Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Mushrooms, Mayhem, and Murder - A Toxic Tale

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

Several guests fall gravely ill and lose their lives after attending a meal hosted by Erin Patterson. Among the victims, the symptoms were immediate and severe, but curiously, Erin's symptoms did not align with the rest, casting a shadow of suspicion over her. In this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack dive into the twisted tale of the death cap mushroom, a case that sends shockwaves across Victoria, Australia. From exploring the forensic complexities of the case to uncovering the historical context of poisonings, Joe Scott and Dave guide listeners through a web of mysteries, detailed autopsy procedures, and the legal intricacies that come into play.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time codes: [00:00:20] Joseph Scott Morgan discusses various types of mushrooms, ending with the fatal death cap mushroom. [00:03:04] Dave Mack tells the story of Erin and Simon Patterson's split, the deadly lunch, and the unfolding drama. [00:05:11] A twist is revealed when Dave states that Erin's symptoms do not match those of the other guests. [00:08:01] Joe Scott discusses the challenges of identifying toxins in a body. [00:13:20] A pattern of people falling ill when Erin cooks, dating back to May 2022, is revealed. [00:15:36] Details are shared about the gruesome effects of toxins on the liver and kidneys. [00:18:44] Joe Scott contemplates intentional poisoning. [00:19:16] References to historical cases of poisoning with death cap mushrooms. [00:25:00] Morgan explains food identification even after digestion. [00:30:33] Insight into the role of pathologists adds legal dimensions.  [00:32:40] Questions about weaponizing common food items open a new line of inquiry. [00:33:21] Joe Scott emphasizes the importance of medical charting. [00:35:20] The investigation's scope broadens when considering other geographically close cases.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Some of these names that I'm about to give to you kind of conjure up all kinds of warm feelings. From the perspective of fine food, or food that I would consider comfort food. Button. Chantrelline. Cremini. Shiitake.

One of my favorites. Orchard. Snowpuff. Portobello. I love a good portobello sandwich. Grilled. Portini. Morel. For you high dollar types out there. But you know, the name that is not included on this list is a scientific name, first off. It's called Amanita phalloid, otherwise known as a death cap. The death cap mushroom. A mushroom so very lethal that once it is ingested, there is a high probability that death will visit you in less

than about 24 hours. Today, we're going to talk about arguably one of the more bizarre cases that we've heard about. We're going to explore some of the issues that may have occurred in a town in Victoria, Australia. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. I love mushrooms, Dave. I love them. This is how I love them. I love them. Generally, button mushrooms. I like to take them fresh ones now. I don't like them out of the can because they're too salty. And they've got that funky color that's almost gray. It's not very appetizing.

But I like to take button mushrooms and saute them in butter, onions, and garlic. And then once I have them just right, and after I have grilled my ribeye steak, I like to take them and pour them over the top of that steak and maybe have a few on the side and enjoy that flavor, that robust flavor with a grilled steak. I don't know that there's anything better, maybe a hamburger with sauteed mushrooms, but boy, I tell you what, you bring out the mushrooms

and you really, really make my mouth start. Matter of fact, hang on, let me get my handkerchief out right now. I'm kind of, my mouth is kind of watering. Yeah, you're kind of freaking me out how deep you've gone into this, Joe. I'm a little concerned, but the story has gained worldwide attention for its simplicity and diabolical nature. Here it is in a nutshell, Joe. Aaron and Simon Patterson have been married for

several years. They've got two children. However, the marriage isn't working out. Aaron and Simon split up. Aaron, hoping for reconciliation, reaches out and invites Simon over for a big lunch. With Simon, she invites her ex-in-laws, soon to be ex-in-laws, Gail and Don Patterson. She also invites Heather Wilkinson and Ian Wilkins. That would be Wilkinson. That would be Simon's aunt and uncle. Ian Wilkinson is a pastor. He's a much beloved pastor. And I think Aaron, in her mind's eye, was thinking his family will be in favor of staying together from that generation of you stay together for the kids or whatever. But what she doesn't know is that Simon's family doesn't trust her. They really are a little weirded out by Aaron Patterson. So as this lunch is going on, this lunch of beef Wellington and

