Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 113 | The HORRIFIC Mushroom Murders

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

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A small town in the south of Australia. A few streets, a pub, a petrol station, hours from the nearest city. The kind of place where nothing really happens. And there were five people and a quiet house at the end of a long road, enjoying a few hours together. It should have been a forgettable day. But it wasn't. This is the story of the mushroom murders.

Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder all things that I love to consume. And I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually minded. Fike! Today, we are talking about the mushroom murders. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelt, go mock-frived down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bustle the windshield into this infamous Australian case together. All right, let's talk about something a little lighter for a moment, and that is blankets. Now, I am a die-hard blanket person, as you guys know, but lately I have had a problem,

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You deserve and your pet deserves to wrap yourselves in luxury. Thank you so much to Lola Blanket for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel and let's get back to it. Erin Trudy Scudder was born in 1974 in suburban Melbourne. And she grew up in Glen Waverly, a quiet residential neighborhood about 19 kilometers southeast of the city center. Yes, we're talking in. kilometers today, people. All right, we're in Australia. Also, as a Canadian, I'm loving it. But it was the kind of place where families put down roots and just never really left. And this suburb had undergone rapid growth in the 1960s. And by the time, Erin was a child, Glenn Waverly was home to nine primary schools and four high schools. And homes sat on big

lots along organized streets, just a solidly middle class Australia. And her family fit that mold because her father, Eiton Scudder, worked for the government, and her mother, Dr. Heather Scudder, held a position at Monash University as a literature lecturer. And Heather specialized in children's literature, specifically, Australian Studies and Women's Writing. And she authored an academic book called Displaced Fictions, a detailed study of contemporary Australian teen and young adult fiction. And Aaron's sister, Cainwin Ruth Scudder, would study geology at Monash. following the family path. So with an academic mother, a public servant father,

and two university-bound daughters, the Scutters were a modern Australian family on paper. And by every measure, Erin was right at home in it. She was bright, she was bookish, she was quick with commitment, and her teachers would notice her really early. She had the kind of mind that picked things up faster than anyone in the room around her. And by the time she finished high school,

she had a place at the University of Messe. Melbourne waiting for her. Just a bright, full life ahead of her. And Erin had a mind that just didn't sit still. She kept picking up new qualifications and new fields and new subjects to dig into. And she started at the University of Melbourne in 1992, where she earned a place in the science program. And science eventually gave way to accounting, which became her first job, which offered her very stable, very conventional work. But she wasn't done collecting qualifications.

And in February 2001, she joined Air Services Australia and began their air traffic control training program in Melbourne. And the course ran 10 months long, and it was very competitive, technical, and not everyone made it through. It's very difficult. My grandpa used to do it, and it's one of the most stressful jobs

you can actually ever do, ever. And air traffic control is one of those professions most people never think about until something goes wrong. Controllers manage the movement of aircraft in real time, sequencing takeoffs, landings, and routing across packed airspace. It's, again, just very stressful. You have hundreds of lives in your hands at every given moment, essentially.

And a single miscommunication can end those lives. So by the time the program was finished, Erin had earned her place in the tower. So she was a university graduate and a qualified air traffic controller. And a manager who worked with her remembered her this way, saying, quote, colorful, smart, very smart, she was no dummy." So Air Services Australia lasted less than two years.

And by November 2002, she would eventually move on. But her next stop was local government. And she picked up a position at the Manash City Council in Melbourne. And the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the RSPCA, ran an animal management office inside the council. And by 2004, Erin was there as an administrative assistant. filing paperwork, basically, and handling the unglamorous daily rhythm of local government, a world away from the control tower, which again is like an extremely stressful job, so I don't blame

her for switching jobs. But the fact that she can just like toss around all these high qualifications and just kind of pick and choose whatever she wants to do because she's so smart is very impressive. So Aaron's government job turned out to matter more than even the title suggested, because also working at the city of Manash was a civil engineer named Simon Patterson, and a group of council employees had formed what Simon described as, quote-unquote, a fairly eclectic circle of friends, and Aaron found her way into that group. And by July 2005, Aaron and Simon were together, but she'd met his parents even before the relationship had really begun, and it was March or April 2005, and she and Simon had gone camping with a group of friends, and somewhere along the way,

they swung by the family Patterson home. Now, the Patterson's lived in Corambeura, a small town in the green hilly country of South Gippsland, roughly 90 minutes southeast of Melbourne. And that afternoon was the first time Aaron met Don and Gail Patterson. Now, Don and Gail's lives

had followed similar paths from the very beginning. Both were in scouts and guides as children, both took a piano and tennis, and both spent holidays at the same beachside towns on the Moorrington Peninsula, Rosebud and Germana. And their paths first crossed, at Sunday School in Hughesdale, a suburb east of Melbourne Center.

And Don came out of Melbourne University with a science degree, and he had the foundation for a research career in Australia, but he and Gail decided on a different direction. And the couple just packed up and moved abroad, Botswana first, then China, and both stints centered on mission work and teaching. And when they eventually returned, Don took a position at Coramura Secondary College, where he taught for 25 years and at one point served as deputy

principal. And Richard Collier, who taught alongside him, described Don as a man who earned deep respect from students, parents, and staff. In the exchange program, he helped create, sent Coramboro students to China, which, of course, was a country he and Gail had already poured years of their lives into. And Gail's contributions ran just as deep. In Botswana, she'd homeschooled their children using lessons materials sent from Australia. And Simon liked to joke that he, quote, reached his academic peak in grade four, unquote, which he insisted was, quote, no reflection on the teachers that followed, but on mom's ability as a teacher, unquote. And back in Corom Burra, she worked in the school office at the secondary college alongside Dawn. Now beyond the school, her volunteer work

was described as, quote unquote, quietly extensive. Bible study groups, youth events, community meals, producing the Burra flyer newsletter, reading newspapers aloud for people who couldn't see, welcoming overseas visitors and newcomers to the town, etc., etc., these people are saints, it seems, doesn't it? They're just given everything they have to everyone around them. And when a fire destroyed the secondary college's records in 1993, Gayle helped piece them back together. So it was said of the couple, quote, they just got on with living generous lives quietly and without fanfare, unquote.

