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The Mushroom Murder Case: Uncovering the Facts Behind the Mystery · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: A small town in the south of Australia. A few streets,
0:03
Speaker 1: a pub, a petrol station, hours from the nearest city.
0:07
Speaker 1: The kind of place where nothing really happens. And there
0:10
Speaker 1: were five people and a quiet house at the end
0:13
Speaker 1: of a long road, enjoying a few hours together. It
0:16
Speaker 1: should have been a forgettable day. But it wasn't. This
0:19
Speaker 1: is the story of the Mushroom Murders. Crime, conspiracy, cults,
0:24
Speaker 1: serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume,
0:27
Speaker 1: and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful,
0:29
Speaker 1: intellectually-minded freak. Today, we are talking about the Mushroom Murders.
0:34
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelt, go Mach
0:36
Speaker 1: 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust
0:38
Speaker 1: through the windshield into this infamous Australian case together. All right,
0:57
Speaker 1: let's talk about something a little lighter for a moment,
1:00
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1:06
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1:09
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1:12
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1:16
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1:22
Speaker 1: Claiming it's theirs. I literally cannot get them off it
1:26
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1:29
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1:34
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1:37
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1:40
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1:59
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2:02
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2:05
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2:07
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2:18
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2:22
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Lola Blanket for sponsoring the
2:24
Speaker 1: video and supporting the channel. And let's get back to it.
2:26
Speaker 1: Erin Trudy Scudder was born in 1974 in suburban Melbourne,
2:31
Speaker 1: and she grew up in Glen Waverly, a quiet residential
2:34
Speaker 1: neighborhood about 19 kilometers southeast of the city center. Yes,
2:38
Speaker 1: we're talking in kilometers today, people. All right, we're in Australia. Also,
2:42
Speaker 1: as a Canadian, I'm loving it. But it was the
2:45
Speaker 1: kind of place where families put down roots and just
2:48
Speaker 1: never really left. And this suburb had undergone rapid growth
2:52
Speaker 1: in the 1960s. And by the time Erin was a child,
2:55
Speaker 1: Glen Waverly was home to nine primary schools and four
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Speaker 1: high schools. And Holmes sat on big lots along organized streets,
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Speaker 1: just a solidly middle-class Australia. And her family fit that mold,
3:08
Speaker 1: because her father, Eichen Scudder, worked for the government, and
3:12
Speaker 1: her mother, Dr. Heather Scudder, held a position at Menash
3:16
Speaker 1: University as a literature lecturer. And Heather specialized in children's literature,
3:22
Speaker 1: specifically Australian studies and women's writings. And she authored an
3:26
Speaker 1: academic book called Displaced Fictions, a detailed study of contemporary
3:31
Speaker 1: Australian teen and young adult fiction. And Erin's sister, Canewyn
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Speaker 1: Ruth Scudder, would study geology at Menash, following the family path.
3:40
Speaker 1: So with an academic mother, a public servant father, and
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Speaker 1: two university-bound daughters, the Scudders were a modern Australian family
3:49
Speaker 1: on paper. And by every measure, Erin was right at
3:52
Speaker 1: home in it. She was bright, she was bookish, she
3:56
Speaker 1: was quick with commitment. And her teachers would notice her
3:59
Speaker 1: really early. She had the kind of mind that picked
4:01
Speaker 1: things up faster than anyone in the room around her.
4:04
Speaker 1: And by the time she finished high school, she had
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Speaker 1: a place at the University of Melbourne waiting for her.
4:10
Speaker 1: Just a bright, full life ahead of her. And Erin
4:13
Speaker 1: had a mind that just didn't sit still. She kept
4:16
Speaker 1: picking up new qualifications and new fields and new subjects
4:19
Speaker 1: to dig into. And she started at the University of
4:22
Speaker 1: Melbourne in 1992, where she earned a place in the
4:25
Speaker 1: science program. And science eventually gave way to accounting, which
4:30
Speaker 1: became her first job, which offered her very stable, very
4:33
Speaker 1: conventional work. But she wasn't done collecting qualifications. And in
4:38
Speaker 1: February 2001, she joined Air Services Australia and began their
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Speaker 1: air traffic control training program in Melbourne. And the course
4:46
Speaker 1: ran 10 months long, and it was very competitive, technical,
4:49
Speaker 1: and not everyone made it through. It's very difficult. My
4:53
Speaker 1: grandpa used to do it, and it's one of the
4:54
Speaker 1: most stressful jobs you can actually ever do, ever. And
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Speaker 1: air traffic control is one of those professions most people
5:01
Speaker 1: never think about until something goes wrong. Controllers manage the
5:05
Speaker 1: movement of aircraft in real time, sequencing takeoffs, landings, and
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Speaker 1: routing across packed airspace. It's, again, just very stressful. You
5:14
Speaker 1: have hundreds of lives in your hands at every given moment, essentially.
5:18
Speaker 1: And a single miscommunication can end those lives. So by
5:22
Speaker 1: the time the program was finished, Erin had earned her
5:25
Speaker 1: place in the tower. So she was a university graduate
5:28
Speaker 1: and a qualified air traffic controller. And a manager who
5:32
Speaker 1: worked with her remembered her this way, saying, quote, colorful, smart,
5:36
Speaker 1: very smart. She was no dummy. Unquote. So Air Services
5:40
Speaker 1: Australia lasted less than two years. And by November 2002,
5:45
Speaker 1: she would eventually move on. But her next stop was
5:48
Speaker 1: local government. And she picked up a position at the
5:50
Speaker 1: Menashe City Council in Melbourne. And the Royal Society for
5:54
Speaker 1: the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the RSPCA, ran an
5:58
Speaker 1: animal management office inside the council. And by 2004, Erin
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Speaker 1: was there as an administrative assistant, filing paperwork, basically. and
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Speaker 1: handling the unglamorous daily rhythm of local government, a world
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Speaker 1: away from the control tower, which again is like an
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Speaker 1: extremely stressful job, so I don't blame her for switching jobs.
6:18
Speaker 1: But the fact that she can just like toss around
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Speaker 1: all these high qualifications and just kind of pick and
6:23
Speaker 1: choose whatever she wants to do because she's so smart
6:25
Speaker 1: is very impressive. So Erin's government job turned out to
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Speaker 1: matter more than even the title suggested, because also working
6:33
Speaker 1: at the city of Menashe was a civil engineer named
6:35
Speaker 1: Simon Patterson, And a group of council employees had formed
6:39
Speaker 1: what Simon described as, quote unquote, a fairly eclectic circle
6:43
Speaker 1: of friends. And Erin found her way into that group.
6:47
Speaker 1: And by July 2005, Erin and Simon were together. But
6:51
Speaker 1: she'd met his parents even before the relationship had really begun.
