she did think that she had the moral high ground. She's the mother of the children. She has been incredibly generous to the family. She's enabled the two siblings to buy homes. I think she felt like she had done her bit and earned. earned her status in the family. And now, because of Simon's accountant, she's out. She's being suddenly sidelined. Yeah, she's out. That's how she felt. Even though the Patterson's

tried to reassure and reassure her, we still love you. You're still like a daughter to us. She stopped going to family functions, which she had always done, you know, started making a lot of drama. She'd show up and leave really early and was to me clearly screaming for their attention and support and they weren't getting it. They didn't understand what was happening with her. And they probably like a lot of us, really and truly when you look at the facts, think Simon's doing his best here. He's doing his best to be a good dad, a good ex-partner. He's trying to do the right thing, but she's just not having it. Yeah. Now, we fast forward past these messages. Those messages were sent in late 2022. In April of 2023, something happened. Now, we have to talk about

website and an app called I Naturalist. Have you heard of that? No, I haven't. I reckon it would be huge in Canada. You know why? Why? Like Australia, Canada is about the natural beauty, right? The nature, the natural world, the natural wonders. And when you talk to us about a case, where was it? I remember I went down a real wormhole looking at this beautiful place in Canada. It had bears, it had water, it had mountains. Oh, in Alberta. Alberta, right? So Australia's similar. I think in terms of the way we engage with the world around us. So I Naturalist is a website and an app where you're encouraged to upload photos of things that you encounter in nature just to let other users see where it is.

I saw a bear in Alberta. Then other people will go, great, I'm going to go to that place where she was and see the bear maybe. I don't know. No, no. I don't think they will. I would. I'd give anything to see a bear.

But, you know, or they can help identify things. If you see a plant, you can pop a photo on there and someone will say, I know exactly what that is. Well, on the 18th of April, 2023, a lady called Christine McKenzie was walking her dog near the town of Locke. Locke is about half an hour from Erin's house. So that area is just lots of beautiful little villages. And Locke is one of them. And this woman, as she's walking, she noticed some death cap mushrooms growing. We'll get into all the great things about death cap mushrooms at some point.

But all you need to know is that this lady knew exactly what they were. And so she was a former pharmacist. She was a poison specialist. She dutifully picked all the mushrooms she could find so she could dispose of them properly. And she uploaded photos and a story and all that to eye naturalist saying, guys, if you're walking dogs, particularly around this area, be so careful. If they lick one, they will die. Okay?

So data extracted later from one of Erin's computers showed that she had access the iNaturalist website at various times over the previous two years. So basically, police were able to prove that Erin knew of the site and used it. They couldn't prove that she saw this particular post, but they could prove that she knew of the website and that she used it. And that was interesting because 10 days after that post, providing the location, that's the other thing they do. They drop a pin and provide the exact location of what it is they're talking about.

Erin's mobile phone 10 days later pinged on a communication tower near lock. We can't narrow it down any further than that, but her phone data suggests that she was in the lock area 10 days after that post. And what we do know is that because of phone data and a store receipt is that on the way back from lock, Erin Patterson called into Hartley-Lawkson. Wells Electrical, a store in Lee and Gathar, and paid $299 for a Sunbeam food hydrator. Oh, I didn't know on the way back. Wow. That's not very smart. Well, this is, look, again, this is a theme that we will hear a lot in this story,

is Erin thinking she's smarter than everyone else. And there's reasons for that. She is an incredibly intelligent woman. She did great at school. She did great at university. She got a job for a while as an air traffic controller, which is a job that you need to be really smart to be able to do. And I think that having stopped working and become the stay-at-home mum, there was a big part of her that really yearned to flex her brain, to flex her intelligence, to remind

everyone. She was more than a mom doing school pick-up and drop off. She's a really smart woman. And part of that was her true crime crew on Facebook. They said later that she was an incredible researcher that oftentimes, you know, people do online try and solve crimes and all that kind of stuff, that she was a gun at research. She was really quick and really good at analysis and all that kind of stuff. So I think there is an element of that in this, of wanting to pit herself against other really smart people, you know? Well, it seems like she was more book smart than.

like street smart. Yes. She would disagree, but she would disagree with us about lots and lots of things. But ostensibly, she was a nice Christian mom living in the country. So that to us would say, yeah, probably not the most street smart person. But she definitely felt like she could outwit a lot of very smart people. So she bought her food hydrator on the way home that day. Now, fast forward 10 weeks from there.