And Gail's younger sister was Heather Wilkinson. born Heather Young. And her husband was Ian Wilkinson. And together, they raised four children, David, Luke, Ruth, and Elizabeth. And Heather taught English to adult migrants, and she never stopped. And she was called a gifted teacher. And under her influence, more parents started volunteering at the school than ever before. And one friend who had known Heather her entire life said, quote unquote,

the spirit of God was always evident in Heather. And quote, peaceful, grateful, calm, joyful. She is kind, friendly, even-tempered, and with a quirky sense of humor, unquote. And Ian had been the pastor of Coram-Bara Baptist Church for more than two decades, marking his 25th year in the role in February of 2024. And for these families, faith wasn't something they set aside after Sunday service. It really just shaped the way they lived every single day. So when Aaron and Simon married on June 2, 2007, at the Coram-Burra Anglican Church,

they chose that church deliberately. And Aaron said they wanted Ian and Heather, quote, to be able to come and relax with guests, unquote, rather than working the ceremony at their own Baptist church. And the reception was held under a marquee in Dawn and Gail's backyard in Coramura. But Aaron's parents weren't able to be there. So the person who walked her down the aisle was David Wilkinson,

which was Ian and Heather's son. But Faith hadn't always been part of Aaron's world. And she actually said she'd actively tried to convert him away from belief, saying, quote, I was trying to convert him into being an atheist, but things happened in reverse, unquote. And then, around 2005, she walked into Cumbura Baptist Church for the first time. And something shifted. Ian Wilkinson stood behind the pulpit, and up to that point, faith had been nothing more than an intellectual puzzle to her.

But something hit her in that room. It quote unquote quite overwhelmed her, and it pulled her into the orbit of the very people sitting in those pews. The Patterson's, the Wilkinsons, and the small town faith community they'd spent a lifetime building. And after the wedding, Aaron and Simon didn't settle down right away. And instead, they would use money from Aaron's inheritance and buy a Nissan patrol. Patrol. Sorry if I'm saying that wrong. And drove into Outback, Australia.

Sorry, I couldn't help it. I had to do it once. Okay, I won't do it again. But Simon described those months as a quote-unquote meander through the country's vast interior. And from there, they flew to Africa, traveling through South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. And Botswana, as you may recall, was one of those places where Dawn and Gale had lived decades earlier as missionaries. And by September 2007, they'd settled in Perth, and their first child, a boy, arrived in January of 2009, and the birth was pretty rough. Forecepts failed during delivery, and the doctors had to perform an emergency C-section, and their newborn ended up in the intensive care unit.

But even before the doctors cleared her, Aaron signed herself out, she wanted to be at her baby's side. And Don and Gail came to help with the new baby, and Aaron said she felt, quote, out of my depth, unquote, and was, quote, really relieved that Gail was there. unquote. So she had that support system. And she described her mother-in-law as, quote, really supportive and gentle and patient, unquote. And Gail told Aaron to, quote, just relax and enjoy your baby. And those words landed deeply. And for a stretch in 2011 and 2012, the family was living in Pemberton, a tiny timber milling town in the southwestern region of Western Australia. And Aaron opened a secondhand bookshop there. And it became kind of a hub for serious readers

in a place where you wouldn't necessarily expect one. And eventually, after their first child, a daughter would follow in 2014. And as it turned out, Simon's sister Anna Tarrington was also expecting. So the two babies were born within three days of each other. So the family started affectionately calling them the twins. And that same year, Aaron and Simon bought a house in Coramura, so they could be closer to Simon's parents.

And this was the town where Dawn taught, where Ian preached and where Gail had spent decades quietly holding the community together. So the entire family was putting down their roots. But trouble arrived with their first child. And even with a baby, Simon wanted to keep road tripping. The family headed north along the Gibb River Road, a remote track through Western Australia's Kimberly region. And somewhere around Queensland, the trip fell apart.

And Aaron booked a flight to Perth and left. And Simon had no choice. but to drive back with the baby. So it was a week on the road just him and his infant. And when he finally got back, she'd already arranged a rental cottage for herself. And Simon wound up at a caravan park nearby. So this would be the first time Aaron would leave.

And they were apart roughly two to three months before getting back together. And it kind of became a pattern. From 2009 to 2015, the couple separated and reconciled multiple times. And Simon felt that she was the one who always left despite his desire to have a solid marriage.

Quote, what I understood from Aaron was that she was struggling inside herself, unquote. Now, Aaron framed the problem differently, saying, quote, if we had a disagreement or any kind of conflict, we didn't seem to be able to talk about it in a way where either of us felt hurt or understood, unquote. And eventually, she told him the way they related

to each other was toxic. And the marriage drifted through towns along the way. And they would try counseling and patch things up together, and would actually move to York, which is in Western Australia. And then came the tiny timber settlement of Quinnanup, and they came back to Victoria in 2013, a short stop in Bena, then a house in Coramborough. And the final split came in November of 2015,

and she picked up a place of her own in Coramura, and the family home was behind her. Quote, I didn't want to be separated, but I felt there was no choice, unquote. But still, through it all, they never. divorced. And what made the split unusual was how little seemed to change on the surface. Custody was split, but they continued texting regularly, and they still sat in the same pews on Sunday, and they even traveled together as a family. And Aaron noted that Don and Gail never changed