mushrooms prepared for by a mushroom connoisseur, somebody who knows how to forage, meaning find mushrooms out in the field. She knows the right stores to shop for the right mushrooms. She actually prepares this beef Wellington garnished with mushrooms for her soon to be ex-in-laws thinking there will be a reconciliation, but instead Simon doesn't show up and the family basically turns on her in her mind's eye and they are not in favor of the two getting back together. What happens next is the reason this story has gone worldwide. Of the five adults sitting in that table partaking of Beef Wellington garnished with mushrooms, three of them end up dead and one ends up in ICU waiting on a liver transplant. Only one was able to walk away from that table.

That person was Erin Patterson. I find it interesting that she would prepare a meal for these individuals. And it was within a very short period of time that you've got these individuals who begin to display gastrointestinal discomfort. They were straight up poisoned at lunch. That's what I'm going to be honest with you. We could beat around the bush all day long. But the reason I pointed out that Simon wasn't there and that the family was not in favor of them getting back together is Aaron knew that when they got there. She immediately knew that this was not going the way that she wanted. And next thing you know, Beef Wellington and Mushrooms is served and everybody gets sick. Well, let me ask you, did Aaron get sick?

Joe, I'm glad you asked that. I feel like Columbo. According to Erin, she got sick and that she too went to the hospital. But here's the deal. You've got these four elderly people. Oh, and by the way, just let me interject this. The pastor you mentioned, this guy's on the list for a liver transplant. So he's like in dire straits. Well, you may as well go ahead and say it. The other three are dead, Joe. They died. And this guy, the pastor, the only reason he's alive is anybody.

Ian Wilkinson is alive by the grace of God. That's the only way you can. They all eat the same thing. So they all get sick and die. Ian is, you mentioned liver transplant. The guy's barely hanging on. And Erin Wilkinson, she's not on her deathbed. She's not in the hospital. She claims she got sick. And there is a report that she did go to the hospital. If you and I go out to dinner tonight and you make meat and mushrooms, I could probably go to

the hospital and fake a good sick. I could go in and complain about my stomach and I could do all of that for at least 12 hours. They did. They put me in just by complaining alone. I can make myself throw up, tell them anything I needed to tell them. So her being in the hospital doesn't mean very much to me because she doesn't have any of the other symptoms everybody else has. Yeah. And most of the time, if there's a toxic substance that everybody is ingesting and it's impacting this many people, there's a high probability that if anyone ingested it, they're going to be equally as sick. As a medical legal death investigator in forensics, one of the things that we look for is kind of from an epidemiological standpoint.

You look for origins of diseases, you look for origins of medical conditions and what brought that back. But particularly when you're thinking about, say, for instance, a major loss of life event, or you're thinking about something that brings about an illness, just think about any kind of pandemic. But here we have in almost a microcosm where you have multiple people, three of which die, and you have an additional individual that is now on life support with his liver essentially destroyed. We approach this from a medical model when we're investigating these kinds of cases. It's not like commonly when you begin to think about gunshot wound or stab wound or bludgeoning. You can kind of trace that back to

a single instrument that is used. But it's not so simple when you begin to think about something that is so toxic and incompatible with life, you really have to put your thinking cap on and begin to examine what you have before you and trying to determine because it's not necessarily going to just immediately present itself. You can't look at a body and say, well, look, this toxin is present. Now, there are certain things that you can look for, particularly like with heavy metal poisoning, for instance. You can see changes in the body and the pallor and all those sorts of things, nail beds and all those things that we look for.