Okay. So we've got the hydrator. at home at the house. Erin attended a church service at the Karanborough Baptist Church. Now, she and the kids didn't go like every week, but they went sort of fairly frequently and the kids could catch up with their dad, catch up with their grandparents, all that kind of stuff. So Aaron shows up to church this day. And as I say, this is the family's church. Simon's uncle, Ian, is the pastor of this church, as I mentioned before. And he's there at the service this day. He's running the show. And after the service,

Erin sidled up to her mother-in-law, Gail, and Gail's sister Heather, who are both in their late 60s, beautiful, lovely women, and she invited them for lunch to her house in two weeks' time. Now, I think because Gail was such a sweet soul, she was thrilled because she thought, oh, maybe this is an olive branch. Maybe we can get back to normal. You know, we've had probably by this stage, maybe 12 months of drama. So maybe this is Erin getting everybody back to normal. normal. And she went and told her husband, Don, Simon's dad, and he was like great. And Heather and

Ian were invited too. And Ian said later, I mean, that we were thrilled, but we thought it was weird because we'd never had much of a relationship with Erin. But Erin did mention that she had something going on in her life that she wanted advice about. It was how to handle something with the children. So that made sense to get your in-laws, the children's grandparents, and your church pastor to come and help you talk about that. So she said, can you come to my place for lunch in two weeks, the children won't be there. It's just adults. Oh, she also invited Simon, I should say. She invited her husband, Simon. Right. The evening before the lunch, Simon texted Erin to let her know he wasn't going to be there. He told Erin he thought it would

be too uncomfortable. And although she complained that she'd already put a lot of money and work into the lunch and implored him to consider, reconsider, he stood firm. He was not coming. Now, just over two years later, a jury would be left to draw their own conclusions as to why Simon felt uncomfortable about attending the lunch. Was it because they were still arguing about money? Was it because Erin had taken to making big decisions about the kids without discussing it with him? Earlier that year, she'd moved the kids to a new school without even telling him. Wow. And without including him on the enrollment forms, as if the kids had no father.

So he tried to contact the school to ask them a question about a question about a. an open day or something and they said, oh, sorry, we can't give you that information. It's only for family. And that's how we found out that, yeah, she filled out the forms and not included him. But now she's decided to invite him and his family to lunch to discuss something completely out of the blue. Yeah, all of a sudden, she's just like complete little sweetness and light and wants them to come over for lunch and, yeah, wants help and support with something.

She's in trouble and she needs help. So everyone goes, okay, okay, no problem. except Simon the night before, he's had two weeks to think about it, the night before he goes, oh, actually, no, I cannot, I can't do it. So there's an asteris about this. What the jury didn't know, what none of us knew at the time, because it was deemed inadmissible by the judge prior to the trial, was that by the day of the lunch, Simon and his doctor believed that Erin had poisoned him three times already, at least.

What? Simon had shared his suspicions with his family and yet incredibly they didn't feel like they were in danger themselves. Oh my God. Even Simon said later that while he thought she might be trying to kill him, he didn't think she'd hurt anyone else. Talk about what's going on behind closed doors. And what's the method?

Is there any details about the method that he felt she was using to poison him? On that same computer seized from Aaron's house, police found information about barium carbonate or rat poison. And a specialist who reviewed Simon's hospital records found that his symptoms were consistent with barium carbonate poison. Now, the most serious episode occurred just over a year before the lunch. So this is pretty early days in the bad blood. Simon ended up in a coma requiring life-saving surgery,

had a lot of his colon removed after eating a chicken curry made by Eric. On another occasion, Simon suffered seizures after eating a chicken rat made by Erin. Wow. After this episode, Simon removed Erin as his medical next of kin and stopped eating her food. That is fine with the family going over. But let's his parents go to her house. So I guess, look, I often think, again, this is one of those moments where we look and go, oh, come on, guys, if this was an episode of, you know, some TV show, some CSI, whatever,

we'd go, oh, that's stupid. Who would do that? But in reality, who amongst us would assume, would believe, would want to believe that the father or the mother of our children was poisoning us? Hindsight is always 2020. Yeah, right? So it took three serious illnesses for Simon and his doctor to look at each other and say, okay, we've got to talk about this seriously.

We have to consider some things that we don't want to consider. And so his doctor had him taking notes about every single thing he ate, where he ate it, to try and eliminate this idea that Erin was poisoning him. So they were working actively on this spreadsheet that they'd started. And then this lunch invitation popped up. And at the last minute, Simon got scared, I guess is what you would say. He actually got too scared to go to her house for lunch. He had good reason to be scared.

