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

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

0:08
Speaker 1: Body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Some of the names
0:21
Speaker 1: that I'm about to give to you kind of contra
0:24
Speaker 1: up all kinds of warm feelings from the perspective of
0:28
Speaker 1: fine food or food that I would consider comfort food. Button, chantraline, cremini, shaitaki.
0:36
Speaker 1: One of my favorites Orscher, snowpuff, portobella. I love a
0:41
Speaker 1: good portobella sandwich, grilled porcini morale for the you high
0:46
Speaker 1: dollar types out there. But you know, the name that
0:50
Speaker 1: is not included on this list is a scientific name.
0:53
Speaker 1: First off, it's called Amanita falloid, otherwise known as a
0:58
Speaker 1: death cap, the death cap ushroom. A mushroom is so
1:01
Speaker 1: very lethal that once it is ingested, there is a
1:06
Speaker 1: high probability that death will visit you in less than
1:10
Speaker 1: about twenty four hours. Today we're going to talk about
1:14
Speaker 1: arguably one of the more bizarre cases that we've heard about.
1:17
Speaker 1: We're going to explore some of the issues that may
1:20
Speaker 1: have occurred in a town in Victoria, Australia. I'm Joseph
1:24
Speaker 1: s Gott Morgan and this is body bags. I love mushrooms, Dave,
1:33
Speaker 1: I love them. This is how I love them. I
1:34
Speaker 1: love them generally. Button mushrooms. I like to take them
1:38
Speaker 1: fresh ones. Now. I don't like them out of the
1:39
Speaker 1: can because they're too salty, and they've got that funky
1:43
Speaker 1: color that's almost gray. It's not very appetizing. But I
1:47
Speaker 1: like to take button mushrooms and sautee them in butter,
1:51
Speaker 1: onions and garlic, and then once I have them just right,
1:56
Speaker 1: and after I have grilled my rib I steak, like
2:00
Speaker 1: to take them and pour them over the top of
2:03
Speaker 1: that steak and maybe have a few on the side
2:06
Speaker 1: and enjoy that flavor, that robust flavor with a grilled steak.
2:10
Speaker 1: I don't know that there's anything better. Maybe a hamburger
2:13
Speaker 1: with salted mushrooms. But boy, I'll tell you what. You
2:16
Speaker 1: bring out the mushrooms and you really really make my
2:19
Speaker 1: mouth start. A matter of fact, hang on, we'll get
2:21
Speaker 1: my handkerchief out right now. Kind of my mouth is
2:24
Speaker 1: kind of watering.
2:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're kind of freaking me out. How deep you've
2:27
Speaker 2: gone into this, Joe. I'm a little concerned. But the
2:30
Speaker 2: story has gained worldwide attention for its simplicity and diabolical nature.
2:37
Speaker 2: Here it is in a nutshell. Joe Aaron and Simon
2:40
Speaker 2: Patterson have been married for several years. They've got two children. However,
2:44
Speaker 2: the marriages are working out, Aaron and Simon split up. Aaron,
2:49
Speaker 2: hoping for reconciliation, reaches out and invites Simon over for
2:53
Speaker 2: a big lunch with Simon. She invites her exen laws
2:57
Speaker 2: soon to be exend laws, Gail and Don Patterson. She
3:00
Speaker 2: also invites Heather Wilkinson and Ian Wilkins. That would be Wilkinson,
3:05
Speaker 2: that would be Simon's and uncle. Ian Wilkinson is a pastor.
3:09
Speaker 2: He's a much beloved pastor. And I think Aaron, in
3:12
Speaker 2: her mind's I was thinking his family will be in
3:15
Speaker 2: favor of staying together from that generation, if you stay
3:18
Speaker 2: together for the kids or whatever. But what she doesn't
3:20
Speaker 2: know is that Simon's family doesn't trust her. They really
3:23
Speaker 2: are a little weirded out by Aaron Patterson. So as
3:26
Speaker 2: this lunch is going on, this lunch of beef Wellington
3:29
Speaker 2: and mushrooms prepared for by a mushroom connoisseur, somebody who
3:33
Speaker 2: knows how to forge, meaning find mushrooms out in the field.
3:36
Speaker 2: She knows the right stores to shop for the right mushrooms.
3:39
Speaker 2: She actually prepares this beef wellington garnished with mushrooms for
3:42
Speaker 2: her soon to be accent loss, thinking there will be
3:45
Speaker 2: a reconciliation, but instead, Simon doesn't show up and the
3:49
Speaker 2: family basically turns on her in her mind's eye, and
3:52
Speaker 2: they are not in favor of the dude getting backed together.
3:55
Speaker 2: What happens next is the reason this story has gone worldwide.
4:00
Speaker 2: Of the five adults sitting in that table partaking of
4:04
Speaker 2: beef wellington garnish with mushrooms, three of them end up
4:07
Speaker 2: dead and one ends up in ICU waiting on a
4:11
Speaker 2: liver transplant. Only one was able to walk away from
4:15
Speaker 2: that table. That person was Aaron Patterson.
4:19
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that she would prepare a meal
4:23
Speaker 1: for these individuals, and it was within a very short
4:26
Speaker 1: period of tom that you've got these individuals who begin
4:32
Speaker 1: to display gastro intestinal discomfort.