6:55
Speaker 1: and it was March or April 2005. And she and
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Speaker 1: Simon had gone camping with a group of friends, and
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Speaker 1: somewhere along the way, they swung by the family Patterson home. Now,
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Speaker 1: the Pattersons lived in Corumbura, a small town in the
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Speaker 1: green hilly country of South Gippsland, roughly 90 minutes southeast
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Speaker 1: of Melbourne. And that afternoon was the first time Erin
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Speaker 1: met Dawn and Gail Patterson. Now, Dawn and Gail's lives
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Speaker 1: had followed similar paths from the very beginning. Both were
7:21
Speaker 1: in scouts and guides as children, both took up piano
7:24
Speaker 1: and tennis, and both spent holidays at the same beachside
7:27
Speaker 1: towns on the Morrington Peninsula, Rosebud and Germanna. And their
7:30
Speaker 1: paths first crossed at Sunday School in Hughesdale, a suburb
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Speaker 1: east of Melbourne's centre. And Don came out of Melbourne
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Speaker 1: University with a science degree, and he had the foundation
7:40
Speaker 1: for a research career in Australia, but he and Gail
7:43
Speaker 1: decided on a different direction. And the couple just packed
7:47
Speaker 1: up and moved abroad. Botswana first, then China, and both
7:51
Speaker 1: stints centered on mission work and teaching. And when they
7:54
Speaker 1: eventually returned, Don took a position at Coramborough Secondary College,
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Speaker 1: where he taught for 25 years and at one point
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Speaker 1: served as deputy principal. And Richard Collier, who taught alongside him,
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Speaker 1: described Don as a man who earned deep respect from students, parents,
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Speaker 1: and staff. And the exchange program he helped create sent
8:12
Speaker 1: Coramborough students to China and which, of course, was a
8:15
Speaker 1: country he and Gail had already poured years of their
8:18
Speaker 1: lives into. And Gail's contributions ran just as deep. In Botswana,
8:22
Speaker 1: she'd homeschooled their children using lessons materials sent from Australia.
8:27
Speaker 1: And Simon liked to joke that he, quote, reached his
8:30
Speaker 1: academic peak in grade four, unquote, which he insisted was, quote,
8:35
Speaker 1: no reflection on the teachers that followed, but on mom's
8:38
Speaker 1: ability as a teacher, unquote. And back in Corumbura, she
8:42
Speaker 1: worked in the school office at the secondary college alongside Dawn. Now,
8:47
Speaker 1: beyond the school, her volunteer work was described as, quote, unquote,
8:50
Speaker 1: quietly extensive. Bible study groups, youth events, community meals, producing
8:55
Speaker 1: the Borough Flyer Newsletter, reading newspapers aloud for people who
8:59
Speaker 1: couldn't see, welcoming overseas visitors and newcomers to the town, etc., etc.
9:04
Speaker 1: These people are saints, it seems. Doesn't it? Like, they're
9:09
Speaker 1: just giving everything they have to everyone around them. And
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Speaker 1: when a fire destroyed the secondary college's records in 1993,
9:16
Speaker 1: Gale helped piece them back together. So it was said
9:20
Speaker 1: of the couple, quote, they just got on with living
9:23
Speaker 1: generous lives quietly and without fanfare, unquote. And Gail's younger
9:28
Speaker 1: sister was Heather Wilkinson, born Heather Young. And her husband
9:32
Speaker 1: was Ian Wilkinson. And together, they raised four children, David, Luke, Ruth,
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Speaker 1: and Elizabeth. And Heather taught English to adult migrants, and
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Speaker 1: she never stopped. And she was called a gifted teacher.
9:44
Speaker 1: And under her influence, more parents started volunteering at the
9:48
Speaker 1: school than ever before. And one friend who had known
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Speaker 1: Heather her entire life said, quote unquote, the spirit of
9:54
Speaker 1: God was always evident in Heather. And quote, peaceful, grateful, calm, joyful.
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Speaker 1: She is kind, friendly, even-tempered, and with a quirky sense
10:03
Speaker 1: of humor, unquote. And Ian had been the pastor of
10:05
Speaker 1: Coram Borough Baptist Church for more than two decades, marking
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Speaker 1: his 25th year in the role in February of 2024.
10:11
Speaker 1: And for these families, faith wasn't something they set aside
10:15
Speaker 1: after Sunday service. It really just shaped the way they
10:18
Speaker 1: lived every single day. So when Aaron and Simon married
10:22
Speaker 1: on June 2nd, 2007, at the Corambura Anglican Church, they
10:27
Speaker 1: chose that church deliberately. And Aaron said they wanted Ian
10:31
Speaker 1: and Heather, quote, to be able to come and relax
10:34
Speaker 1: with guests, unquote, rather than working the ceremony at their
10:38
Speaker 1: own Baptist church. And the reception was held under a
10:40
Speaker 1: marquee in Dawn and Gail's backyard in Corambura. But Erin's
10:44
Speaker 1: parents weren't able to be there. So the person who
10:47
Speaker 1: walked her down the aisle was David Wilkinson, which was
10:50
Speaker 1: Ian and Heather's son. But Faith hadn't always been part
10:54
Speaker 1: of Erin's world. And she actually said she'd actively tried
10:57
Speaker 1: to convert him away from belief, saying, quote, I was
11:00
Speaker 1: trying to convert him into being an atheist, but things
11:03
Speaker 1: happened in reverse, unquote. And then around 2005, she walked
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Speaker 1: into Cumbura Baptist Church for the first time. And something shifted.
11:12
Speaker 1: Ian Wilkinson stood behind the pulpit, and up to that point,
11:16
Speaker 1: faith had been nothing more than an intellectual puzzle to her.
11:19
Speaker 1: But something hit her in that room. It, quote-unquote, quite
11:24
Speaker 1: overwhelmed her, and it pulled her into the orbit of
11:27
Speaker 1: the very people sitting in those pews. The Pattersons, the Wilkinsons.
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Speaker 1: and the small-town faith community they'd spent a lifetime building.
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Speaker 1: And after the wedding, Aaron and Simon didn't settle down
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Speaker 1: right away. And instead, they would use money from Aaron's
11:41
Speaker 1: inheritance and buy a Nissan Patrol, Patrol, Patrol, sorry if
11:45
Speaker 1: I'm saying that wrong, and drove into Outback, Australia. Sorry,
11:49
Speaker 1: I couldn't help it. I had to do it once. Okay,
11:52
Speaker 1: I won't do it again. But Simon described those months
11:55
Speaker 1: as a, quote-unquote, meander through the country's vast interior. And
12:00
Speaker 1: from there, they flew to Africa, traveling through South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe,
12:05
Speaker 1: and Namibia. And Botswana, as you may recall, was one
12:09
Speaker 1: of those places where Don and Gail had lived decades
12:12
Speaker 1: earlier as missionaries. And by September 2007, they'd settled in Perth.