But if you're talking about something perhaps like a poisoned mushroom, that's going to take a bit more time to understand because as many cases, as many kinds of toxic events that emergency room personnel have to deal with that walk through the door and clinical personnel from a treatment standpoint, long-term treatment, they don't encounter poison vegetation like this. And certainly not something as glaring as a poison mushroom. When I think about what would I know if I sit down to eat and you were describing how much you love the mushrooms and you sit down to eat. Would they taste different? Do poison mushrooms taste different than non-poisonous mushrooms? No, I mean, and listen, I think probably a discerning person that is really into mushrooms.

You think about somebody that forages for mushrooms. There are different textures. And my family are big on chanterelle mushrooms. They love them. They cook with them. They wait for the seasons to come in. And they all have different textures. And many of them will be described as being kind of light, and others will be described literally as being very beefy when you eat them. And a lot of that has to do with texture and flavor as well. So it's like anything else in the world, whether it's a bottle of wine or a cigar, everybody has different things that they like and mushrooms are no different. But for this particular species that we're actually talking

about with the mushroom, and just so you know, from Jump Street, we know that something is afoot because the authorities actually identified this mushroom as a species that is referred to as the death cap mushroom. And it's highly toxic. But here's the thing. It has to be ingested in order for it to do harm to you. So it's not what we refer to as a transdermal thing. There are certain species of plant life in the world in which we encounter that when you touch it, it can be transdermal thing. There are certain species of plant life in the world in which we encounter that when you touch it, it can be transdermal. You know, you can absorb it through your skin.

And keep in mind, a mushroom is not necessarily a plant like we think of. It's actually a fungus that's growing out of the earth like this. And the death cap mushroom actually has kind of this very interwoven network beneath the surface of the earth that it's growing through. So you'll have multiple of these sprouts coming up. But it's very distinctive. And this is the thing. The wife in this particular case, Erin, she's known as a forager. And so one of the hallmarks of a really good forager for mushrooms is that you understand species.

You understand the way things look. And I beg any of you, within the sound of my voice, to go and actually take a look at the different species of mushrooms out there. And each one of them are very, very distinctive. And the most common is the button mushroom. It's white. Sometimes they're referred to as white mushrooms around kind of a bulbous head. The death cap mushroom, though, Dave, this should be your first warning. The cap itself spreads out rather wide.

Think of a rather substantial miniature umbrella, okay? And the thickness of it, it's not as thick as, say, for instance, relatively speaking, as a portobello or a button mushroom, the cap on it is kind of thin. But here's the thing. It has this luminescent green color when you see it that, first off, it doesn't look appetizing at all. I know you don't like mushrooms and none of them look appetizing. But if you come across something that's green, other than maybe a green apple, Granny Smith, or green grapes, you're not necessarily going to grab it up and stick it in your mouth. Well, and for somebody that does this, even as a hobbyist, they're going to look at this thing and say, you know what? That's probably something that I ought to stay away from.

Or they're going to look at it and say, oh, my gosh, that's a death cap mushroom. Not only do I need to stay away from it, I need to warn everybody that might be in my little group that goes out and forages for mushrooms that there are death cap mushrooms here. We need to stay away from them. Here we are at this time and place where you've got a forager. She's an expert on these things. She knows what she's doing when it comes to mushrooms. We've got four people at a lunch that doesn't go her way. And all the adults at the table are sick, except for Aaron Patterson, the woman who prepared it. Her ex-husband, well, I don't like calling somebody an ex when they're

only separated, but I don't think there's any real chance they're going to get back together. But they are currently not together. Simon has no interest in getting back together with his wife, Erin. And yet now we find out, and this is something that investigators pulled out. How did these people get sick? Did you feed them these mushrooms? Well, they started looking back in history. Has she done this before? Do we have any other people getting sick when she cooks? Sure enough, May 2022, a year and two months before, her husband Simon ended up in the hospital with very similar symptoms. And that's amazing because, Dave, if this is in fact, and let's face it, this is almost a serialized event when you think about it. Poisoners in and of themselves are interesting birds, to say the very least.