after the separation. Quote, they just continued to love me, unquote, she would say. And they treated her, quote, like their own daughter, unquote. And Simon confirmed Aaron saying, quote, got along very well with his parents, especially with dad." So in February of 2022, Don reached out to offer video call tutoring for Aaron's eldest child, telling her he was happy to help with any subject he had some competence in. And both Aaron and Don had what Simon described as inquiring minds, and the two of them bonded over shared curiosity. Financially, Aaron was pretty well off, because her grandmother's death in 2006 had left behind a substantial estate. And Aaron Scher was evaluated at around two million Australian dollars,

parceled out over eight years. And her father had died of cancer in 2011, and when her mother died of cancer some years later, another inheritance followed. And Simon called her very generous with his family, and the numbers backed that up. She lent hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of his three siblings, and his brother Matt alone received $300 to $400,000 to $400,000 Australian dollars.

to help build a home. And she would buy property of her own, a unit in Mount Waverly, and a place on Gibson Street in Lian Gatha, still being finished when she moved in. So pretty generous, I'd say. And she called Gibson Street her final house, the place where her children would grow up

and she'd grow old. But they lived with her only part-time under the shared custody agreement. And she wasn't working at that time, and she had actually deferred a place in a nursing and midwifery course. because she was pretty comfortable from her assets, saying, quote, I could afford to go to university and I didn't need to work a job at the same time, unquote.

Teach it around. If you got it, why not? So on Mother's Day of 2003, Gail sent Aaron a text saying, quote, Happy Mother's Day, Aaron, may God bless you, love Dawn and Gail, unquote. And Aaron wrote back, quote, thanks Gail, happy Mother's Day to the best mum-in-law anyone could ask for, X-X-O. So regardless of Simon and Aaron's separation, the family was still really close-knit, but something awful was about to take place. So on Saturday, July 29, 2023, Aaron invited five people to lunch at her home on Gibson Street.

Simon, his parents, Dawn, and Gail, and Gail's sister, Heather, along with Heather's husband, Ian. So just that whole close-knit family. And it was to be in adults-only gathering. And Aaron's kids were spending a day with a friend, so it was a little family. really just all the adults getting together for a nice lunch. But Aaron had some news for the family, and the purpose of this gathering was medical, because Aaron told the family she was dealing with a health scare and needed help figuring out what to say to her children. And the night before, Simon texted

to say he wouldn't be coming, and he would tell her he felt too uncomfortable to attend, but he offered to have the conversation over the phone if she still wanted his input. Now, Aaron wrote back at length, because she had spent the entire week getting prepared mentally and getting the house ready and the meal and just everything. And she would say to him, quote, the work had been exhausting in light of the issue I'm facing, unquote. And she even said she'd put, quote, a small fortune toward beef I filet to make beef wellingtons because she wanted it to be a special meal. I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time, she would add, quote, it's important to me that you're all there tomorrow. I hope you change your mind.

unquote, but Simon would never reply, and he would stay home, and his chair at the table would sit empty. But the remaining four guests arrived that Saturday, Don and Gail, Heather and Ian. And for the Wilkinsons, especially, the invitation had carried real weight. They were very happy to be invited,

and Ian had taken it as a hopeful signal, a sense that maybe our relationship with Aaron was going to improve, unquote. Because the family was still close, But the separation had caused, you know, some friction in the family, so everybody was just happy to be getting together. So before they sat down to eat, Aaron took her guests on a tour of the house. And then, once lunch was ready, Heather and Gail offered to bring the food out. So Aaron would plate the portions and all the women would bring out the food together.

Then they would bow their heads and say grace before the first bite. The conversation over the meal was light. Family talk, easy laughter, no one was in any sort of rush. the Wilkinsons ate their meal and Gail got through about half her portion before pushing the plate over to Don to finish. And between his own plate and hers, Don ate close to a serving and a half. And there was the teasing around the table about, quote, husbands helping their wives out by eating extra food, unquote. So the lunch was going really well. And then dessert was already waiting. And it was a cake Gail had baked and a fruit platter Heather had prepared. And the group managed a little

of each, but after the Wellington's, there wasn't much appetite to go around. But once the plates were cleared, the mood of the afternoon changed. And Aaron told the group she discovered a lump on her elbow. And she'd said it had been diagnosed as cancer, quote, very serious, life-threatening, unquote. And Ian said she'd appeared, quote, very concerned, unquote, about what the diagnosis meant. And she asked for the guidance on whether to tell her children and if so, how. the news would settle over the room. A little cancer diagnosis in this circle wasn't something anyone would carry alone.

And Don was the first to respond. And he told her, quote, that the best approach was to be honest, unquote. And then they prayed asking for God's blessing on Aaron. And they held her in that prayer the way they'd held each other through every hard chapter for nearly 20 years. And the afternoon wound down quietly after that.

And the guests left sometime in the late afternoon, and Heather said that the food had been delicious and beautiful. So by every measure available to the people sitting at that table, it had been a warm Saturday. Let's take a quick pause to talk about something that is really hard, and that is trying something new. It can be pretty terrifying. I know when I launched this podcast and when Caleb and I launched Sour Boys,

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those what ifs into with Shopify. So sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash ccccm. Go to shopify.com slash cccm. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel and helping with all of our businesses and let's get back to it. But by nightfall, every one of them would fall ill. Diarrhea and vomiting started to set in after dark, and it wouldn't stop. Both couples spent long hours assuming it would pass, but by Sunday morning it was clear it wouldn't. The Patterson's and the Wilkinsons compared symptoms by phone

and realized all four of them were sick. Dawn and Gail actually called the ambulance, and they arrived at Coramboro Hospital at 10.10 a.m. July 30th. And between the two of them, Dawn had taken the harder hit. And Simon drove the Wilkinsons to Leongotha Hospital at 10.57 AM. A different hospital roughly 20 minutes away because Coromberra didn't have the capacity for all four patients. But at both hospitals, the initial assessment was the same, suspected food poisoning or gastroenteritis, which essentially is an inflamed stomach and intestine often from infection. But all four patients were

conscious and alert and able to talk. And from his hospital bed, Don walked the doctors through everything that happened at Saturday's lunch. But as he went on, he kept going downhill and his lactate levels climbed dangerously high, and his liver began failing, and signs of sepsis started to set in.