12:17
Speaker 1: And their first child, a boy, arrived in January of 2009.
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Speaker 1: And the birth was pretty rough. Forceps failed during delivery,
12:25
Speaker 1: and the doctors had to perform an emergency C-section. and
12:29
Speaker 1: their newborn ended up in the intensive care unit. But
12:32
Speaker 1: even before the doctors cleared her, Erin signed herself out.
12:36
Speaker 1: She wanted to be at her baby's side. And Dawn
12:39
Speaker 1: and Gail came to help with the new baby, and
12:41
Speaker 1: Erin said she felt, quote, out of my depth, unquote,
12:46
Speaker 1: and was, quote, really relieved that Gail was there, unquote.
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Speaker 1: So she had that support system. And she described her
12:52
Speaker 1: mother-in-law as, quote, really supportive and gentle and patient, unquote.
12:56
Speaker 1: And Gail told Aaron to, quote, just relax and enjoy
12:59
Speaker 1: your baby. And those words landed deeply. And for a stretch,
13:03
Speaker 1: in 2011 and 2012, the family was living in Pemberton,
13:07
Speaker 1: a tiny timber milling town in the southwestern region of
13:10
Speaker 1: Western Australia. And Aaron opened a secondhand bookshop there, and
13:14
Speaker 1: it became kind of a hub for serious readers in
13:16
Speaker 1: a place where you wouldn't necessarily expect one. And eventually,
13:20
Speaker 1: after their first child, a daughter would follow in 2014.
13:24
Speaker 1: And as it turned out, Simon's sister Anna, Tarrington, was
13:28
Speaker 1: also expecting. So the two babies were born within three
13:31
Speaker 1: days of each other. So the family started affectionately calling
13:34
Speaker 1: them the twins. And that same year, Aaron and Simon
13:38
Speaker 1: bought a house in Corumbura so they could be closer
13:41
Speaker 1: to Simon's parents. And this was the town where Don taught,
13:44
Speaker 1: where Ian preached, and where Gail had spent decades quietly
13:47
Speaker 1: holding the community together. So the entire family was putting
13:51
Speaker 1: down their roots. But trouble arrived with their first child.
13:56
Speaker 1: And even with a baby, Simon wanted to keep road tripping.
14:00
Speaker 1: The family headed north along the Gibb River Road, a
14:02
Speaker 1: remote track through Western Australia's Kimberley region. And somewhere around Queensland,
14:08
Speaker 1: the trip fell apart, and Erin booked a flight to
14:11
Speaker 1: Perth and left. And Simon had no choice but to
14:14
Speaker 1: drive back with the baby. So it was a week
14:17
Speaker 1: on the road, just him and his infant. And when
14:20
Speaker 1: he finally got back, she'd already arranged a rental cottage
14:23
Speaker 1: for herself. And Simon wound up at a caravan park nearby.
14:27
Speaker 1: So this would be the first time Aaron would leave.
14:30
Speaker 1: And they were apart roughly two to three months before
14:33
Speaker 1: getting back together. And it kind of became a pattern.
14:36
Speaker 1: From 2009 to 2015, the couple separated and reconciled multiple times.
14:41
Speaker 1: And Simon felt that she was the one who always
14:43
Speaker 1: left despite his desire to have a solid marriage. Quote,
14:47
Speaker 1: what I understood from Erin was that she was struggling
14:50
Speaker 1: inside herself, unquote. Now, Erin framed the problem differently, saying, quote,
14:55
Speaker 1: if we had a disagreement or any kind of conflict,
14:58
Speaker 1: we didn't seem to be able to talk about it
15:00
Speaker 1: in a way where either of us felt heard or understood, unquote.
15:04
Speaker 1: And eventually she told him the way they related to
15:06
Speaker 1: each other was toxic. And the marriage drifted through towns
15:10
Speaker 1: along the way. And they would try counseling and patch
15:13
Speaker 1: things up together and would actually move to York, which
15:16
Speaker 1: is in Western Australia. And then came the tiny timber
15:20
Speaker 1: settlement of Quinnenup. And they came back to Victoria in 2013,
15:25
Speaker 1: a short stop in Bena, then a house in Corumbura.
15:29
Speaker 1: And the final split came in November of 2015. She
15:32
Speaker 1: picked up a place of her own in Corumbura, and
15:35
Speaker 1: the family home was behind her. Quote, I didn't want
15:38
Speaker 1: to be separated, but I felt there was no choice, unquote.
15:42
Speaker 1: But still, through it all, they never divorced. And what
15:45
Speaker 1: made the split unusual was how little seemed to change
15:49
Speaker 1: on the surface. Custody was split, but they continued texting regularly,
15:54
Speaker 1: and they still sat in the same pews on Sunday.
15:56
Speaker 1: And they even traveled together as a family. And Aaron
16:00
Speaker 1: noted that Dawn and Gail never changed after the separation. Quote,
16:04
Speaker 1: they just continued to love me, unquote, she would say.
16:08
Speaker 1: And they treated her, quote, like their own daughter, unquote.
16:11
Speaker 1: And Simon confirmed Aaron saying, quote, got along very well
16:15
Speaker 1: with his parents, especially with dad, unquote. So in February
16:19
Speaker 1: of 2022, Dawn reached out to offer video call tutoring
16:23
Speaker 1: for Aaron's eldest child. telling her he was happy to
16:26
Speaker 1: help with any subject he had some competence in. And
16:29
Speaker 1: both Erin and Don had what Simon described as inquiring minds,
16:34
Speaker 1: and the two of them bonded over shared curiosity. Financially,
16:37
Speaker 1: Erin was pretty well off, because her grandmother's death in
16:41
Speaker 1: 2006 had left behind a substantial estate. And Erin's share
16:45
Speaker 1: was evaluated at around two million Australian dollars, parceled out
16:49
Speaker 1: over eight years. And her father had died of cancer
16:53
Speaker 1: in 2011, and when her mother died of cancer some
16:55
Speaker 1: years later, another inheritance followed. And Simon called her very
17:00
Speaker 1: generous with his family, and the numbers backed that up.
17:04
Speaker 1: She lent hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of
17:07
Speaker 1: his three siblings. And his brother, Matt, alone received $ 300, 000
17:10
Speaker 1: to $ 400, 000, Australian dollars, to help build a home. And
17:16
Speaker 1: she would buy property of her own, a unit in
17:19
Speaker 1: Mount Waverly, and a place on Gibson Street in Leangatha,
17:23
Speaker 1: still being finished when she moved in. So, pretty generous,
17:27
Speaker 1: I'd say. And she called Gibson Street her final house,
17:30
Speaker 1: the place where her children would grow up and she'd
17:33
Speaker 1: grow old. But they lived with her only part-time under
17:36
Speaker 1: the shared custody agreement. And she wasn't working at that time.