First off, they're very stealthy. And here's the thing. In order to poison someone, and let's just, she has not been convicted of having poisoned anyone. Let me say- Not even charged yet. Yeah. And let me just say that very plainly. But here's the thing. With these poisoning cases, you almost have to be an intimate to be within the circle of an individual. Because why? Well, you have to get close enough to them to apply whatever toxin it is that you're looking to get into their system. And what's the most quickest way to do it because once you uptake this thing and it begins to metabolize in your system, you're going to have this onset, this horrible onset of nausea. It'll be accompanied by vomiting. There'll be terrible intestinal pain. If you've ever had severe intestinal cramping, it leads to severe dehydration, just an unquenchable thirst.

It's a horrible way for these people. The course is very horrible. And if they can survive beyond, I don't know, the first six hours or so, guess what happens? There's a phase two that this kicks into relative to the poisoning. And you think that you're out of the woods. This is the scary part. You might be in the hospital. They've hung an IV on you. They're pushing the necessary medications into your system. There's almost like this dormant phase where this toxin is coursing through your system. It's not that it's necessarily gone into a dormant state. It's now working at a cellular level and it cannot be

detected until it gets into phase three. And you know what happens then? Your liver begins to shut down. And we think about the pastor, right? The 66-year-old. And your kidneys begin to shut down at that moment in time. And look, man, you have renal failure failure, renal failure is that's one of the leading causes of death at an end stage phase with people. What is it? What is renal failure? Renal failure means literally that your kidneys have shut down and they can no longer appropriately process waste in your body. So everything, all these toxins begin to back up in your body. And isn't it interesting also the liver begins to fail. So you go into what's referred to as hepatic failure, which is just a fancy term for the liver.

And the liver begins to shut down. The individuals actually begin to present with yellow skin color. And, of course, we know that means they're in a state of jauntus. If you've never seen anybody with jauntus, it's striking when you see them. Even what were the whites of their eyes become yellow at that time, too. And so they're in a total system failure at this point in time. It's a horrific way to die. How is it possible, Joe, that four people, seemingly similar health, three die, one survives. I mean, the fact that the 66-year-old pastor is still alive, granted he's on a liver transplant list and things are not looking good for him, but it obviously is not always fatal.

What are some things that would make a difference, do you think? I think probably within, this is an excellent point, Dave, when you look at this, you think about survivability. This pastor that you mentioned, he is 66. The rest of these poor victims, they're well north of 66. He's the youngest one in the group. And look, let's face it, as some moderate symptoms, but not deathly? No, I don't think that that's possible. Because if you ingested this thing, from my perspective, if you ingested this mushroom, which is arguably the single most toxic mushroom in the world, okay? There are no degrees to it, really. I'm going to be very curious to find out when

her husband had complained of this illness several months prior to this fatal event that occurred at their home or at their former family home there where they were getting together. I'd like to know the symptomology that he went through and kind of the progress. Now, people can survive this. What's really horrific about this kind of circumstance is that if she did, in fact, poison this group of people, she really took a shotgun approach. She was indiscriminate, Dave. She blasted them, essentially, with this toxic substance, and she really didn't care who died. Maybe she viewed everybody in the room as an enemy.

Maybe she said, well, I'm going after the one target, and if other people die as a result of it, so be it. But she certainly didn't die. She still survived. She's lived to tell the tale. I love history. I do. Unashamedly. I think probably one of our most successful episodes that we had was probably the examination that we did of Julius Caesar's autopsy. Oh my goodness, that was crazy. Well, let me throw another couple of names at you. Emperor Claudius of the Roman Empire. And in addition to Emperor Claudius, Charles VI, who was one of the Holy Roman Emperors.

Take a wild guess what both of these cats had in common. Death by poison? Yeah, and not just poisoning, but death cap mushroom poisoning oh i thought you were messing with me no honest to god's truth and voltaire actually wrote about charles the sixth death as a result of ingesting death cap mushroom and it may have not have been a homicidal poisoning but he was on a hunting trip and he ingested these. Claudius was, in fact, poisoned, lethally poisoned in common history. And I think a lot of these scholars concur that it was probably a death cap mushroom. And these mushrooms have been known for years and years, and they actually, they were initially found in Europe.