4:35
Speaker 2: They were straight up poisoned at lunch. That's what I'm
4:38
Speaker 2: going to be honest with you. We could beat around
4:40
Speaker 2: the bush all day long. But the reason I pointed
4:42
Speaker 2: out that Simon wasn't there and that the family was
4:44
Speaker 2: not in favor of them getting back together is Aaron
4:47
Speaker 2: knew that when they got there, she immediately knew that
4:50
Speaker 2: this was not going the way that she wanted. And
4:51
Speaker 2: next thing, you know, beef wellington and mushrooms deserved and
4:55
Speaker 2: everybody gets sick.
4:57
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you. Did Aaron get sick?
4:59
Speaker 2: Joe, I'm glad you asked that. I feel like Colombo.
5:02
Speaker 2: According to Aaron, she got sick and that she too
5:06
Speaker 2: went to the hospital. But here's the deal. You've got
5:09
Speaker 2: these four elderly people.
5:12
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, just let me interject this.
5:15
Speaker 1: The pastor you mentioned, this guy's on the list for
5:18
Speaker 1: a liver transplant, so he's like in dire straits.
5:22
Speaker 2: Well, you may as well go ahead and say it.
5:23
Speaker 2: The other three are dead, Joe. They died, and this guy,
5:28
Speaker 2: the pastor. The only reason he's alive is anybody. Ian
5:31
Speaker 2: Wilkinson is alive by the grace of God. That's the
5:34
Speaker 2: only way you can look. They all eat the same thing,
5:37
Speaker 2: so they all get sick and die. Ian, as you mentioned,
5:41
Speaker 2: liver transplanted. The guy's barely hanging on. And Aaron Wilkinson,
5:46
Speaker 2: she's not on her deathbed, she's not in the hospital.
5:49
Speaker 2: She claims she got sick, and there is a report
5:52
Speaker 2: that she did go to the hospital. If you and
5:55
Speaker 2: I go out to dinner tonight and you make meat mushrooms.
5:57
Speaker 2: I could probably go to the hospital and take a
5:59
Speaker 2: good sick I could go in and complain about my stomach,
6:01
Speaker 2: and I could do all of that for at least
6:03
Speaker 2: twelve hours they put me in. Just by complaining alone,
6:07
Speaker 2: I can make myself throw up, tell them anything I
6:08
Speaker 2: needed to tell them. So her being in the hospital
6:11
Speaker 2: doesn't mean very much to me because she doesn't have
6:14
Speaker 2: any of the other symptoms everybody else has.
6:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and most of the time, if there's a toxic
6:18
Speaker 1: substance that everybody is ingesting and it's impacting this many people,
6:25
Speaker 1: there's a high probability that if anyone ingested it, they're
6:29
Speaker 1: going to be equally as sick. As a medical legal
6:51
Speaker 1: death investigator, in forensics, one of the things that we
6:54
Speaker 1: look for is kind of from an epidemiological standpoint, you
6:59
Speaker 1: look for or urgens of diseases. You look for origins
7:03
Speaker 1: of medical conditions and what brought that back, particularly when
7:06
Speaker 1: you're thinking about, say, for instance, a major loss of
7:10
Speaker 1: life event, or you're thinking about something that brings about
7:14
Speaker 1: an illness. Just think about any kind of pandemic. But
7:18
Speaker 1: here we have, in almost a microcosm, where you have
7:21
Speaker 1: multiple people, three of which die, and you have an
7:26
Speaker 1: additional individual that is now on life support with his
7:30
Speaker 1: liver essentially destroyed. We approach this from a medical model
7:37
Speaker 1: when we're investigating these kinds of cases. It's not like commonly,
7:41
Speaker 1: when you begin to think about gunshot wound or stab
7:44
Speaker 1: wound or bludgeoning, you can kind of trace that back
7:46
Speaker 1: to a single instrument that is used. But it's not
7:51
Speaker 1: so simple when you begin to think about something that
7:55
Speaker 1: is so toxic and incompatible with life, you really have
7:59
Speaker 1: to put your thinking cap on and begin to examine
8:02
Speaker 1: what you have before you and trying to determine because
8:05
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily going to just immediately present itself. You
8:09
Speaker 1: can't look at a body and say, well, look, this
8:11
Speaker 1: toxin is present. Now. There are certain things that you
8:14
Speaker 1: can look for, particularly like with heavy metal poisoning, for instance,
8:18
Speaker 1: you can see changes in the body and the pallor
8:20
Speaker 1: and all those sorts of things, nail beds and all
8:23
Speaker 1: those things that we look for. But if you're talking
8:25
Speaker 1: about something perhaps like a poison mushroom, that's going to
8:30
Speaker 1: take a bit more time to understand. Because as many cases,
8:34
Speaker 1: as many kinds of toxic events that emergency room personnel
8:39
Speaker 1: have to deal with that walk through the door, and
8:41
Speaker 1: clinical personnel from a treatment standpoint, long term treatment, they
8:45
Speaker 1: don't encounter poison vegetation like this, and certainly not something
8:50
Speaker 1: as glaring as a poison mushroom.
8:54
Speaker 2: When I think about, what would I know if I've
8:56
Speaker 2: sit down to eat and you're describing how much you
8:59
Speaker 2: love the mushroom and you sit down to eat, would
9:02
Speaker 2: they taste different? Do poison mushrooms taste different than non
9:05
Speaker 2: poisonous mushrooms?