And doctors realized that gastroenteritis alone couldn't explain what they were seeing. So toxicologists were consulted and the symptoms pointed toward a specific culprit. Ammonita falloids, death cap mushrooms. Death caps are behind more than 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide, and they contain amatoxins which are heat-stable. Or, in other words, cooking does nothing to neutralize them.

So the poison makes its way to the liver after ingestion, and it locks onto the cells there and kills their ability to produce proteins. So the cells literally die, and the orrower. and the poisoning follows a very cruel pattern. First, violent stomach symptoms hit within six to 24 hours of eating, then the patient seems to rally for roughly a day, and then three to five days after ingestion, the liver collapses along with other major organs afterwards.

In other words, sepsis. And it takes remarkably little to have a devastating effect. Just 0.1 milligrams per kilogram of body, can be fatal, and one mushroom can take down a grown person. And in light of this discovery, the decision was made to move all four patients to major hospitals in Melbourne, because the rural facilities could not manage what was coming. Now, Aaron had told Simon she'd also been sick since Saturday night, and she arrived at Leongotha Hospital on Monday morning at 805, and then was transferred to Manash Clayton later

that day. but she would be discharged the next day. And six days after the lunch, on August 4th, Gail and Heather would pass away. Gail was 70 years old at the time, and Heather was 66 years old. And she had still been teaching that week, working with her English students right up until the end.

And doctors listed the cause as liver dysfunction and cascading organ failure, all traced to aminita mushroom toxicity. And by the time they died, their medical teams had already accepted that there was nothing more that they could do. And Don would receive a liver transplant in a last-itch effort to help save him, but unfortunately it wouldn't be enough. And Simon would say, quote,

sadly, the rest of his body was already too sick to go on past that point, unquote. And Ian nearly suffered the same fate. And he had spent weeks in an induced coma. And he would also receive a liver transplant of his own, and he was taken off the ventilator on August 14th. So 54 days passed between his admission and his release on September 23rd. And when news came of his release, his family spoke publicly for the first time, calling it a moment of immense relief in gratitude.

In the following Sunday, the Baptist Church congregation gathered to support each other and pray for Ian's recovery. And local mayor, Nathan Hersey, spoke for the town. And the three who died, he said, were, quote, exceptional people who had given generously to the local community, unquote. And counselor Jenny Curie said, quote, we've lost a great store of kindness in Coramura this weekend, unquote. So on August 31st, the memorial service for Don and Gail was held at Coramura Memorial Hall,

and hundreds of mourners filled the space, and tribute letters arrived from China, Botswana, and the United Kingdom, all saying Don and Gail were the most capable kindness and generous people they had. had ever met. And Simon stood before the crowd and read Gail's final words, and she had typed them from her bed at Danding Nung Hospital one last message to the family group chat, quote unquote, lots of love to you all. And on October 4th, Heather had her own memorial service, and more than 400 people came to say goodbye. And Ian stood among those mourners, frail and still deep in recovery, and it was his first public appearance since that lunch.

Police assigned its homicide squad to the case on August 4th, 2023. The same day, Gail and Heather had passed away. And Detective Sergeant Luke Farrell led the search of Patterson's Leongotha home the following morning. And over the next three months, investigators pulled at every single thread. And what they found dismantled the picture, piece by piece. Now, the first alarm had sounded at the hospital. When Dr. Chris Webster told Aaron that Death Cat Mushroom, may have been involved in her guests poisoning. And he asked what kind of mushrooms she'd used in the meal.

And she said Woolworth, the supermarket chain. And death cat mushrooms are not sold in supermarkets, obviously. And those kind of contradictions kept coming. And Aaron's medical results showed no clinical or biochemical evidence of Aminita poisoning. And she had claimed to have eaten the same meal as her guests and to have become ill. But her blood work didn't reflect anything clearly.

close to what the others were showing. And even her presence at the hospital began to look strained in retrospect. The nurse Cindy Monroe had treated the other lunch guests and was now treating Erin, saying, quote, she didn't look unwell like Ian and Heather. I recall Ian being so unwell, he could barely lift his head off the pillow.

Aaron was sitting up in bed in the trolley, unquote. And Aaron had stayed about five minutes that Monday morning, despite her doctor's objections, she had gotten up and just walked out, saying she needed to feed the dogs and pack her daughter's ballet bag. And when she failed to return in an agreed 20-minute window, a concerned doctor at the hospital contacted police. And that was the first time anyone in a position of authority had treated the lunch as something other than a medical event. And investigators began to suspect that her

brief hospital appearance had never been about getting treatment. It had been about being seen as sick. And her behavior the day before only reinforced the So on Sunday, while Don and Gail were on their way to Corambeurah Hospital, while the Wilkinsons were arriving at Leongatha, Aaron had told Simon she'd had diarrhea since Saturday night. And that same afternoon, she had loaded her son into the car and driven him to a flying lesson in Tyab. And the drive was more than an hour each way. So after her transfer to Manash Clayton, Simon's sister-in-law, Tanya, came to visit.