That's where they kind of spring from. And I find it, it's fascinating to me the way these things travel across the world. Because, you know, the case of these poor people down in Australia, I don't know that this species of mushroom existed prior to that land down there being inhabited by Europeans. And they can also be found in North America as well. And again, what do we have in common with that? Well, the first settlers of North America were European. So it's, and you know, over a period of time, certain species will kind of evolve within their environment. It might turn into a different species, or it might vary slightly from, say,

the European species. The one thing that they do have in common is that their level of toxicity and kind of what you're seeing with them when they present at autopsy, and certainly in the clinical phase when you're doing an examination of the records leading up to their death. Let me ask you about autopsy. You mentioned that. Would it show up in an autopsy that it was a death cap mushroom poison or would it just be vague in that, well, they died from some poison, which a mushroom is, or some type of plant life that we might see. One of the things that we do at Autopsy, Dave, and I don't know that many people really think about this. We not only draw blood, we draw urine and bile and vitreous fluid.

We examine the organs and take samples of those. One of the tasks that you have to do at autopsy is during the dissection, just imagine the shape of a stomach, okay? You have the long tube that comes down the esophagus and you take a piece of string, okay? And you make an incision beneath the esophagus where it attaches on adjacent to where like the aorta is running down the spine. Okay. And you tie that piece of string off so that you've essentially tied off the top end of the esophagus where it dumps into the stomach or the lower end of the esophagus.

So forgive me where it dumps into the stomach. And then you cut, you transect across that with a pair of scissors. Then you go beneath the stomach where it dumps into the small intestine. And here's the other part. You take a piece of string and you tie off that bit that dumps in to actually the small intestine and you clip below that so that when you pull up the stomach, you have a completely encased sac. It's the stomach removed from the body. And that's the way we examine it. And we'll take that entire stomach before we examine the contents and we'll put it in a scale. And the scales, if you've ever been to the grocery store and been to the produce section, that's what the scales look like

in the morgue. No more, no less. That's exactly what they look like. We measure everything in grams. So we would get a weight for the stomach with the contents therein. We then go over to a sink that we have in the morgue and we carefully hold the stomach above a container in the sink, and we gently opened up the stomach by an incision, and everything that's contained within that stomach dumps into that container. Now, I know this is horribly grotesque for people to listen to, but this is part of medical legal death investigation because once we have all of those remnant, partially digested foodstuffs that are in the stomach, we can take that container and walk over to the autopsy table, put it up on our dissecting board, and very, very carefully go through it.

And we will literally try to identify every type of substance that's contained within that gastric content. We'll also get a fluid measurement on it too. We'll talk about how many cc's of content, for instance, you know, like a cc is an increment of measurement that we do injections with in a clinical standpoint, but we measure out in cc's the amount that's contained in the stomach. And we'll actually talk about color because, you know, sometimes it'll be green, the contained in the stomach. And we'll actually talk about color because, you know, sometimes it'll be green, the contents of the stomach will be green, it'll be beige, sometimes you'll see reds. And you can actually identify foodstuffs within the stomach. I'll give you an example. The most identifiable food in the human stomach that you can come across are

actually hot dogs because they're in a casing, whether it's a naturally occurring casing or synthetic casing. And most people don't chew them up very well. And you can look at it and say, oh my gosh, that's a hot dog. And easy to spot any kind of leafy green vegetable matter like salads. Most of that stuff's easily appreciable. So with a mushroom, it's kind of spongy, right? So as it would be chewed, all right, you would still see a remnant of that. Perhaps if you were keen on this, you would hone in on something that resembles a mushroom that's in there. And I say this because this goes back to the investigation that the police would have been conducting concurrently with the local coroner, because down in Australia, they actually still have a coroner system. So when they get

together before the autopsy, if there's a suspicion on the part of the investigators, the police that is, death cap mushrooms have been used, then the coroner would begin to look at this at autopsy, and they would save every bit of the stomach content, Dave. They would put it in little clear plastic vials that have a screw-on cap. And they would set it aside, keep it in the refrigerator, keep it cool. And then they would take a sample of this and they would send it off. They would send it off to the crime lab. And it would be examined there.