9:07
Speaker 1: No, I mean, and listen, I think probably a discerning
9:11
Speaker 1: person that is really into mushrooms. You think about somebody
9:15
Speaker 1: that forages for mushrooms. There are different textures and my
9:18
Speaker 1: family are big on chanterline mushrooms. They love them, they
9:22
Speaker 1: cook with them, they wait for these seasons to come in,
9:26
Speaker 1: and they all have different textures and many of them
9:28
Speaker 1: will be described as being kind of light and others
9:32
Speaker 1: will be described literally as being very beefy when you
9:35
Speaker 1: eat them, And a lot of that has to do
9:36
Speaker 1: with texture and flavor as well. So it's like anything
9:40
Speaker 1: else in the world, whether it's a bottle of wine
9:42
Speaker 1: or a cigar, everybody has different things that they like,
9:45
Speaker 1: and mushrooms are no different. But for this particular species
9:50
Speaker 1: that we're actually talking about with the mushroom, and just
9:54
Speaker 1: so you know, from Jump Street, we know that something
9:57
Speaker 1: is afoot because the authority is actually identified mushroom as
10:00
Speaker 1: a species that is referred to as the death cap mushroom,
10:05
Speaker 1: and it's highly toxic. But here's the thing. It has
10:09
Speaker 1: to be ingested in order for it to do harm
10:12
Speaker 1: to you. So it's not what we refer to as
10:15
Speaker 1: a transdermal thing. There are certain species of plant life
10:19
Speaker 1: in the world in which we encounter that when you
10:22
Speaker 1: touch it, it can be transdermal. You know, you can
10:25
Speaker 1: absorb it through your skin. And keep in mind a
10:28
Speaker 1: mushroom is not necessarily a plant like we think of.
10:30
Speaker 1: It's actually a fungus that's growing out of the earth
10:35
Speaker 1: like this, and the death cap mushroom actually has kind
10:38
Speaker 1: of this very interwoven network beneath the surface of the
10:42
Speaker 1: earth that it's growing through. So you'll have multiple of
10:45
Speaker 1: these sprouts coming up, but it's very distinctive. And this
10:48
Speaker 1: is the thing. The wife in this particular case Aaron.
10:52
Speaker 1: She's known as a forager, and so one of the
10:56
Speaker 1: hallmarks or a really good forager from mushrooms is that
10:59
Speaker 1: you understand speed, you understand the way things look. And
11:03
Speaker 1: I beg any of you within the sound of my
11:05
Speaker 1: voice to go and actually take a look at the
11:09
Speaker 1: different species of mushrooms out there, and each one of
11:11
Speaker 1: them are very, very distinctive. And the most common is
11:14
Speaker 1: the button mushroom. It's white. Sometimes they're referred to as
11:17
Speaker 1: white mushrooms around kind of a bulbous head the death
11:21
Speaker 1: cap mushroom, though, Dave, this should be your first warning.
11:24
Speaker 1: The cap itself spreads out rather wide. Think of a
11:28
Speaker 1: rather substantial miniature umbrella, okay, And it's the thickness of
11:34
Speaker 1: it is not as thick as, say, for instance, relatively
11:37
Speaker 1: speaking as a portobello or a button mushroom. The cap
11:41
Speaker 1: on it is kind of thin. But here's the thing.
11:44
Speaker 1: It has this luminescent green color. When you see it
11:49
Speaker 1: that first off, it doesn't look appetizing at all. I
11:52
Speaker 1: know you don't like mushrooms, and none of them look appetizing.
11:55
Speaker 1: But if you come across something that's green other than
11:58
Speaker 1: maybe a green apple granny smith are green grapes, you're
12:02
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to grab it. Up and stick in
12:04
Speaker 1: your mouth. Well, and for somebody that does this, even
12:07
Speaker 1: as a hobbyist, they're going to look at this thing
12:10
Speaker 1: and say, you know what, that's probably something that I
12:14
Speaker 1: ought to stay away from. Or they're going to look
12:15
Speaker 1: at it and say, oh my gosh, that's a death
12:18
Speaker 1: cap mushroom. We not only do I need to stay
12:21
Speaker 1: away from it, I need to warn everybody that might
12:24
Speaker 1: be in my little group that goes out and forges
12:27
Speaker 1: for mushrooms that there are death cap mushrooms here. We
12:30
Speaker 1: need to stay away from them.
12:31
Speaker 2: Here we are, at this time and place where you've
12:33
Speaker 2: got a forager. She is an expert on these things.
12:36
Speaker 2: She knows what she's doing when it comes to mushrooms.
12:39
Speaker 2: We've got four people at a lunch that doesn't go
12:42
Speaker 2: her way, and all the adults at the table are
12:45
Speaker 2: sick except for Aaron the Patterson, the woman who prepared it.
12:49
Speaker 2: Her ex husband. Well, I don't like calling somebody X
12:51
Speaker 2: when they're only separated, but I don't think there's any
12:54
Speaker 2: real chance they're going to get back together. But they
12:56
Speaker 2: are currently not together. Simon has no interest and getting
13:00
Speaker 2: back together with his wife Aaron. And yet now we
13:03
Speaker 2: find out and this is something that investigators pulled out.
13:06
Speaker 2: How did these people get sick? Did you feed them
13:09
Speaker 2: these mushrooms? Well, they started looking back in history. Has
13:12
Speaker 2: she done this before? Do we have any other people
13:14
Speaker 2: getting sick when she cooks? Sure enough? May twenty twenty two,
13:19
Speaker 2: a year and two months before her husband Simon ended
13:22
Speaker 2: up in the hospital with very similar symptoms.