And Tanya told Aaron the others were going downhill quickly, and Aaron pivoted. And she asked about taking her children on a boat cruise. And Simon would later say that through all of it, Aaron, quote unquote, never actually asked about how his relatives were doing. And then there was the question of the children. And at the hospital, she had told staff her kids had eaten leftover wellingtons, but she said she'd scraped off all the mushroom before giving it to them. and Nurse Monroe warned that toxins could have seeped straight through the mushroom and into the beef.

And Aaron resisted bringing the children in saying, quote, they did not eat the mushrooms. I just don't want them to be panicked and stressed, unquote. She eventually agreed, and the children were kept overnight and found not to be ill, luckily. So the implication landed quietly. Aaron, by her own account, had already known which part of the food was dangerous. And she had scraped it away from her children's. portions. And she went public with a story. And Aaron told the media that Beef Wellingtons had contained store-bought mushrooms along with dried ones from an Asian grocery shop somewhere around Mount Waverly.

Quote, I am now devastated to think that these mushrooms may have contributed to the illness suffered by my loved ones, unquote, she told the media. And she also addressed reporters in a doorstep interview at the Leongotha home after police described her as a suspect, saying, quote, unquote, I didn't do anything, she said. I loved them. And health authorities moved quickly. And over the course of a couple days, a city of Manash Public Health Officer named Troy Shankanect hit every Asian and Indian grocery

store he could find in Oakley and Clayton and Mount Waverly. And not one sold anything matching her description. And she had no name for the shop. And no address. And no way to send investigators anywhere near it. So it looked like, The shop didn't really exist. And then the footage surfaced.

And CCTV showed Aaron pulling into the Coonwara Transfer Station on August 2nd, four days after the lunch. So her guests were fighting for their lives in intensive care units across Melbourne, and she was at the local tip carrying a sunbeam food dehydrator into the electronics waste shed. And police would recover it from the dump two days later, and her fingerprints were on the device. And forensic testing found traces

of death cat mushroom inside. And her first response to detectives was flat denial. She said she didn't own a food dehydrator, never had, but her own friend had already given police screenshots from a Facebook group conversation, and the photos showed mushrooms arranged across the trays of a dehydrator. Maybe if you're doing something, Bad, don't post it on Facebook, or do.

You know, it's good that, it's good that she did. Um, that's crazy. And she would eventually have to admit the truth, saying, quote, I knew that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator, and I just panicked, unquote. And detectives identified two phones in Patterson's possession. Now, the first was the device she'd been carrying in the weeks leading up to the lunch. And the last time it appeared on any footage was a hospital security camera on July 31st.

And by the time, investigators got inside the Gibson Street house on August 5th, the SIM card had already been pulled from that phone and dropped into a Nokia. And the movement log put the swap at 145 p.m., which was while detectives were still working their way through the rooms. And the physical phone was never actually found. And the phone she did hand over had been factory reset four separate times during 2023. A little bit suspicious, I'd say. Sorry, that's, I'm sorry. That's, I'm That's the last time I'm gonna do it, I swear. And once on August 2nd, the same day she drove to the tip with the dehydrator.

And once again, August 5th, while police were conducting the search. And then once more, after investigators already had it in their possession. Someone triggered a remote wipe while it was sitting in an evidence room. The detectives also seized her desktop computer. A forensic officer ran keyword searches including death cap, death cap mushroom, and poison, and the cache data turned up I naturalist, a citizen science site, and people log where they've spotted different species of plants and fungi in the wild, including death caps. The trail stretched back more than a year before the lunch,

and someone using that machine had gone looking for death cap mushroom sightings around Marabin back in 2022. And when confronted, Patterson said she couldn't recall. visiting the site and then added quote well somebody did and that somebody could have been me unquote why you why even say just say you did it what do you put the clicker phone records pointed in that same direction and cell tower data placed her device near the town of out trim on may 22nd 2023 and the day before a mushroom specialist had flagged a death cap sighting on nielsen street through i naturalist the puzzle pieces are puzzling together and her phone also connected to towers near the town of Locke on April 28th,

around the same time she purchased the dehydrator. Photographs were pulled from her tablet with photos of death caps sitting right there on her kitchen scale. And it was photographed like someone was measuring out portions. And as a cherry on top, or should I say mushroom, the cancer she disclosed to her guests that Saturday afternoon was also fabricated.

Doctors went through her medical records, and an intensive care specialist couldn't find a single thing pointing to cancer. No diagnosis, nothing. Erin's name was absent from the Victorian Cancer Registry, a database that captures every cancer diagnosis in the state. And the lump on her elbow, the very serious life-threatening condition, the request for her family's guidance,

the prayer they had said over her, all of it built on a story that had zero foundation. So the lunch itself began to look pretty different too. And Simon told investigators that Aaron almost never hosted. He called guests at the Gibson Street property very rare. And Heather and Ian had never set foot there before that Saturday, hence why she gave them a tour of the house. And if the family ever got together, it was at somebody else's place.