17:40
Speaker 1: And she had actually deferred a place in a nursing
17:42
Speaker 1: and midwifery course because she was pretty comfortable from her
17:46
Speaker 1: assets saying, quote, I could afford to go to university
17:49
Speaker 1: and I didn't need to work a job at the
17:52
Speaker 1: same time, unquote. Teach the round. If you got it,
17:55
Speaker 1: why not? So on Mother's Day of 2023, Gail sent
17:58
Speaker 1: Aaron a text saying, quote, Happy Mother's Day, Aaron. May
18:02
Speaker 1: God bless you. Love, Dawn and Gail, unquote. And Aaron
18:06
Speaker 1: wrote back, quote, So regardless of Simon and Aaron's separation,
18:16
Speaker 1: the family was still really close-knit. But something awful was
18:21
Speaker 1: about to take place. So on Saturday, July 29th, 2023,
18:25
Speaker 1: Aaron invited five people to lunch at her home on
18:28
Speaker 1: Gibson Street. Simon, his parents, Dawn, and Gail, and Gail's sister, Heather.
18:33
Speaker 1: along with Heather's husband, Ian. So just that whole close-knit family.
18:38
Speaker 1: And it was to be an adults-only gathering. And Erin's
18:41
Speaker 1: kids were spending a day with a friend, so it
18:43
Speaker 1: was really just all the adults getting together for a
18:45
Speaker 1: nice lunch. But Erin had some news for the family,
18:50
Speaker 1: and the purpose of this gathering was medical. Because Erin
18:53
Speaker 1: told the family she was dealing with a health scare
18:56
Speaker 1: and needed help figuring out what to say to her children.
18:59
Speaker 1: And the night before, Simon texted to say he wouldn't
19:02
Speaker 1: be coming. And he would tell her he felt too
19:05
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to attend. But he offered to have the conversation
19:09
Speaker 1: over the phone if she still wanted his input. Now,
19:12
Speaker 1: Erin wrote back at length. because she had spent the
19:14
Speaker 1: entire week getting prepared mentally and getting the house ready
19:17
Speaker 1: and the meal and just everything. And she would say
19:20
Speaker 1: to him, quote, the work had been exhausting in light
19:22
Speaker 1: of the issue I'm facing, unquote. And she even said
19:25
Speaker 1: she'd put, quote, a small fortune toward Beef Eye Filet
19:29
Speaker 1: to make Beef Wellingtons because she wanted it to be
19:31
Speaker 1: a special meal. I may not be able to host
19:34
Speaker 1: a lunch like this again for some time, she would add, quote,
19:38
Speaker 1: it's important to me that you're all there tomorrow. I
19:41
Speaker 1: hope you change your mind, unquote. But Simon would never reply,
19:45
Speaker 1: and he would stay home, and his chair at the
19:48
Speaker 1: table would sit and But the remaining four guests arrived
19:52
Speaker 1: that Saturday, Dawn and Gail, Heather and Ian. And for
19:56
Speaker 1: the Wilkinsons especially, the invitation had carried real weight. They
20:01
Speaker 1: were very happy to be invited, and Ian had taken
20:04
Speaker 1: it as a hopeful signal, a sense that maybe our
20:07
Speaker 1: relationship with Aaron was going to improve, unquote. Because the
20:10
Speaker 1: family was still close, but the separation had caused, you know,
20:14
Speaker 1: some friction in the family, so everybody was just happy
20:16
Speaker 1: to be getting together. So before they sat down to eat,
20:19
Speaker 1: Erin took her guests on a tour of the house.
20:22
Speaker 1: And then once lunch was ready, Heather and Gail offered
20:25
Speaker 1: to bring the food out. So Erin would plate the
20:27
Speaker 1: portions and all the women would bring out the food together.
20:30
Speaker 1: Then they would bow their heads and say grace before
20:33
Speaker 1: the first bite. The conversation over the meal was light.
20:37
Speaker 1: Family talk, easy laughter, no one was in any sort
20:41
Speaker 1: of rush. The Wilkinsons ate their meal and Gail got
20:44
Speaker 1: through about half her portion before pushing the plate over
20:47
Speaker 1: to Don to finish. And between his own plate and hers,
20:50
Speaker 1: Don ate close to a serving and a half. And
20:53
Speaker 1: there was the teasing around the table about, quote, husbands
20:56
Speaker 1: helping their wives out by eating extra food, unquote. So
21:00
Speaker 1: the lunch was going really well. And then dessert was
21:03
Speaker 1: already waiting. And it was a cake Gail had baked.
21:06
Speaker 1: and a fruit platter Heather had prepared. And the group
21:09
Speaker 1: managed a little of each, but after the Wellingtons, there
21:11
Speaker 1: wasn't much appetite to go around. But once the plates
21:14
Speaker 1: were cleared, the mood of the afternoon changed. And Erin
21:18
Speaker 1: told the group she discovered a lump on her elbow.
21:21
Speaker 1: And she'd said it had been diagnosed as cancer. Quote,
21:25
Speaker 1: very serious, life-threatening, unquote. And Ian said she'd appeared, quote,
21:30
Speaker 1: very concerned, unquote, about what the diagnosis meant. And she
21:34
Speaker 1: asked for the guidance on whether to tell her children,
21:37
Speaker 1: and if so, how. So the news would settle over
21:41
Speaker 1: the room. A cancer diagnosis in this circle wasn't something
21:45
Speaker 1: anyone would carry alone. And Dawn was the first to respond.
21:49
Speaker 1: And he told her, quote, that the best approach was
21:52
Speaker 1: to be honest, unquote. And then they prayed, asking for
21:56
Speaker 1: God's blessing on Aaron. And they held her in that
21:59
Speaker 1: prayer the way they'd held each other through every hard
22:02
Speaker 1: chapter for nearly 20 years. And the afternoon wound down
22:06
Speaker 1: quietly after that. And the guests left sometime in the
22:08
Speaker 1: late afternoon, and Heather said that the food had been
22:12
Speaker 1: delicious and beautiful. So by every measure available to the
22:15
Speaker 1: people sitting at that table, it had been a warm Saturday.
22:19
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick pause to talk about something that
22:22
Speaker 1: is really hard, and that is trying something new. It
22:25
Speaker 1: can be pretty terrifying. I know when I launched this
22:28
Speaker 1: podcast and when Caleb and I launched Sour Boys, it
22:31
Speaker 1: was pretty daunting, just not knowing if it was going
22:34
Speaker 1: to work or not. But honestly, having a partner like
22:37
Speaker 1: Shopify has made the whole journey so much easier. Now Shopify,
22:41
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know, is the commerce
22:43
Speaker 1: platform behind millions of businesses around the world. About 10%
22:48
Speaker 1: of all e-commerce in the US, in fact. From household
22:51
Speaker 1: names like Allbirds and Skims to brands just getting started.