13:27
Speaker 1: And that's amazing, because, Dave, if this is in fact,
13:31
Speaker 1: and let's face it, this is almost a serialized event
13:35
Speaker 1: when you think about it. Poisoners in and of themselves
13:39
Speaker 1: are interesting birds, to say the very least. First off,
13:42
Speaker 1: they're very stealthy. And here's the thing. In order to
13:45
Speaker 1: poison someone, and let's just she has not been convicted
13:50
Speaker 1: of having poisoned anyone. Let me see, not even charged yet. Yeah,
13:54
Speaker 1: let me just say that very plainly. But here's the
13:56
Speaker 1: thing with these poisoning cases. You almost have to be
14:01
Speaker 1: an intimate to be within the circle of an individual,
14:04
Speaker 1: because why well, you have to get close enough to
14:07
Speaker 1: them to apply whatever toxin it is that you're looking
14:12
Speaker 1: to get into their system. And what's the most effective
14:15
Speaker 1: way to do that. Well, ingestion is the quickest way
14:17
Speaker 1: to do it, because Once you uptake this thing and
14:20
Speaker 1: it begins to metabolize in your system, you're going to
14:23
Speaker 1: have this onset and this horrible onset of nausea. It'll
14:27
Speaker 1: be accompanied by vomiting. There'll be terrible intestinal pain. If
14:31
Speaker 1: you've ever had severe intestinal cramping, it leads to severe dehydration,
14:37
Speaker 1: just an unquenchable thirst. It's a horrible way for these people.
14:42
Speaker 1: The course is very horrible and if they if they
14:44
Speaker 1: can survive beyond, I don't know the first six hours
14:49
Speaker 1: or so, guess what happens. There's a phase two that
14:54
Speaker 1: this kicks into relative to the poisoning, and you think
14:59
Speaker 1: that you're out of the woods. This is a scary part.
15:02
Speaker 1: You might be in the hospital. They've hung an ivy
15:05
Speaker 1: on you. They're pushing the necessary medications into your system.
15:09
Speaker 1: There's almost like this dormant phase where this toxin is
15:13
Speaker 1: coursing through your system. It's not that it's necessarily gone
15:17
Speaker 1: into a dormant state. It's now working at a cellular
15:21
Speaker 1: level and it cannot be detected until it gets into
15:24
Speaker 1: phase three, and you know what happens. Then your liver
15:27
Speaker 1: begins to shut down and we think about the pastor
15:30
Speaker 1: right the sixty six year old, and your kidneys begin
15:33
Speaker 1: to shut down at that moment time. And look, man,
15:36
Speaker 1: if you have renal failure, renal failure is that's one
15:40
Speaker 1: of the leading causes of death at an end stage
15:43
Speaker 1: phase with people. What is it?
15:45
Speaker 2: What is renal fail.
15:46
Speaker 1: Renal failure means literally that your kidneys have shut down
15:50
Speaker 1: and they can no longer appropriately process waste in your body.
15:55
Speaker 1: So everything, all these toxins begin to back up in
15:57
Speaker 1: your body. And isn't it interesting? Also the liver begins
16:01
Speaker 1: to fail, so you go into what's referred to as
16:04
Speaker 1: hepatic failure, which is just a fancy term for the liver,
16:07
Speaker 1: and the liver begins to shut down. The individuals actually
16:11
Speaker 1: begin to present with yellow skin color, and of course
16:15
Speaker 1: we know that means they're in a state of jauntice.
16:18
Speaker 1: If you've never seen anybody with jauntice, it's striking. And
16:22
Speaker 1: when you see them, even what were the whites of
16:25
Speaker 1: their eyes become yellow at that time too, And so
16:28
Speaker 1: they're in a total system failure at this point in time.
16:31
Speaker 1: It's a horrific way to die.
16:33
Speaker 2: How is it possible, Joe, that four people seemingly similar
16:38
Speaker 2: health three die one survives. I mean the fact that
16:42
Speaker 2: the sixty six year old pastor is still alive. Granted
16:46
Speaker 2: he's on a liver transplant list and things are not
16:48
Speaker 2: looking good for him. But is it always Obviously is
16:51
Speaker 2: not always fatal. What are some things that would make
16:53
Speaker 2: a difference, do you think?
16:54
Speaker 1: I think probably within this is an excellent point day
16:57
Speaker 1: when you look at this, you think about survivability. This
17:00
Speaker 1: pastor that you mentioned, he is sixty six. The rest
17:03
Speaker 1: of these poor victims, they're well north of sixty six.
17:08
Speaker 1: He's the youngest one in the group. And let's face it,
17:11
Speaker 1: as you age, your systems become weaker than they were
17:14
Speaker 1: when you were younger.
17:15
Speaker 2: Would it be possible that the chef, the person who
17:19
Speaker 2: prepared the dish, that they could, in fact, being substantially younger,
17:24
Speaker 2: eat some of it, have some moderate symptoms, but not deathly.