So the effort, she had poured into the meal a week of preparation, beef-eye filet, individual wellingtons, now stood out against the backdrop of someone who never had people over. And Ian's account of that house tour came back too. Heather had been particularly eager to see the pantry, and she had a pantry project of her own at home and wanted to see Aaron's layout. But according to Ian, Aaron had been very reluctant about the visit to the pantry, and then there was the plating. Heather and Gail had both volunteered to help serve, and Aaron had turned them away, and she plated every dish herself, but let them take it out after she was done. And the plates became evidence in their own right, because the four guests had been served on

large gray plates, and Aaron had carried her own plates separately to the table, and hers was a different color. It was like an orange tan color. And Heather actually made note of it in the car on the way to the hospital, that that was kind of odd. So as the investigation widened, the woman behind those clues began to come into focus. And almost nothing about her matched with the Patterson family had thought they knew. Investigators recovered private Facebook messages she'd sent to a circle of online friends. And the childhood she had presented as quietly middle class she had described very differently in those messages saying, quote, mom was essentially a cold robot, unquote, she had written. And quote, it was like being brought up in a Russian orphanage.

where they don't touch babies, unquote. And she described her father as a man who, quote, wanted to be warm and loving to us, but mom wouldn't let him because it would spoil us so he did as he was told. And she would shout at him if he did the wrong thing, so he became very meek and compliant. And my sister and I would hide in our room most of the time

so we couldn't do anything wrong, unquote. And a neighbor who had known Heather Scudder for years described her differently, saying, quote, a lovely woman, as was her husband, unquote. So there's those two portraits, the public one and the private one. They didn't match.

And old details took on a new weight. Because remember, Aaron's parents hadn't attended her wedding to Simon in 2007. And when asked at the time, she had said they were on a train in Russia. And there was no other explanation other than that, so we can safely assume she was not remotely close with her parents.

And then there was also, a documented history of deception that almost no one close to her had heard about. Because in 2002, during her brief career as an air traffic controller at Air Services Australia, management had grown suspicious of her hours. And they had reviewed security cameras in the employee car park, and she had actually been clocking full shifts on paper while routinely walking out early, which is horrifying to think about because she's an air traffic controller in charge of hundreds of lives. And when confronted, she just flat out denied.

it. And then management ran her through the timestamps from the footage one by one. And she couldn't really say anything otherwise. And by November 2002, she no longer worked there. And in 2004, she had been convicted of property damage and multiple traffic offenses, using an unregistered vehicle on a highway, failing to stop after an accident and driving 35 kilometers per hour over the speed limit. And her former co-workers from the air traffic control tower who had been guarded in their earlier statements began to speak more openly now. The woman they described was far sharper edge than the earlier impressions had let on. And one former colleague called her a ritual habitual and pathological liar. Who would just say anything just to get away with anything and others were less measured, saying quote, a bit strange

or a loner, someone who didn't engage with anyone, very secretive about her family, and multiple men in the tower had once been smitten with her, and she managed to get guys wrapped around her little finger, as one of them would put it. And during her time at Air Services Australia, she had earned a nickname among staff, which was, quote-unquote, Scudder the Nutter, after her maiden name. And the manager, who once called her smart, very smart, as we talked about before, had added something to his fuller statement. Almost too smart.

And then there was the bookshop. Because for a stretch in 2011 and 2012, Aaron had run a secondhand bookshop in Pemberton, a tiny timber milling town in Western Australia. And the shop had fed a long-running personal fascination of hers. True crime. And she had been deeply interested in the genre for years, reading widely, immersing herself in cases,

long before she ever found herself at the center of one. And finally, there was the relationship she had told everyone was loving and warm. Investigators recovered another cluster of Facebook messages, and these ones were about Dawn and Gail. And in late 2022, a dispute over child support had cracked the surface of the family, and Simon's tax return had listed him as separated, something he blamed on a mistake from his accountant, and Aaron, quote unquote, took great exception.

And the change triggered a formal process that upended the formal arrangements they had kept for years around school fees and family expenses. So the numbers made the sting feel worse. And Simon's child support was assessed at $38 a month. And meanwhile, the change in status cost Aaron her eligibility for government family tax benefit payments, roughly $15,000 a year because her inheritance put her above the threshold once the formal process kicked in. And even Simon recognized the gap. he acknowledged that the low assessment was likely why Aaron had become so upset. And there had also been the matter of Gail's 70th birthday lunch at the top pub in Coramura.

And Aaron said the invitation she received had felt like it came as an afterthought. So Don had picked up the phone afterward and called her to talk it over, and he called it in oversight and said he genuinely wanted her at the table. And when the school fees fight intensified, Aaron had gone over Simon's head. and she had actually taken it directly to Don and Gail, asking them to help the two of them talk it out. Quote, I thought that if Simon knew that Don and Gail knew how he was behaving, he might change his behavior, unquote. And Don has suggested she pray with Simon and withdraw the child support claim. And Aaron's reaction, as she told her Facebook friends, quote, my head nearly exploded and I was like, what? And Don and Gail had eventually told her they, quote, didn't want to get involved in financial matters.

quote. And by December 2022, the friction had escalated to what Simon called an extremely aggressive exchange and to the point that he considered ringing in a mediator. And in private messages to friends on Facebook, her frustration was unfiltered, saying, quote, this family, I swear to fucking God. 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, unquote. And she would later insist the messages were nothing more than venting. Quote, I had a good relationship with Don and Gail, unquote.

And Simon's brother, Matthew, had also noticed something. And Aaron had stopped coming to some family events entirely, and at others she would barely stay. And the warm Mother's Day text from May 2023 sent three months before that devastating lunch had been delivered against a backdrop the Patterson's never knew existed. She was starting to try to build up that relationship again to make them want to come to a lunch that she was eventually going to host. So it was just a long game for Aaron.

So on the morning of November 2nd, 2023, police arrived at Aaron's door with technology detector dogs, trained to locate hidden electronics like USB drives. I didn't know these existed. That's awesome. And Aaron was placed under arrest. And Homicide Squad Detective Inspector Dean Thomas acknowledged the case had been subjected to incredibly intense levels of public scrutiny,

and she was charged with three counts of murder for the deaths of Don Patterson, Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson, and five counts of attempted murder were filed alongside them. Two, related to that July lunch, one for Ian Wilkinson, who had survived, and one for Simon, who had been invited, but stayed home. And now we realize why he stayed home, because they were not getting along at all. And the other three alleged she said, had attempted to murder Simon on separate occasions across 2021 and 2022. Let's take a quick pause to talk about something that nobody really talks about. Scammers and protecting yourself from said scammers.