22:55
Speaker 1: And you get a full design studio with hundreds of
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Speaker 1: ready-to-use templates, AI tools that write your product descriptions and
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Speaker 1: even enhance your product photos, and that iconic purple shop
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Speaker 1: pay button. Which is why Shopify has the best converting
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Speaker 1: checkout on the planet. There's less abandoned carts and more sales.
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Speaker 1: So it's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify.
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Speaker 1: So sign up for your $ 1 per month trial today
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Speaker 1: at shopify.com slash cccm. Go to shopify.com slash cccm. Thank
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Speaker 1: you so much to Shopify for sponsoring the video and
23:29
Speaker 1: supporting the channel and helping with all of our businesses.
23:33
Speaker 1: And let's get back to it. But by nightfall, every
23:37
Speaker 1: one of them would fall ill. Diarrhea and vomiting started
23:41
Speaker 1: to set in after dark, and it wouldn't stop. Both
23:45
Speaker 1: couples spent long hours assuming it would pass, but by
23:49
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, it was clear it wouldn't. The Pattersons and
23:52
Speaker 1: the Wilkinsons compared symptoms by phone and realized all four
23:56
Speaker 1: of them were sick. Don and Gail actually called the ambulance,
24:01
Speaker 1: and they arrived at Corimbra Hospital at 10.10 a.m. on
24:05
Speaker 1: July 30th. And between the two of them, Don had
24:08
Speaker 1: taken the harder hit, and Simon drove the Wilkinsons to
24:11
Speaker 1: Leongatha Hospital at 10.57 a.m., a different hospital roughly 20
24:16
Speaker 1: minutes away because Corimbra didn't have the capacity for all
24:20
Speaker 1: four patients. But at both hospitals, the initial assessment was
24:24
Speaker 1: the same. Suspected food poisoning or gastroenteritis, which essentially is
24:29
Speaker 1: an inflamed stomach and intestine, often from infection. But all
24:34
Speaker 1: four patients were conscious and alert and able to talk.
24:38
Speaker 1: And from his hospital bed, Don walked the doctors through
24:41
Speaker 1: everything that happened at Saturday's lunch. But as he went on,
24:45
Speaker 1: he kept going downhill and his lactate levels climbed dangerously high.
24:50
Speaker 1: And his liver began failing, and signs of sepsis started
24:54
Speaker 1: to set in. And doctors realized that gastroenteritis alone couldn't
24:58
Speaker 1: explain what they were seeing. So toxicologists were consulted, and
25:02
Speaker 1: the symptoms pointed toward a specific culprit. Amanita phalloids. Death
25:08
Speaker 1: cap mushrooms. Now, death caps are behind more than 90%
25:12
Speaker 1: of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide, and they contain amatoxins, which
25:17
Speaker 1: are heat stable. Or in other words, cooking does nothing
25:21
Speaker 1: to neutralize them. So the poison makes its way to
25:24
Speaker 1: the liver after ingestion, and it locks onto the cells
25:28
Speaker 1: there and kills their ability to produce proteins. So the
25:32
Speaker 1: cells literally die and the organ follows. And the poisoning
25:37
Speaker 1: follows a very cruel pattern. First, violent stomach symptoms hit
25:42
Speaker 1: within six to 24 hours of eating. Then the patient
25:46
Speaker 1: seems to rally for roughly a day. And then three
25:49
Speaker 1: to five days after ingestion, the liver collapses along with
25:53
Speaker 1: other major organs afterwards. In other words, sepsis. And it
25:57
Speaker 1: takes remarkably little to have a devastating effect. Just 0.1
26:03
Speaker 1: milligrams per kilogram of body weight can be fatal. And
26:07
Speaker 1: one mushroom can take down a grown person. And in
26:10
Speaker 1: light of this discovery, the decision was made to move
26:14
Speaker 1: all four patients to major hospitals in Melbourne. because the
26:17
Speaker 1: rural facilities could not manage what was coming. Now, Erin
26:20
Speaker 1: had told Simon she'd also been sick since Saturday night,
26:24
Speaker 1: and she arrived at Leongatha Hospital on Monday morning at 8.05,
26:30
Speaker 1: and then was transferred to Menash Clayton later that day,
26:33
Speaker 1: but she would be discharged the next day. And six
26:37
Speaker 1: days after the lunch, on August 4th, Gail and Heather
26:41
Speaker 1: would pass away. Gail was 70 years old at the time,
26:45
Speaker 1: And Heather was 66 years old. And she had still
26:48
Speaker 1: been teaching that week, working with her English students right
26:52
Speaker 1: up until the end. And doctors listed the cause as
26:55
Speaker 1: liver dysfunction and cascading organ failure, all traced to Amanita
27:00
Speaker 1: mushroom toxicity. And by the time they died, their medical
27:03
Speaker 1: teams had already accepted that there was nothing more that
27:06
Speaker 1: they could do. And Don would receive a liver transplant
27:09
Speaker 1: in a last-ditch effort to help save him. But unfortunately,
27:13
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be enough. And Simon would say, quote, sadly,
27:17
Speaker 1: the rest of his body was already too sick to
27:19
Speaker 1: go on past that point, unquote. And Ian nearly suffered
27:23
Speaker 1: the same fate. And he had spent weeks in an
27:26
Speaker 1: induced coma. And he would also receive a liver transplant
27:30
Speaker 1: of his own. And he was taken off the ventilator
27:33
Speaker 1: on August 14th. So 54 days passed between his admission
27:37
Speaker 1: and and his release on September 23rd. And when news
27:41
Speaker 1: came of his release, his family spoke publicly for the
27:44
Speaker 1: first time, calling it a moment of immense relief and gratitude.