17:28
Speaker 1: No, I don't think that that's possible, because if you
17:31
Speaker 1: ingested this thing, from my perspective, if you ingested this mushroom,
17:38
Speaker 1: which is arguably the single most toxic mushroom in the world. Okay,
17:44
Speaker 1: there are no degrees to it. Really, I'm going to
17:48
Speaker 1: be very curious to find out when her husband had
17:54
Speaker 1: complained of this illness several months prior to this fatal
17:58
Speaker 1: event that occurred at their home or at their former
18:01
Speaker 1: family home there where they were getting together. I'd like
18:04
Speaker 1: to know the symptomology that he went through and kind
18:06
Speaker 1: of the progress now people can survive this. What's really
18:10
Speaker 1: horrific about this kind of circumstance is that if she did,
18:16
Speaker 1: in fact poison this group of people, she really took
18:19
Speaker 1: a shotgun approach. She was indiscriminate, Dave. She blasted them
18:24
Speaker 1: essentially with this toxic substance, and she really didn't care
18:29
Speaker 1: who died. Maybe she viewed everybody in the room as
18:32
Speaker 1: an enemy. Maybe she said, well, I'm going after the
18:36
Speaker 1: one target, and if other people die as a result
18:38
Speaker 1: of it, so bit. But she certainly didn't die. She
18:42
Speaker 1: still survived.
18:43
Speaker 3: She's lived to tell the tale.
19:04
Speaker 1: I love history, I do unashamedly. I think probably one
19:08
Speaker 1: of our most successful episodes that we had was probably
19:12
Speaker 1: the examination that we did of Julius Caesar's autopsy.
19:15
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, that was crazy.
19:17
Speaker 1: Well, let me throw another couple of names at you.
19:20
Speaker 1: Emperor Claudius was a Roman empire and in addition to
19:25
Speaker 1: Emperor Claudius Charles the six who was one of the
19:29
Speaker 1: Holy Roman emperors. Take a while, guess what both of
19:34
Speaker 1: these cats had in common.
19:36
Speaker 2: Death by poison.
19:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not just poisoning, but death cap mushroom poisoning.
19:42
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you were messing with me.
19:43
Speaker 1: No, honest to God's truth. And Voltaire actually wrote about
19:48
Speaker 1: Charles the sixth death as a result of ingesting death
19:53
Speaker 1: cap mushroom. And it may have not have been a
19:56
Speaker 1: homicidal poisoning, but he was on a hunting trip and
19:59
Speaker 1: he ingested these. Claudius was in fact poisoned, lethally poisoned,
20:04
Speaker 1: and common history and I think a lot of these
20:08
Speaker 1: scholars concur that it was probably a death cap mushroom.
20:12
Speaker 1: And these mushrooms have been known for years and years,
20:14
Speaker 1: and they actually they were initially found in Europe. That's
20:19
Speaker 1: where they kind of spring from. And I find it
20:21
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me the way these things travel across
20:24
Speaker 1: the world, because you know the case of these poor
20:27
Speaker 1: people down in Australia, I don't know that this species
20:31
Speaker 1: of mushroom existed prior to that land down there being
20:36
Speaker 1: inhabited by Europeans. And they can also be found in
20:40
Speaker 1: North America as well, And again, what do we have
20:42
Speaker 1: in common with that? Well, the first settlers of North
20:45
Speaker 1: America were European, so it's and you know, over a
20:50
Speaker 1: period of time, certainly these species will kind of evolve
20:53
Speaker 1: within their environment. It might turn into a different species,
20:56
Speaker 1: or it might vary slightly from say the European specs.
21:01
Speaker 1: The one thing that they do have in common is
21:03
Speaker 1: that their level of toxicity and kind of what you're
21:07
Speaker 1: seeing with them when they present at autopsy and certainly
21:10
Speaker 1: in the clinical phase when you're doing an examination of
21:13
Speaker 1: the records leading up to their death.
21:16
Speaker 2: Let me ask you about autopsy. You mentioned that what
21:19
Speaker 2: did it show up in an autopsy that it was
21:23
Speaker 2: a death cab mushroom poison or would it just be
21:27
Speaker 2: vague in that while they died from some poison, I mean,
21:30
Speaker 2: is there a way to tell?
21:31
Speaker 1: This is one of the really cool things about a
21:33
Speaker 1: case involving something that is ingested, like a fungus like this,
21:39
Speaker 1: which a mushroom is, or some type of plant life
21:42
Speaker 1: that we might see. One of the things that we
21:43
Speaker 1: do at autopsy, Dave, and I don't know that many
21:47
Speaker 1: people really think about this. When not only draw blood,
21:50
Speaker 1: we draw urine and bile and vitreous fluid. We examine
21:54
Speaker 1: the organs and take samples of those. One of the
21:56
Speaker 1: tasks that you have to do at autopsy is during
22:01
Speaker 1: the dissection. Just imagine the shape of a stomach. Okay.
22:05
Speaker 1: You have the long tube that comes down the esophagus,
22:10
Speaker 1: and you take a piece of string okay, and you
22:14
Speaker 1: make an incision beneath the esophagus where it attaches on
22:19
Speaker 1: adjacent to where like the aord is running down the spine. Okay,
22:23
Speaker 1: and you tie that piece of string off so that
22:26
Speaker 1: you've essentially tied off the top end of the esophagus
22:32
Speaker 1: where it dumps into the stomach, or the lower end
22:35
Speaker 1: of the esophagus, forgive me where it dumps into the stomach.