That's coming up next. Here's Michelle Lorry again with the Mushroom Murders case. So Saturday, 29th of July, 2023, the lunch happens. And there are two versions of what happened at this lunch because two people survived. One of the people is Aaron and the other person is Pastor Ian Wilkinson, Simon's uncle. Now, ultimately the jury believed Wilkinson's version of events, Pastor Wilkinson. So that's the version that I'll rely heavily on. Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson arrived together.

I just can't say this enough. Four of the sweetest old people you could ever imagine roll up in one corolla or whatever, you know, just beautiful, beautiful, lovely people. And the women, they're walking around the house. Oh, Erin. Oh, it's so beautiful. Because, you know, she's just moved into this house. They've never been there before.

So they're just like, oh, I love what you've done with the driveway. I love these plants. What are they? Can I get a cutting? All the stuff that old people say. say, you know, the ladies are poking around every corner of the house. I love this. I love that. They have a look at the garden. The men are sort of, you know, feigning interest in all of this, palava. And they're just chatting amongst themselves. And, you know, eventually, of course,

the ladies say, oh, Erin, can we help you with lunch? And Erin, no, no, no, no, no, no, please. It's all ready to dish up. You just sit down, take a seat at the table and relax. The table is, it's a big open plan kitchen dining room, you know, so The bench is in the middle. Aaron's at the bench, serving things up, getting them ready, and everyone else is at the table on the other side. So Ian Wilkinson could see very clearly what Erin was doing as she plated up the meal. He could see that she was plating up individually wrapped beef Wellington's,

mashed potato and green beans. Now, the Beef Wellington structure is very crucial to our story. Is it a popular meal in Canada? I don't think so. Anyone who's a Gordon Ramsey fan like me will know exactly what we're talking about with a Wellington because on his TV shows he always serves a Wellington in his in his restaurants. It's the pastry, right? Yeah, but the crucial ingredient in between, so it's a big lump of beef.

Normally it's just one big lump of beautiful beef. And then what you do is you smear around it this mushroom concoction. Oh. So you cook down this mushroom paste. Duxel, I think it's called a mushroom duck cell. And you put that all over the beef and then you put the pastry so that when you cut it, you've got these rings of business. Interestingly, Erin didn't make a whole Wellington. She made, and again, maybe she's just a Gordon Ramsey fan because he often makes individual Wellington. He makes a smaller bit of beef and wraps it up like a parcel. That's what she was serving. And as she was doing so, Ian noticed very clearly on the bench four large grey plates and one smaller orange plate. Right. She brought the meals over and placed them in front of people and all of her guests had one of those grey plates and she had the orange plate. So according to Ian, lunch was terrific.

Everyone loved it. Everyone raved about it. The two ladies, God bless them, said, oh, it's a bit too much for me. but otherwise they loved them. Don, bless him, ended up eating half of gales as well. So this poor man ate one and a half doses, shall we say, of the Wellington. And everybody loved lunch. And then according to Ian, after lunch, Erin announced that's his word, announced that she had cancer.

On the stand, Ian said he couldn't remember what kind of cancer, but he believed it was either ovarian or cervical cancer in the way of an old man, he remembered it was a women's cancer. That's the way he described it, a lady's cancer. He said that she told them it was very serious, life-threatening. She used those phrases, very serious, life-threatening, and she asked for guidance from them about telling the children. Ian led a prayer for Erin, asking God to support her and help her know how to deal with the children. And then, just sort of as I were finishing up the prayer, the kids arrived back home again. So that was the end of everything because Erin made it very clear she didn't want this spoken

about in front of the children at all. And then the guests left. Ian had an engagement with another parishioner and everyone had things to do Saturday afternoon. So they all went home in good spirits, successful lunch. But it was roughly 12 hours later. So this is the middle of the night by this stage when all four guests became ill. In the Wilkinson household, it was Heather who felt the first rumblings. She awoke around midnight and vomited for the first time, and Ian was sick soon after.

Their reaction, I think, was pretty typical. They lamented that they'd picked up a stomach bug and settled in to ride it out. That's what I would do. I think, you know, you get a bottle of water, you find a spot close to the toilet, and you just try and grab those bits of sleep in between, and you just prepare to be miserable for a few hours. But what they didn't realize was that there was a similar scene playing out over at Don and Gale Patterson's house.

because it's the middle of the night and they're very polite people, they're not going to ring each other. They're just hoping that everyone else is okay and we'll reconnect in the morning. So early that following morning, this is the Sunday morning. Don Patterson called Simon, his son, to say that both he and Gail had been terribly ill all night. So this is when the penny really drops for Simon. He doesn't take any chances. He says, get off the phone from me right now.