It would be examined in the crime lab. Now, you would have to have somebody at the crime lab that can look at stomach contents like this. And first off, they would look at it from a taxonomy standpoint where they're identifying what type of matter this is. Is it some type of non-animal matter that has been ingested. So it might be a fungus like a mushroom or it could be a leafy vegetable like a lettuce or whatever it is. You think about the components contained within this beef wellington dish, which mushrooms are actually a component of. You think about a baked good because beef wellington actually has a crust on it. It's rolled up and there's beef contained

in there, obviously, and other vegetable matter. And so you would be looking at this mishmash of stuff that's in there. So you have to be very, very careful. And once you've identified that mushroom, because heat is not going to change it. So if this mushroom was baked in, okay, that mushroom is not going to be baked down to the point in a kitchen where it would be unrecognizable from a microscopic standpoint. And if you need further help, for instance, in a case like this, I would suspect that a sample of this mushroom, and this happens here in the U.S. relative to the Smithsonian, they would send a sample of this off to the National Museum, perhaps, or to an organization that deals with toxic plants. And there will be specialists on

staff that will specifically identify this. And if this case does go to trial, they'll have these individuals testify about it. Amazing that you can find all of that out at an autopsy. And it does make sense that there would be a lot of undigested stuff in there. The people got sick right away. So even if they are getting rid of the contents, I mean, through expulsion, through vomiting and diarrhea and everything else, there would still be enough left to determine what actually caused this. Yeah, there would be. And keep in mind, and I don't want to really disgust people with this, but you have to understand one of the presentations

with this toxic event is gastrointestinal discomfort. Okay. So let's just kind of take this stage by stage. Once it's ingested, this toxin goes into the system. Now, how does it go through into the system? Well, it's in the stomach first. It's passed through the esophagus. It's sitting in the stomach. Just because we ingest something doesn't mean it just merely pauses in the stomach and then goes into the small intestine where absorption takes place and all this sort of stuff at that point. You still have absorption that's going on in the stomach. With the triggering mechanism of this toxic event. You have people that develop nausea. They can vomit, but they'll also develop things like diarrhea. So you might have it coming out of both ends, as they say, but there would still be a remnant enough of this. And here's another piece to this that's

kind of fascinating. When you have a toxic substance like this, it's not just what has been ingested into the system through absorption through the stomach and the small intestine and that sort of thing. One of the other things that you look for is that many times with a toxic substance, it will begin to cause changes in the lining of the stomach, perhaps. And those changes that you see are associated, and microscopically, they can be identified as being associated with certain types of toxins, okay? You might look at it, it might look red and irritated, for instance, or inflamed.

But microscopically, those changes sometimes can be very specific to specific types of toxins. So once that stomach is removed, like we were talking about just a second ago, you would trim out part of that stomach itself and you would preserve it. And the physicians would take it and fix it onto a slot. And part of that is, I guess you could refer to it as forensic histology. It's really just histology, which is the study of tissues. So that's one of the things that pathologists do. Those samples that we take from all of the organs in the body, they would examine that microscopically over a period of time and document those changes.

And they can testify to that on stand, Dave, because forensic pathologists are pathologists as well. And so they're experts in the area of histology, studying tissue, you know, because forensic pathologists are pathologists as well. And so they're experts in the area of histology, studying tissue, you know, because like things that come out of surgery, if somebody has a gangrenous limb or cancers and all these things are removed, a pathologist takes a look at all that stuff. So they're keen on different types of tissues. And so that would be examined as well. So you've got a whole myriad of things that come into play here. And we haven't even mentioned all of these people will have had some kind of liver failure

as well. And that can be demonstrated. And it's very powerful when you think about it, because if this thing were to go to trial, the pathologist could actually put up several slides of what healthy liver looks like. And then they take a slide and they show what a damaged liver looks like from an acute poison event. And it's going to be striking. And they will literally on the stand give an anatomy lesson.