22:38
Speaker 1: And then you cut, you transsect across that where with
22:41
Speaker 1: a pair of scissors. Then you go beneath the stomach
22:44
Speaker 1: where it dumps into the small intestine. And here's the
22:47
Speaker 1: other part. You take a piece of string and you
22:51
Speaker 1: tie off that bit that dumps in to actually the
22:56
Speaker 1: small intestine, and you clip below that so that when
22:58
Speaker 1: you pull up the stomach, you have a completely in
23:03
Speaker 1: cased sack. It's the stomach removed from the body, and
23:07
Speaker 1: that's the way we examine it. And we'll take that
23:09
Speaker 1: entire stomach before we examine the contents, and we'll put
23:13
Speaker 1: it in a scale, and the scales. If you've ever
23:15
Speaker 1: been to the grocery store and been to the produce section,
23:19
Speaker 1: that's what the scales look like in the morgue, no more,
23:22
Speaker 1: no less, that's exactly what they look like. We measure
23:25
Speaker 1: everything in gram so we would get a weight for
23:27
Speaker 1: the stomach where the contents therein. We then go over
23:30
Speaker 1: to a sink that we have in the morgue and
23:33
Speaker 1: we carefully hold the stomach above a container in the
23:38
Speaker 1: sink and we gently opened up the stomach by incision,
23:44
Speaker 1: and everything that's contained within that stomach dumps into that container.
23:49
Speaker 1: Now I know this is horribly grotesque for people to
23:51
Speaker 1: listen to, but this is part of medical legal debt
23:54
Speaker 1: investigation because once we have all of those remnant that
24:00
Speaker 1: partially digested food stuffs that are in stomach, we can
24:04
Speaker 1: take that container and walk over to the autopsy table,
24:07
Speaker 1: put it up on our dissecting board, and very very
24:11
Speaker 1: carefully go through it and we will literally try to
24:15
Speaker 1: identify every type of substance that's contained within that gastric content.
24:22
Speaker 1: We'll also get a fluid measurement on it too. We'll
24:24
Speaker 1: talk about how many c ses of content for instance,
24:27
Speaker 1: you know, like a c C is an increment of
24:30
Speaker 1: measurement that we do injections with in a clinical standpoint,
24:34
Speaker 1: but we measure out in ccs the amount that's contained
24:37
Speaker 1: in the stomach. And we'll actually talk about color because
24:40
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it'll be green the contents of the stomach.
24:43
Speaker 1: It will be green, it will be a bage. Sometimes
24:45
Speaker 1: you'll see reds. And you can actually identify food stuffs
24:49
Speaker 1: within the stomach. I'll give you for an example. The
24:52
Speaker 1: most identifiable food in the human stomach that you can
24:56
Speaker 1: come across are actually hot dogs because they're in a case,
25:00
Speaker 1: whether it's a naturally occurring caseing or synthetic casing, and
25:03
Speaker 1: most people don't chew them up very well, and you
25:05
Speaker 1: can look at it and say, oh my gosh, that's
25:07
Speaker 1: a hot dog, and easily easy to spot. Any kind
25:11
Speaker 1: of leafy, green vegetable matter like salads, most of that
25:15
Speaker 1: stuff's easily appreciable. So with a mushroom, it's kind of spongy, right,
25:21
Speaker 1: so as it would be chewed all right, you would
25:25
Speaker 1: still see a remnant of that. Perhaps if you were
25:28
Speaker 1: keen on this, you would hone in on something that
25:31
Speaker 1: resembles a mushroom that's in there. And I say this
25:34
Speaker 1: because this goes back to the investigation that the police
25:39
Speaker 1: would have been conducting concurrently with the local corner. Because
25:43
Speaker 1: down in Australia they actually still have a corner system.
25:46
Speaker 1: So when they get together before the autopsy, if there's
25:51
Speaker 1: a suspicion on the part of the investigators the police
25:53
Speaker 1: that is death cap mushrooms have been used, then the
25:57
Speaker 1: corner would begin to look at this at auto and
26:00
Speaker 1: they would save every bit of the stomach content day.
26:03
Speaker 1: They would put it in little clear plastic vials that
26:06
Speaker 1: have a screw on cap and they would set it aside,
26:09
Speaker 1: keep it in the refrigerator, keep it cool, and then
26:12
Speaker 1: they would take a sample of this and they would
26:14
Speaker 1: send it off. They would send it off to the
26:16
Speaker 1: crime lab and it would be examined there. It would
26:20
Speaker 1: be examined in the crime lab. Now you would have
26:22
Speaker 1: to have somebody at the crime lab that can look
26:25
Speaker 1: at stomach contents like this, and first off, they would
26:28
Speaker 1: look at it from a taxonomy standpoint where they're identifying
26:32
Speaker 1: what type of matter this is. Is it of some
26:36
Speaker 1: type of non animal matter that has been ingested, So
26:40
Speaker 1: it might be a fungus like a mushroom, or it
26:43
Speaker 1: could be a leafy vegetable like a lettuce or whatever
26:46
Speaker 1: it is. You think about the components contained within this
26:50
Speaker 1: beef wellington dish, which mushrooms are actually a component of.
26:54
Speaker 1: You think about a baked good, because beef wellington actually
26:57
Speaker 1: has a crust on it, it's rolled up, and there's
27:00
Speaker 1: beef contained in there obviously, and other vegetable matter, and
27:03
Speaker 1: so you would be looking at this mishmash of stuff
27:06
Speaker 1: that's in there. So you have to be very very
27:08
Speaker 1: careful and once you've identified that mushroom, because heat is
27:13
Speaker 1: not going to change it. So if this mushroom was
27:15
Speaker 1: baked in, okay, that mushroom is not going to be
27:19
Speaker 1: baked down to the point in a kitchen where it
27:23
Speaker 1: would be unrecognizable from a microscopic standpoint. And if you
27:27
Speaker 1: need further help, for instance, in a case like this,
27:30
Speaker 1: I would suspect that a sample of this mushroom, and
27:34
Speaker 1: this happens here in the US. Relative to the Smithsonian,
27:38
Speaker 1: they would send a sample of this off to the
27:40
Speaker 1: National Museum perhaps or to an organization that deals with
27:45
Speaker 1: toxic plants, and there will be specialists on staff that
27:49
Speaker 1: will specifically identify this, and if this case does go
27:52
Speaker 1: to trial, they'll have these individuals testify.