27:48
Speaker 1: And the following Sunday, the Baptist Church congregation gathered to
27:51
Speaker 1: support each other and pray for Ian's recovery. And local
27:55
Speaker 1: mayor Nathan Hersey spoke for the town. And the three
27:58
Speaker 1: who died, he said, were, quote, exceptional people who had
28:02
Speaker 1: given generously to the local community. unquote. And counselor Jenny
28:06
Speaker 1: Curie said, quote, we've lost a great store of kindness
28:09
Speaker 1: in Corimbra this weekend, unquote. So on August 31st, the
28:14
Speaker 1: memorial service for Don and Gail was held at Corimbra
28:17
Speaker 1: Memorial Hall, and hundreds of mourners filled the space. And
28:21
Speaker 1: tribute letters arrived from China, Botswana, and the United Kingdom,
28:25
Speaker 1: all saying Don and Gail were the most capable, kindest,
28:29
Speaker 1: and generous people they had ever met. And Simon stood
28:32
Speaker 1: before the crowd and read Gail's final words. And she
28:35
Speaker 1: had typed them from her bed at Dandingnong Hospital, one
28:39
Speaker 1: last message to the family group chat, quote unquote, lots
28:42
Speaker 1: of love to you all. And on October 4th, Heather
28:46
Speaker 1: had her own memorial service. And more than 400 people
28:50
Speaker 1: came to say goodbye. Ian stood among those mourners, frail
28:54
Speaker 1: and still deep in recovery. And it was his first
28:57
Speaker 1: public appearance since that lunch. The Victoria Police assigned its
29:01
Speaker 1: homicide squad to the case on August 4th, 2023, the
29:06
Speaker 1: same day Gail and Heather had passed away. And Detective
29:09
Speaker 1: Sergeant Luke Farrell led the search of Patterson's Leangatha home
29:13
Speaker 1: the following morning. And over the next three months, investigators
29:17
Speaker 1: pulled at every single thread. And what they found dismantled
29:21
Speaker 1: the picture. piece by piece. Now, the first alarm had
29:25
Speaker 1: sounded at the hospital when Dr. Chris Webster told Erin
29:29
Speaker 1: that Death Cat mushrooms may have been involved in her
29:32
Speaker 1: guest's poisoning. And he asked what kind of mushrooms she'd
29:36
Speaker 1: used in the meal. And she said Woolworth's, the supermarket chain.
29:39
Speaker 1: And Death cat mushrooms are not sold in supermarkets, obviously.
29:43
Speaker 1: And those kind of contradictions kept coming. And Erin's medical
29:47
Speaker 1: results showed no clinical or biochemical evidence of Amanita poisoning.
29:53
Speaker 1: And she had claimed to have eaten the same meal
29:56
Speaker 1: as her guest's, and to have become ill, but her
29:59
Speaker 1: blood work didn't reflect anything close to what the others
30:01
Speaker 1: were showing. And even her presence at the hospital began
30:04
Speaker 1: to look strange in retrospect. Nurse Cindy Monroe had treated
30:08
Speaker 1: the other lunch guests and was now treating Erin, saying, quote,
30:12
Speaker 1: she didn't look unwell like Ian and Heather. I recall
30:15
Speaker 1: Ian being so unwell, he could barely lift his head
30:18
Speaker 1: off the pillow. Erin was sitting up in bed in
30:21
Speaker 1: the trolley, unquote. And Erin had stayed about five minutes
30:24
Speaker 1: that Monday morning, despite her doctor's objections. She had gotten
30:28
Speaker 1: up and just walked out, saying she needed to feed
30:31
Speaker 1: the dogs and pack her daughter's ballet bag. And when
30:34
Speaker 1: she failed to return in an agreed 20-minute window, a
30:37
Speaker 1: concerned doctor at the hospital contacted police. And that was
30:41
Speaker 1: the first time anyone in a position of authority had
30:44
Speaker 1: treated the lunch as something other than a medical event.
30:48
Speaker 1: And investigators began to suspect that her brief hospital appearance
30:51
Speaker 1: had never been about getting treatment. It had been about
30:55
Speaker 1: being seen as sick. And her behavior the day before
30:58
Speaker 1: only reinforced the suspicion. So on Sunday, while Dawn and
31:02
Speaker 1: Gail were on their way to Corimbra Hospital, while the
31:05
Speaker 1: Wilkinsons were arriving at Leangatha, Erin had told Simon she'd
31:10
Speaker 1: had diarrhea since Saturday night. And that same afternoon, she
31:14
Speaker 1: had loaded her son into the car and driven him
31:17
Speaker 1: to a flying lesson in Tyab. And the drive was
31:19
Speaker 1: more than an hour each way. So after her transfer
31:23
Speaker 1: to Menash Clayton, Simon's sister-in-law, Tanya, came to visit. And
31:27
Speaker 1: Tanya told Aaron the others were going downhill quickly. And
31:32
Speaker 1: Aaron pivoted. And she asked about taking her children on
31:36
Speaker 1: a boat cruise. And Simon would later say that through
31:39
Speaker 1: all of it, Aaron, quote unquote, never actually asked about
31:43
Speaker 1: how his relatives were doing. And then there was the
31:46
Speaker 1: question of the children. At the hospital, she had told
31:49
Speaker 1: staff her kids had eaten leftover wellingtons, but she said
31:52
Speaker 1: she'd scraped off all the mushroom before giving it to them.
31:56
Speaker 1: And Nurse Monroe warned that toxins could have seeped straight
31:59
Speaker 1: through the mushroom and into the beef. And Erin resisted
32:02
Speaker 1: bringing the children in, saying, quote, they did not eat
32:05
Speaker 1: the mushrooms. I just don't want them to be panicked
32:07
Speaker 1: and stressed, unquote. She eventually agreed, and the children were
32:11
Speaker 1: kept overnight and found not to be ill, luckily. So
32:15
Speaker 1: the implication landed quietly. Erin, by her own account, had
32:19
Speaker 1: already known which part of the food was dangerous, and
32:23
Speaker 1: she had scraped it away from her children's portions. And
32:27
Speaker 1: she went public with a story. And Erin told the
32:29
Speaker 1: media that Beef Wellington's had contained store-bought mushrooms along with
32:33
Speaker 1: dried ones from an Asian grocery shop somewhere around Mount Waverly. Quote,
32:38
Speaker 1: I am now devastated to think that these mushrooms may
32:41
Speaker 1: have contributed to the illness suffered by my loved ones, unquote,
32:44
Speaker 1: she told the media. And she also addressed reporters in
32:47
Speaker 1: a doorstep interview at the Leangatha home after police described
32:52
Speaker 1: her as a suspect. saying, quote-unquote, I didn't do anything,
32:55
Speaker 1: she said. I loved them. And health authorities moved quickly.
32:59
Speaker 1: And over the course of a couple days, a City
33:02
Speaker 1: of Menash public health officer named Troy Schankenecht hit every
33:06
Speaker 1: Asian and Indian grocery store he could find in Oakley
33:10
Speaker 1: and Clayton and Mount Waverly. And not one sold anything
33:14
Speaker 1: matching her description. And she had no name for the shop.
33:18
Speaker 1: and no address and no way to send investigators anywhere
33:21
Speaker 1: near it. So it looked like the shop didn't really exist.
33:26
Speaker 1: And then the footage surfaced and CCTV showed Aaron pulling
33:30
Speaker 1: into the Coonwara transfer station on August 2nd, four days
33:36
Speaker 1: after the lunch. So her guests were fighting for their
33:39
Speaker 1: lives in intensive care units across Melbourne, and she was
33:42
Speaker 1: at the local tip carrying a Sunbeam food dehydrator into
33:46
Speaker 1: the electronics waste shed. And police would recover it from
33:50
Speaker 1: the dump two days later, and her fingerprints were on
33:53
Speaker 1: the device. And forensic testing found traces of death cap
33:57
Speaker 1: mushroom inside. And her first response to detectives was flat denials.