Dad, call an ambulance right now. as I say, he'd already confided to his dad and to his whole family that he thought Aaron might have been mucking around with his food. So at this point, he said, God, what if, you know, get to the hospital immediately. And the other thing that he did, and this is again, the jury never heard this. So this is where the story seemed really confusing for the jury and for those of us playing along at home, who were reading headlines, reading bits and pieces and going, hang on, how did they figure that out? Simon called his doctor and his doctor called the hospital and said to them, treat this as a poisoning, please. We think this woman is a poisoner.

And to their credit, they did. Like nobody went, what? That's stupid. They've just got food poisoning. Everyone took it very, very seriously. So it's a pretty chaotic morning. Simon rings his aunt and uncle. His parents are on the way to the hospital.

The doctor's dealing with the doctor at the hospital. Simon rings his aunt and uncle and says, are you okay? my mum and dad aren't well. They go, no, actually, we've been sick as dogs all night. Simon says, oh my God, he doesn't waste any time at all. He drives over there and picks them up. And he's going to take them to the hospital himself. And on the way to the hospital, beautiful Heather says,

did you notice, Ian, that Erin ate off a different plate to us? Why would she do that? They both remembered her asking that question, and they both said later, it wasn't really a question. It was a comment, an observation, like the penny was starting to drop, right, for everybody. So because they'd been warned, they started doing tests on people that they wouldn't ordinarily do as soon as you. If you and I arrived at hospital this morning vomiting with diarrhea, they would say, oh, you've got a bug or you've got, you know, food poisoning. Gastro, yeah.

Yeah, they might give us fluids. Someone might help us go to the toilet every 15 minutes, but no one's panicking, right? But as soon as these guys got to the hospital, it was panic stations and they started testing their liver function, their kidney function, all of that. And they discovered that Don's liver was already seriously compromised. And they sent him and Gail to a big hospital in Melbourne. They didn't muck around. They got them straight into a big serious hospital. As I said, by the time this matter came to trial, the judge had ruled that evidence about Aaron's alleged poisonings of Simon was inadmissible.

So the jury never heard about Simon and his doctor sounding the alarm that. morning. This made the chain of events hard for the jury and the public to follow. From the evidence, the stories seemed to jump from lunch on Saturday to everyone knowing they'd been mushroom poisoning by Sunday. But the truth is that without Simon and the doctor's warnings, the patients would most likely have been treated for basic food poisoning and they probably would have just died mysterious deaths. Because the sort of ingenious part of this plot, and again, this is I think where Erin has enjoyed it, maybe, is the choice of the poison. Death cat mushrooms, also known as Aminida Faloides.

And I know so much about Aminita Faloides now because I... Do you? I sat through days of evidence in the trial of hearing, you know, botanists and all sorts and scientists and everybody just talking us through amnita Faloides, where it grows, why it grows, and how it works as a toxin. It's how it works that makes it terrifying. A big part of that is that it's undetectable in your body after 24 hours, but it's still working. So the way it works is that when you ingest it, it sets off a metabolic chain reaction in your body

that continues to work killing your organs after the toxin itself has been flushed from your system. So it gets to the point where doctors can see everything's shutting down and they cannot see why. They can't find any reason why your body is shutting down. Add to that the fact that it takes 12 hours for the symptoms to start. So you've got about a 12-hour window from when people first get sick to when the toxins out of the body and you're not going to find it anymore. So do you see what I mean about the ingenious nature of this choice? If only she hadn't attempted to poison Simon three previous times.

Exactly. Exactly. It would have been the perfect crime, allegedly. Well, we'll get to why we still have to say allegedly about that as well. But specialists at Dandenong Hospital immediately started, not only are they testing these guys for very serious poisonings, testing their organs early, but they're asking them, OK, what have you done in the last 24 hours? What have you eaten?

And very quickly, the story of the lunch comes out. All four of us went to a lunch yesterday at midday. What did you eat? Oh, we had some mashed potato, we had some beans, and we had beef Wellington. Luckily, there's some Gordon Ramsey fans in there at the hospital who understand what goes into a beef Wellington, right? Yeah. So someone's put two and two together.

I'm sure it's not the only thing they tested for, but they realized mushrooms would be a really great poison to put in this meal. Sure enough, they tested them. Don's results showed a presence of Amanita Faloides. Ian's results showed it was there, but the two women both had negative results. so it had already left their systems by the time they got to Dandenong Hospital. The hospital starts acting appropriately trying to find livers for transplants. Wow.