27:55
Speaker 2: By it amazing that you can find all of that
27:58
Speaker 2: out at an autopsy, and it makes sense that they
28:01
Speaker 2: would be. There would be a lot of undigested stuff
28:04
Speaker 2: in there. The people got sick right away, So even
28:06
Speaker 2: if they are getting rid of the content, I mean
28:09
Speaker 2: through expulsion, through vomiting and diarrhea and everything else, there
28:12
Speaker 2: would still be enough left to determine what actually caused this.
28:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, there would be. And keep in mind, and I
28:20
Speaker 1: don't want to really discuss people with this, but you
28:23
Speaker 1: have to understand one of the presentations with this toxic
28:26
Speaker 1: event is gastrointestinal discomfort. Okay, so let's just kind of
28:31
Speaker 1: take this stage by stage. Once it's ingested, this toxin
28:35
Speaker 1: goes into the system. Now, how does it go through
28:37
Speaker 1: into the system. Well, it's in the stomach first. It's
28:40
Speaker 1: passed through the sophacause it's sitting in the stomach. Just
28:42
Speaker 1: because we ingest something doesn't mean it just merely pauses
28:46
Speaker 1: in the stomach and then goes into the small intestine
28:48
Speaker 1: where absorption takes place and all this sort of stuff.
28:51
Speaker 1: At that point, you still have absorption that's going on
28:53
Speaker 1: in the stomach. With the triggering mechanism of this toxic event.
28:58
Speaker 1: You have people that developed nausea. They can vomit, but
29:02
Speaker 1: they'll also develop things like diarrhea. So you might have
29:06
Speaker 1: it coming out of both ends, as they say, but
29:09
Speaker 1: there would still be a remnant enough of this. And
29:12
Speaker 1: here's another piece to this that's kind of fascinating. When
29:16
Speaker 1: you have a toxic substance like this, it's not just
29:20
Speaker 1: what has been ingested into the system through absorption through
29:26
Speaker 1: the stomach and the small intestine and that sort of thing.
29:29
Speaker 1: One of the other things that you look for is
29:31
Speaker 1: that many times with a toxic substance, it will begin
29:36
Speaker 1: to cause changes in the lining of the stomach perhaps,
29:41
Speaker 1: and those changes that you see are associated and microscopically
29:46
Speaker 1: they can be identified as being associated with certain types
29:49
Speaker 1: of toxins. Okay, you might look at it and it
29:52
Speaker 1: might look red and irritated, for instance, or inflamed, but
29:55
Speaker 1: microscopically those changes sometimes can be very specific to specific
30:00
Speaker 1: types of toxin. So once that stomach is removed, like
30:03
Speaker 1: we were talking about just a second ago, you would
30:06
Speaker 1: trim out part of that stomach itself and you would
30:10
Speaker 1: preserve it and the physicians would take it and fix
30:13
Speaker 1: it onto a slot. And part of that is I
30:15
Speaker 1: guess you could refer to it as forensic histology. It's
30:19
Speaker 1: really just histology, which is the study of tissues. So
30:22
Speaker 1: then that's one of the things that pathologists do. Those
30:25
Speaker 1: samples that we take from all of the organs in
30:27
Speaker 1: the body. They would examine that microscopically over a period
30:32
Speaker 1: of time and document those changes and they can testify
30:35
Speaker 1: to that on stand Dave. Because forensic pathologists are pathologists
30:39
Speaker 1: as well, and so they're experts in the area of
30:42
Speaker 1: histology studying tissue. You know, because like things that come
30:45
Speaker 1: out of surgery, if somebody has a gangrenous limb or
30:48
Speaker 1: or cancers and all these things that are removed, pathologists
30:51
Speaker 1: takes a look at all that stuff. So they're keen
30:54
Speaker 1: on different types of tissues, and so that would be
30:57
Speaker 1: examined as well. So you've got to whole myriad of
31:00
Speaker 1: things that come into play here, and we haven't even
31:04
Speaker 1: mentioned all of these people will have had some kind
31:06
Speaker 1: of liver failure as well, and that can be demonstrated.
31:10
Speaker 1: And it's very powerful when you think about it, because
31:12
Speaker 1: if this thing were to go to trial, the pathologist
31:17
Speaker 1: could actually put up several slides of what healthy liver
31:20
Speaker 1: looks like, and then they take a slide and they
31:23
Speaker 1: show what a damaged liver looks like from an acute
31:26
Speaker 1: poison event. And it's going to be striking, and they
31:29
Speaker 1: will literally on the stand given an anatomy lesson, and
31:31
Speaker 1: it can be very powerful.
31:33
Speaker 2: We probably want to be very clear that she has
31:35
Speaker 2: not Aaron Patterson has not been charged. She has been
31:38
Speaker 2: mentioned as somebody they're interested in based on how these
31:42
Speaker 2: deaths occurred. Three out of the four dying, one still
31:45
Speaker 2: in the hospital. But police they're playing this as they
31:49
Speaker 2: get everything together. The one thing that you and I
31:51
Speaker 2: both noticed, Joe, is the amount of Q and A
31:55
Speaker 2: you and I have gotten privately away from here of
31:58
Speaker 2: people asking about this particular case and poisoning. Is it
32:02
Speaker 2: because using something we eat as a weapon, I mean
32:07
Speaker 2: using a gun, a knife that you know, you've got
32:10
Speaker 2: a big deal there. You're talking about something that people eat.