34:02
Speaker 1: She said she didn't own a food dehydrator, never had,
34:05
Speaker 1: but her own friend had already given police screenshots from
34:10
Speaker 1: a Facebook group conversation and the photos showed mushrooms arranged
34:14
Speaker 1: across the trays of a dehydrator. Maybe if you're doing
34:21
Speaker 1: something bad, don't post it on Facebook or do, you know,
34:24
Speaker 1: it's good that she did. That's crazy. And she would
34:28
Speaker 1: eventually have to admit the truth saying, quote, I knew
34:32
Speaker 1: that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator,
34:35
Speaker 1: and I just panicked, unquote. And detectives identified two phones
34:39
Speaker 1: in Patterson's possession. The first was the device she'd been
34:43
Speaker 1: carrying in the weeks leading up to the lunch. And
34:45
Speaker 1: the last time it appeared on any footage was a
34:48
Speaker 1: hospital security camera on July 31st. And by the time
34:51
Speaker 1: investigators got inside the Gibson Street house on August 5th,
34:55
Speaker 1: the SIM card had already been pulled from that phone
34:58
Speaker 1: and dropped into a Nokia. And the movement log put
35:01
Speaker 1: the swap at 1 45 PM, which was while detectives
35:05
Speaker 1: were still working their way through the rooms. And the
35:08
Speaker 1: physical phone was never actually found. And the phone she
35:11
Speaker 1: did hand over had been factory reset four separate times
35:16
Speaker 1: during 2023. A little bit suspicious, I'd say. Sorry, that's
35:22
Speaker 1: the last time I'm going to do it, I swear.
35:24
Speaker 1: And once on August 2nd, the same day she drove
35:27
Speaker 1: to the tip with the dehydrator. And once again, August 5th,
35:31
Speaker 1: while police were conducting the search. And then once more
35:35
Speaker 1: after investigators already had it in their possession. someone triggered
35:39
Speaker 1: a remote wipe while it was sitting in an evidence room.
35:42
Speaker 1: Detectives also seized her desktop computer. A forensic officer ran
35:46
Speaker 1: keyword searches including death cap, death cap mushroom, and poison,
35:52
Speaker 1: and the cached data turned up iNaturalist, a citizen science site.
35:57
Speaker 1: And people log where they've spotted different species of plants
36:01
Speaker 1: and fungi in the wild, including death caps. The trail
36:05
Speaker 1: stretched back more than a year before the lunch. And
36:08
Speaker 1: someone using that machine had gone looking for death cat
36:11
Speaker 1: mushroom sightings around Moorabbin back in 2022. And when confronted,
36:16
Speaker 1: Patterson said she couldn't recall visiting the site. And then added, quote, well,
36:20
Speaker 1: somebody did. And that somebody could have been me, unquote.
36:24
Speaker 1: Why are you even saying, just say you did it.
36:27
Speaker 1: What do you put, okay. And her phone records pointed
36:30
Speaker 1: in that same direction. And cell tower data placed her
36:33
Speaker 1: device near the town of Outrim on May 22nd, 2023.
36:36
Speaker 1: And the day before, a mushroom specialist had flagged a
36:40
Speaker 1: death cap sighting on Nielsen Street through iNaturalist. The puzzle
36:45
Speaker 1: pieces are puzzling together. And her phone also connected to
36:49
Speaker 1: towers near the town of Locke on April 28th, around
36:52
Speaker 1: the same time she purchased the Dehydrator. And photographs were
36:56
Speaker 1: pulled from her tablet with photos of death caps sitting
37:00
Speaker 1: right there on her kitchen scale. And it was photographed
37:04
Speaker 1: like someone was measuring out portions. And as a cherry
37:09
Speaker 1: on top, or should I say mushroom, The cancer she
37:12
Speaker 1: disclosed to her guests that Saturday afternoon was all so fabricated.
37:18
Speaker 1: Doctors went through her medical records and an intensive care
37:21
Speaker 1: specialist couldn't find a single thing pointing to cancer. No diagnosis, nothing.
37:27
Speaker 1: Erin's name was absent from the Victorian Cancer Registry. a
37:31
Speaker 1: database that captures every cancer diagnosis in the state. And
37:34
Speaker 1: the lump on her elbow, the very serious life-threatening condition,
37:38
Speaker 1: the request for her family's guidance, the prayer they had
37:41
Speaker 1: said over her, all of it built on a story
37:45
Speaker 1: that had zero foundation. So the lunch itself began to
37:50
Speaker 1: look pretty different too. And Simon told investigators that Erin
37:54
Speaker 1: almost never hosted. He called guests at the Gibson Street
37:59
Speaker 1: property very rare. And Heather and Ian had never set
38:03
Speaker 1: foot there before that Saturday, hence why she gave them
38:06
Speaker 1: a tour of the house. And if the family ever
38:09
Speaker 1: got together, it was at somebody else's place. So the
38:12
Speaker 1: effort she had poured into the meal, a week of preparation,
38:16
Speaker 1: beef eye filet, individual wellingtons, now stood out against the
38:20
Speaker 1: backdrop of someone who never had people over. And Ian's
38:24
Speaker 1: account of that house tour came back too. Heather had
38:28
Speaker 1: been particularly eager to see the pantry. and she had
38:31
Speaker 1: a pantry project of her own at home and wanted
38:33
Speaker 1: to see Aaron's layout. But according to Ian, Aaron had
38:36
Speaker 1: been very reluctant about the visit to the pantry. And
38:40
Speaker 1: then there was the plating. Heather and Gail had both
38:43
Speaker 1: volunteered to help serve, and Aaron had turned them away.
38:47
Speaker 1: And she plated every dish herself, but let them take
38:50
Speaker 1: it out after she was done. And the plates became
38:53
Speaker 1: evidence in their own right. Because the four guests had
38:56
Speaker 1: been served on large gray plates. And Erin had carried
39:00
Speaker 1: her own plate separately to the table. And hers was
39:03
Speaker 1: a different color. It was like an orange tan color.
39:07
Speaker 1: And Heather actually made note of it in the car
39:09
Speaker 1: on the way to the hospital, that that was kind
39:12
Speaker 1: of odd. So as the investigation widened, the woman behind
39:15
Speaker 1: those clues began to come into focus. And almost nothing
39:19
Speaker 1: about her matched what the Patterson family had thought they knew.
39:24
Speaker 1: Investigators recovered private Facebook messages she'd sent to a circle
39:28
Speaker 1: of online friends. And the child she had presented as
39:31
Speaker 1: quietly middle class, she had described very differently in those messages, saying, quote,
39:37
Speaker 1: Mom was essentially a cold robot, unquote, she had written. Unquote,
39:42
Speaker 1: it was like being brought up in a Russian orphanage
39:45
Speaker 1: where they don't touch babies, unquote. And she described her
39:48
Speaker 1: father as a man who, quote, wanted to be warm
39:51
Speaker 1: and loving to us, but mom wouldn't let him because
39:54
Speaker 1: it would spoil us, so he did as he was told.