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And Surfshark is also the only VPN with coverage in 100 countries, and nobody else has hit that. So if you want to reap all the rewards of having Surfshark, go to surfshark.com slash call mechris and use code call mechrist at checkout to get four extra months off Surfshark VPN. Again, that's surfshark.com slash call me chris and use code call me chris for four extra months of Surfshark VPN. to Surf Shark for protecting me on the internet and for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel and let's get back to it so the trial opened on april 29th 2025 inside the supreme court of victoria sitting at the latrobe valley courts in morwell and the courtroom sat in a small town

the home where the lunch had taken place was less than an hour's drive away and justice christopher beale presided and before the first witness was called the charges had already shifted and prosecutors dropped every count connected to Simon Patterson. And the three attempted murder charges alleging she had poisoned him on separate occasions in 2021 and 2022 were now gone. And so was the charge that she had tried to kill him at the July lunch. But what remained was the three counts of murder for Don Patterson, Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson, one count of attempted murder for Ian Wilkinson. And Aaron pleaded not guilty to all charges, because she's an evil piece of shit, as we now know.

And the evidence phase alone consumed seven weeks, followed by six days of closing arguments and six and a half days behind the jury room door. And over those weeks, the courtroom heard two entirely different versions of the same woman. The prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC built her case around what she called four calculated deceptions.

First, a fabricated cancer diagnosis invented to lure the victims to a table. Second, death cap, mushrooms placed into the Beep Wellington's in quantities meant to kill, and Rogers pointed to the photographs recovered from Patterson's tablet, which were death caps on a set of kitchen scales. Doesn't get much more guilty than that. And fungi specialist Tom May had examined them and identified the mushrooms as aminita falloids, quote unquote, with a high level of confidence. And Rogers argued Patterson had weighed the mushrooms to calculate the weight required for the

administration of fatal dose for one person, and the weight required for five fatal doses for five people, unquote. And third, a staged hospital visit meant to mimic poisoning symptoms she never had. And fourth, weeks of deliberate evidence destruction designed to keep anyone from finding out what she had done, the definition of premeditation and post-tampering. And then Aaron took the stand. And she testified for eight days. And she gave ground where she had to. Death cat mushrooms must have been in the meal, because she had forage for wild mushrooms since 2019.

And she had bought the Dehydrator, then dumped it while her guests fought for their lives. And the cancer announcement was a fabrication. And she had factory reset her phone to hide photos of mushrooms and the Dehydrator, and the hostile Facebook messages about Dawn and Gail were hers, though she dismissed them as simply venting, but on everything else, she held firm.

She had never deliberately sought out death cat mushrooms, and she had never traveled to lock to collect them, and she had never used eye naturalist to track where they grew, and she never weighed them to calculate a fatal dose. And on the cancer claim, she offered an alternative. She had led the group to believe she might be needing some treatment, she said, but the real issue had been an embarrassment over a gastric bypass. consultation. And prosecutor Rogers pressed her, and she suggested Aaron had never planned to account

for the cancer story because she had never expected to need to, quote, because you thought that the lunch guests would die, unquote. And quote unquote, that's not true. Aaron would answer, but it is. You felt like you didn't have to account for any of this because you thought all of your victims would die, but luckily one did not and thank goodness he didn't. And the prosecution also called Simon Patterson to the stand. And he walked the jury through the crumbling marriage, the private hostility, and the night he had turned down the lunch invitation.

And then Ian Wilkinson testified as well, the only person who had eaten the mushrooms at that table and survived. And he recounted the gray plates, the odd colored plate Aaron had carried to her own seat, and the offer to help serve that she had turned away. And he described Aaron as someone who, quote, just seemed like a normal person, unquote.

And the relationship had been, quote unquote, friendly and amicable, but without, quote, much depth more like acquaintances, unquote. And he told the court what he had told the police. He had been happy about the lunch invitation, hopeful it might improve the relationship with Aaron. Defense counsel Colin Mandy SC offered a simpler story.

What happened was a tragedy, a terrible accident. Aaron's lies, he argued, had been born from shock, not planning. She panicked because she was overwhelmed by the fact that these four people had become so ill because of the food that she'd served them. Not buying it, but keep going. And on motive, he pointed to its absence.

She had no money issues, lived in a big house and had almost full-time custody of her two young children. But in the closing, Rogers, the prosecutor, told the jury they did not need to know why. Quote, you do not have to be satisfied, what the motive was or even that there was one, unquote. The why was unnecessary to convict. Because guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt,

doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have a motive. There just needs to be evidence as to if they did it, right? Motive helps, but it is not necessary. So on July 7, 2025, the jury came back, and all 12 members were in agreement. Guilty on every count. Just a round of applause. for that jury. Three murders, one attempted murder, and media crews flooded the courthouse

within minutes, and by then the trial had become an international story. And sentencing came on September 8th, and Justice Beale handed down three concurrent life sentences for murder and 25 years for attempted murder, and the non-parole period was 33 years. And Aaron at this point was 50 years old, and she won't be eligible for parole until 2056, when she'll be able to. in her 80s. And Beale called her crimes, quote, an enormous betrayal of trust. I have no hesitation in finding that your offending falls into the worst category. And he identified five aggravating factors, substantial premeditation, an elaborate cover-up, a lack of pity, and the suffering of her victims and the betrayal of trust. And she had said nothing to the doctors fighting to save

her guests. And never once she revealed what she had put in their food. Quote, not only did you cut short three lives, Beale would say, you inflicted untold suffering on your own children whom you robbed of their beloved grandparents, unquote. And our complete absence of remorse, he added, quote, pour salt into all the victim's wounds, unquote. And the hearing ran almost 50 minutes and was broadcast live. And the court received 28 victim impact statements. Seven were read aloud. And Simon was absent from the hearing. and a relative read his words to the court.