32:13
Speaker 2: When we began the program, today you were salivating talking
32:16
Speaker 2: about mushrooms. Is that the fascinating part? You think that
32:19
Speaker 2: people are going man something in my backyard In this case,
32:22
Speaker 2: the death cap mushroom could actually be used as a weapon.
32:27
Speaker 2: And the bigger question, could they prosecutors, if they decided
32:31
Speaker 2: to move forward with this, could they go back and
32:34
Speaker 2: look at her husband Simon from fourteen months ago when
32:37
Speaker 2: he was in the hospital in intensive care for twenty
32:39
Speaker 2: one days with gastrointestinal problems. He had three surgeries while
32:43
Speaker 2: he was in there. Could they go back and pull
32:45
Speaker 2: slides from the different things that they were doing with
32:47
Speaker 2: him and determined at this late date that he himself
32:50
Speaker 2: was poisoned.
32:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that they probably could. They've certainly for
32:55
Speaker 1: any of my listeners that have ever been in the hospital,
32:58
Speaker 1: think about all the times when you were in hospital
33:00
Speaker 1: at night and that nurse comes in your room and
33:02
Speaker 1: wakes you up. Hospital is not the place to go
33:04
Speaker 1: for rest, right, Well, every time a nurse comes into
33:07
Speaker 1: your room, they go back out to their desk and
33:10
Speaker 1: they chart, they chart, they chart, they chart. Everything that
33:14
Speaker 1: they do to you is written down, and God bless nurses.
33:17
Speaker 1: I think that they are the unsung heroes in our society.
33:20
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that they do. They not
33:23
Speaker 1: only treat their patients that they're charged to care for,
33:25
Speaker 1: but they chart and document it all along. And so
33:28
Speaker 1: that's a long course for him to have been in
33:30
Speaker 1: the hospital. And if he has undergone these surgeries, like
33:34
Speaker 1: you had mentioned, these multiple surgeries, if anything had been
33:38
Speaker 1: removed from his body at that point in time, Yeah,
33:42
Speaker 1: I think that there's a high probability that they will
33:47
Speaker 1: find perhaps some type of changes, tissue changes in his system,
33:53
Speaker 1: particularly as the scene kind of metabolizes through that talks
33:57
Speaker 1: and metabolizes through his body. And also if there are
34:00
Speaker 1: any biological samples like blood that's left behind. They've had
34:04
Speaker 1: enough time now perhaps that if they are thinking, rethinking
34:08
Speaker 1: the course of treatment, they're going to go back and
34:11
Speaker 1: they're going to take a look at everything he has.
34:13
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, Dave, if they're looking for death
34:17
Speaker 1: cap mushroom toxicity for him, do you think for two
34:21
Speaker 1: seconds he's going to say, no, you guys can't look
34:23
Speaker 1: at my medical records. No, that's not what's going to happen.
34:27
Speaker 1: He's going to say, here, where do I sign the release?
34:30
Speaker 1: Now he's part of a death investigation, and that his
34:33
Speaker 1: course of treatment is part of that, so they can
34:35
Speaker 1: go back and begin to take a look at it.
34:37
Speaker 1: They'll take a look at how he initially presented. They're
34:40
Speaker 1: going to look at his history. Have you ever had
34:42
Speaker 1: an event that occurs like this, that is even in
34:45
Speaker 1: the more distant past, and people that were around him
34:48
Speaker 1: at the time that this occurred, who had access to him,
34:51
Speaker 1: if this was in fact a toxic event, who had
34:54
Speaker 1: access to, say, his food supply at that moment in time,
34:58
Speaker 1: And the police are going to look at every bit
35:00
Speaker 1: of that period. And here's another thing. I would also
35:04
Speaker 1: think that if there are any other cases out there
35:08
Speaker 1: that might have geographic proximity to any of these events
35:13
Speaker 1: that might share commonalities, you can bet your bottom dollar,
35:18
Speaker 1: particularly if they're unsolved or unresolved clinically, they the police,
35:23
Speaker 1: the prosecutor down there, they're going to take a long,
35:25
Speaker 1: hard look at those cases too, because Dave, this is
35:28
Speaker 1: not something that happens every day. All right, It's going
35:31
Speaker 1: to stand out like a sore thumb. But you know
35:34
Speaker 1: that brings us back to where we started in this case.
35:36
Speaker 1: You think about a medical model of investigation, and doctors
35:41
Speaker 1: and nurses and healthcare workers. Yet they are clinicians there
35:45
Speaker 1: to take care of us. But you know what else, Dave,
35:48
Speaker 1: they're investigators. Everything they do, every place that they go
35:52
Speaker 1: with a patient, every bit of treatment that they administer
35:56
Speaker 1: to a patient is problem solving. And that's all investigation is.
36:00
Speaker 1: It's problem solving. It's like a big puzzle. They're going
36:03
Speaker 1: to be putting these pieces together. Let's wait and see
36:05
Speaker 1: what happens with this case, because I for one, I'm
36:08
Speaker 1: going to be fascinated to see what the end result
36:11
Speaker 1: is and to see if this actually did result from
36:17
Speaker 1: the weaponization of a musherer. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and
36:25
Speaker 1: this is bodybags