Simon's cousin, Heather and Ian's daughter, Ruth. Ruth gets into the mix now. I guess they're saying to each other, well, someone's got to ring Erin. Someone's got to ring Aaron and we don't really know what's going on. We've got our suspicions about what's going on, but no one's heard from Erin. Is she okay? What's going on at her place? theoretically is she okay, right? So Ruth, the cousin, they nominate Ruth the cousin to get in touch

with Erin. She texts her, how are you going? Yeah, good, because the other four people who are at your lunch are now in hospital and really, really sick. So we just want to check and see how you're going. Erin's like, yeah, actually, I am a bit queasy. She starts to say she, oh, actually, yeah, I didn't feel really good last night. I'm not feeling that great. She later claimed that she, too, was suffering severe gastrointestinal issues that day. But CCTV proves that Erin embarked on a couple of long car trips that day. And a little bit of light food shopping. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Went inside a service station, looked at the sandwiches, picked around a bit, while wearing white pants. Obviously an unlikely outfit choice for a woman claiming explosive diarrhea. and believe me, neither the prosecution nor social media ignored that fact. I bet. Can you imagine a lawyer in court going, well, hang on a minute, you're telling me you got up and put on white pants,

you got explosive diarrhea, and you're about to drive your kid an hour and a half to a lesson. Yep, yep, yeah, I didn't really think about it. I just, they're the pants I put on. That's Erin. She's almost, I don't know if I can say this, or I don't want to be too controversial, but she's a bit Trumpian in the way that she will just look you in the eye and just say, the craziest thing and dare you to call her a liar. That's, that's Erin's way, that was certainly her way in court.

She's like, yeah, yeah, I put on white pants when I said I had diarrhea. What of it. Okay. Well, noted, Erin, it's noted. On top of that, Erin says she fed her children the leftovers, leftover Beef Wellington. What? That night, the Sunday night.

She says it after she knew that everyone else is. in hospital and they're looking at liver transplants, she thought, what will I give the kids for tea? Oh, it's Sunday night, I can't be bothered cooking. I'll give them the leftover Wellington. Wow. And she says she was sick as well, but she feeds her young kids this food. And she says later, well, I scraped off the mushroom. But not because she thought the mushrooms were poisonous just because the kids don't like mushrooms. What?

Oh, my. It's insane. And of course, the specialists in court are saying it wouldn't have mattered if, if, you're they had death cat mushrooms in them as well, it wouldn't have mattered if she scraped them off. The kids would be dead. This is her story. She's looking to straighten the eye and she's saying, well, this is what happened. I'm telling you what happened. And if you don't believe me, that's your problem. I just can't wrap my head around this. So how old are these kids at the time? They are like nine and 12. So she was prepared for them to be poisoned as well?

She just says she didn't realize that people were looking at that meal, that that meal was what made herself and the others sick, even though we don't think she was sick at all, but she just says, no, I just didn't know why they were sick. I had no idea. Yeah, so I just fed the kids whatever was in the fridge. That's nuts. That's Sunday night.

That's what the kids had for dinner, Sunday night, the day after the lunch. Monday morning, 43 hours after the lunch, Erin finally attended Leigh and Gathar Hospital Emergency Department after dropping her kids at the school bus. This is one of my favourite elements of the story. She texted Simon that morning and said, I don't feel well. Can you take me to the hospital please? And he wrote back, take yourself. On your Simon.

Simon is growing a backbone and just going, are you joking? Take yourself. Anyway, the doctor who was there is a great. character in this story, Dr Chris Webster. He was in charge of the unit that day, just happened to be on shift at Lee and Gathar as this was unfolding. And when she arrived, he was like, oh, thank God, because he knew there was one person unaccounted for from talking to all the people about the story.

He's thinking, where's the other one? Where's the other person who ate this lunch? Where indeed? That's coming up in part two, along with the rest of Erin Patterson's web of lies. Did she really have cancer? Part 2 is available to everyone tomorrow. Thank you again to Michelle Lorry from Australian True Crime for joining us today. You can find her show on podcast players and on YouTube.

Just look for Australian True Crime. To see photos and other media from this case, follow us on the Canadian True Crime Facebook and Instagram pages. We donate monthly to those facing injustice. This month we have donated to the Canadian resource Center for Victims of Crime who offer support, research and education to survivors, victims and their families. Learn more at CRCVC.ca.com. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsay Aldridge. Sound design and additional editing was by me

and the theme song was composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with part two. I'll be back soon with another Canadian true crime episode. See you then.