Quote, his children have been robbed of hope for the kind of relationship with their mother that every child naturally yearns for, unquote. And Ruth Duboy, one of the Wilkinson's daughters, named the broader victims. Medical staff, investigators, shop owners, mushroom growers, the health department, and taxpayers all pulled into the aftermath.

Quote, I am horrified that our family is even associated through no choice of our own with such destructive behavior towards the case. community." And Aaron gave almost nothing away. And for most of the hearing, her eyes were closed. And when they were open, she looked at nothing. Because she is nothing. She's just an evil shit stain in this world, who I hope is having a terrible time rotting at jail. And Ian Wilkinson may have survived the lunch, but his body never came back to the way it had been before. And his liver function remains diminished and respiratory problems followed him out of the hospital and never left. And he lives in

Victoria supported by the same church community that had held him up for decades. And he lost his wife of 44 years and he lost the couple he had described as the closest people to him after his wife and family. And quote, my life is greatly impoverished without them. And he told the court, quote, it's a truly horrible thought to live with that somebody could decide to take her life. I only feel half alive without her." unquote. Oh my God. It's just so heartbreaking.

I just, I don't understand how someone could take somebody away like that. It's just, it's so devastating. And when given the chance to speak about the woman who poisoned him, he chose an unexpected path, and that path was forgiveness. And he offered it publicly and carefully, but only what was his to give.

Because he could forgive the harm that was done unto him, what had been done to the others, he said, was beyond his power to absolve. And he had one prayer for Aaron, and that was, quote, that she will use her time in jail wisely to become a better person, unquote. And outside the courthouse, after it was done, he spoke to the press. And he thanked the police and the hospital workers for their efforts, and then he said what mattered to him most. Quote, I'd like to encourage all those involved to keep turning up and serving others. Our lives and the life of our community depends on the kindness of others, unquote. Aaron and Simon's two children live under a legal suppression order, and their identities are sealed

from public view, but they're believed to be in their father's care. And court records noted they had, quote, settled into a new school better than expected, unquote. And Simon's victim impact statement noted that his children live in an irreparably broken home with only a solo parent, when almost everyone else knows their mother murdered their grandparents. And the media hasn't let them breathe. And the Patterson and Wilkinson family still carry the lasting damage of what happened. And one of the victim impact statements came from Don Patterson's mother. She was 100 years old.

She outlived her own son. So Aaron is serving her sentence at the Dame Phyllis Frost Center, a maximum insecurity women's prison in Melbourne. And she spends at least 22 hours of every day. day inside herself. But the case isn't over and two appeals sit before the Victorian Court of Appeal. And Aaron filed them on November 3, 2025,

seeking to have the guilty verdicts quashed and a retrial ordered. The point at the center of her case is during deliberations, the jury panel was booked into the same accommodation where police and members of the prosecution team were also staying. And she argues that arrangement alone

constituted a fundamental irregularity fat fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts. And she raised multiple grounds, challenges to the phone tower evidence and I naturalist data linking her to death cap mushroom locations, a claim that Facebook messages from her private group should have been excluded from the trial.

And an argument, Justice Beale erred by refusing to admit images and videos from an SD card found at her home. And an allegation of unfair and oppressive cross-examination by the prosecutor, and a charge that the prosecutor prosecution shifted its position on motive between its opening and closing addresses, having opened with no motive and then implied one. The prosecution filed its own appeal earlier on October 6, 2025, arguing the sentence was manifestly inadequate.

And prosecutors contend Justice Beale erred in finding a substantial chance, Aaron would remain in solitary confinement for years, and that this finding infected his assessment of the non-parole period. Both sides must first seek leave to appeal. And three court of appeal judges will hear both if leave is granted. And if Aaron's appeal succeeds, the court may acquit her or send the case back for a retrial, which is insane to think. And if the prosecution's appeal succeeds, the court can impose a longer non-parole period or order a re-sentencing, which would probably be good,

because I feel like her sentencing wasn't adequate enough. But as of early 2026, no date. has been set. And after the verdict, a gag order was lifted. And testimony Simon had given at pretrial hearing became public. And he said he had turned down the lunch invitation because he believed she would poison him. And he described falling severely ill after eating food she had prepared on prior occasions, a penet, boulinets pasta, a chicken corma curry, and a vegetable curry wrap. But the jury never heard any of it. And then there's the question that sits at the center of everything and has no answer, which is why. Prosecutors never offered a motive, and they told the jury they didn't need one,

which they don't. And Justice Beale wouldn't speculate, but there were frustrations, there were financial disputes, the slow erosion of a marriage and the sharper edges that followed. But none of it explains the leap from resentment to poisoning an entire family. But she planned for months, as we saw, tracked where death caps grew online, drove to the locations, bought a dehydrator, weighed the mushrooms on a kitchen scale and folded them into a meal for people who loved her. Justice Beale found she intended to kill Simon too had he shown up. Five intended victims. And when they started dying, she said nothing.

She has never explained it, and she may never explain it. But Ian Wilkinson asked the only question worth asking, which was, quote, Foolishness possesses a person to think that murder could be the solution to their problems, especially the murder of people who have only good intentions towards her. A question, no one can answer. And with that, that is the end of the mushroom murder case. As always, my heart goes out to the family. And I hope true justice is served and the prosecution's appeal goes forward.

But let me know what other cases you would like me to dive into. I always read the comments. And until next time, please stay safe out there. And I will see your beautiful face in the next one. Okay. Bye.