And it can be very powerful. We probably want to be very clear that she has not, Erin Patterson has not been charged. She has not. She has been mentioned as somebody they're interested in based on how these deaths occurred. Three out of the four dying, one still in the hospital. But police, they're playing this as they get everything together. The one thing that you and I both noticed, Joe, is the amount of Q&A you and I have gotten privately away from here of people asking about this particular case and poisoning. Is it because using something we eat as a weapon? I mean, using a gun, a knife that,

you know, you're, you're, you've got a big deal there. You're talking about something that people eat. When we began the program today, you were salivating talking about mushrooms. Is that the fascinating part? You think that people are going, man, something in my backyard, in this case, the death cap mushroom could actually be used as a weapon. And the bigger question, could they, prosecutors, if they decide to move forward with this, could they go back and look at her husband, Simon, from 14 months ago when he was in the hospital in intensive care for 21 days with gastrointestinal problems. He had three surgeries while he was in there. Could they go back and pull slides from the different things that they were doing with him and determine at this late date that he himself was

poisoned? Yeah, I think that they probably could, Dave. Certainly for any of my listeners that have ever been in the hospital, think about all the times when you were in hospital at night and that nurse comes in your room and wakes you up. Hospital is not the place to go for rest, right? Well, every time a nurse comes into your room, they go back out to their desk and they chart. They chart. They chart. They chart. Everything that they do to you is written down.

And God bless nurses. I think that they are the unsung heroes in our society. That's one of the things that they do. They not only treat their patients that they're charged to care for, but they chart and document it all along. And so that's a long course for him to have been in the hospital. And if he has undergone these surgeries, like you had mentioned, these multiple surgeries, if anything had been removed from his body at that point in time, yeah, I think that there's a high probability that they will find perhaps some type of changes, tissue changes in his system, particularly as the scene kind of metabolizes through this toxin,

metabolizes through his body. And also, if there are any biological samples like blood that's left behind, they've had enough time now, perhaps, that if they are thinking, rethinking the course of treatment, they're going to go back and they're going to take a look at everything he has. And here's the thing, Dave, if they're looking for death cap mushroom toxicity for him, do you think for two seconds he's going to say, no, you guys can't look at my medical records? No, that's not what's going to happen. He's going to say, here, where do I sign the release?

Now he's part of a death investigation. And his course of treatment is part of that. So they can go back and begin to take a look at it. They'll take a look at how he initially presented. They're going to look at his history. Have you ever had an event that occurs like this that is even in the more distant past? And people that were around him at the time that this occurred, who had access to him? If this was, in fact, a toxic event, who had access to, say, his food supply at that moment in time? And the police are going to look at every bit of that,

period. And here's another thing. I would also think that if there are any other cases out there that might have geographic proximity to any of these events that might share commonalities, you can bet your bottom dollar, particularly if they're unsolved or unresolved clinically, the police, the prosecutor down there, they're going to take a long, hard look at those cases too. Because Dave, this is not something that happens every day. All right. It's going to stand out like a sore thumb. But you know, that brings us back to where we started in this case. You think about a medical model of investigation and doctors and nurses and healthcare workers, yet they are clinicians there to take care of us. But you know what else, Dave?

They're investigators. Everything they do, every place that they go with a patient, every bit of treatment that they administer to a patient is problem solving. And that's all investigations is. It's problem solving. It's's all investigations is. It's problem solving. It's like a big puzzle. They're going to be putting these pieces together. Let's wait and see what happens with this case because I, for one, I'm going to be fascinated to see what the end result is and to see if this actually did result from the weaponization of a mushroom. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.