39:57
Speaker 1: And she would shout at him if he did the
39:59
Speaker 1: wrong thing, so he became very meek and compliant. and
40:02
Speaker 1: my sister and I would hide in our room most
40:05
Speaker 1: of the time so we couldn't do anything wrong, unquote.
40:09
Speaker 1: And a neighbor who had known Heather Scudder for years
40:11
Speaker 1: described her differently, saying, quote, a lovely woman, as was
40:16
Speaker 1: her husband, unquote. So there's those two portraits, the public
40:20
Speaker 1: one and the private one. They didn't match. And old
40:23
Speaker 1: details took on a new weight. Because remember, Erin's parents
40:27
Speaker 1: hadn't attended her wedding to Simon in 2007. And when
40:31
Speaker 1: asked at the time, she had said they were on
40:35
Speaker 1: a train in Russia. There was no other explanation other
40:38
Speaker 1: than that, so we can safely assume she was not
40:40
Speaker 1: remotely close with her parents. And then there was also
40:44
Speaker 1: a documented history of deception that almost no one close
40:47
Speaker 1: to her had heard about. Because in 2002, during her
40:50
Speaker 1: brief career as an air traffic controller at Air Services Australia,
40:54
Speaker 1: management had grown suspicious of her hours. And they had
40:57
Speaker 1: reviewed security cameras in the employee car park, And she
41:00
Speaker 1: had actually been clocking full shifts on paper while routinely
41:04
Speaker 1: walking out early, which is horrifying to think about because
41:07
Speaker 1: she's an air traffic controller in charge of hundreds of lives.
41:11
Speaker 1: And when confronted, she just flat out denied it. And
41:14
Speaker 1: then management ran her through the timestamps from the footage
41:18
Speaker 1: one by one, and she couldn't really say anything otherwise.
41:22
Speaker 1: And by November 2002, she no longer worked there. And
41:26
Speaker 1: in 2004, she had been convicted of property damage and
41:29
Speaker 1: multiple traffic offenses, using an unregistered vehicle on a highway,
41:35
Speaker 1: failing to stop after an accident, and driving 35 kilometers
41:38
Speaker 1: per hour over the speed limit. And her former co-workers
41:42
Speaker 1: from the air traffic control tower, who had been guarded
41:45
Speaker 1: in their earlier statements, began to speak more openly now.
41:50
Speaker 1: The woman they described was far sharper edge than the
41:53
Speaker 1: earlier impressions had let on. And one former colleague called
41:57
Speaker 1: her a ritual habitual and pathological liar, who would just
42:03
Speaker 1: say anything just to get away with anything. And others
42:07
Speaker 1: were less measured, saying, quote, a bit strange or a loner,
42:12
Speaker 1: someone who didn't engage with anyone very secretive about her family.
42:17
Speaker 1: And multiple men in the tower had once been smitten
42:20
Speaker 1: with her, and she managed to get guys wrapped around
42:23
Speaker 1: her little finger, as one of them would put it.
42:27
Speaker 1: And during her time at Air Services Australia... She had
42:30
Speaker 1: earned a nickname among staff, which was quote-unquote Scudder the Nutter,
42:35
Speaker 1: after her maiden name. And the manager, who once called
42:37
Speaker 1: her smart, very smart, as we talked about before, had
42:41
Speaker 1: added something to his fuller statement. Almost too smart. And
42:46
Speaker 1: then there was the bookshop. Because for a stretch, in
42:49
Speaker 1: 2011 and 2012, Erin had run a secondhand bookshop in Pemberton,
42:54
Speaker 1: a tiny timber milling town in Western Australia. And the
42:57
Speaker 1: shop had fed a long-running personal fascination of hers, true crime.
43:01
Speaker 1: And she had been deeply interested in the genre for years,
43:06
Speaker 1: reading widely, immersing herself deeply. in cases long before she
43:10
Speaker 1: ever found herself at the center of one. And finally,
43:13
Speaker 1: there was the relationship she had told everyone was loving
43:16
Speaker 1: and warm. Investigators recovered another cluster of Facebook messages, and
43:20
Speaker 1: these ones were about Dawn and Gail. And in late 2022,
43:25
Speaker 1: a dispute over child support had cracked the surface of
43:28
Speaker 1: the family, and Simon's tax return had listed him as separated,
43:33
Speaker 1: something he blamed on a mistake from his accountant and
43:36
Speaker 1: Aaron who quote-unquote, took great exception, and the change triggered
43:40
Speaker 1: a formal process that upended the formal arrangements they had
43:43
Speaker 1: kept for years around school fees and family expenses. So
43:47
Speaker 1: the numbers made the sting feel worse, and Simon's child
43:49
Speaker 1: support was assessed at $ 38 a month. Meanwhile, the change
43:54
Speaker 1: in status cost Erin her eligibility for government family tax
43:58
Speaker 1: benefit payments, roughly $ 15, 000 a year. because her inheritance put
44:03
Speaker 1: her above the threshold once the formal process kicked in.
44:06
Speaker 1: And even Simon recognized the gap. And he acknowledged that
44:09
Speaker 1: the low assessment was likely why Erin had become so upset.
44:14
Speaker 1: And there had also been the matter of Gail's 70th
44:16
Speaker 1: birthday lunch at the Top Pub in Corimbra. And Erin
44:20
Speaker 1: said the invitation she received had felt like it came
44:23
Speaker 1: as an afterthought. So Don had picked up the phone
44:27
Speaker 1: afterward and called her to talk it over. And he
44:29
Speaker 1: called it an oversight and said he genuinely wanted her
44:32
Speaker 1: at the table. And when the school fees fight intensified,
44:35
Speaker 1: Erin had gone over Simon's head. And she had actually
44:39
Speaker 1: taken it directly to Dawn and Gail, asking them to
44:41
Speaker 1: help the two of them talk it out. Quote, I
44:44
Speaker 1: thought that if Simon knew that Dawn and Gail knew
44:47
Speaker 1: how he was behaving, he might change his behavior, unquote.
44:50
Speaker 1: And Dawn has suggested she pray with Simon and withdraw
44:53
Speaker 1: the child support claims. And Erin's reaction as she told
44:57
Speaker 1: her Facebook friends, quote, my head nearly exploded and I
45:01
Speaker 1: was like, what? And Dawn and Gail had eventually told
45:04
Speaker 1: her they, quote, didn't want to get involved in financial matters, unquote.
45:08
Speaker 1: And by December 2022, the friction had escalated to what
45:11
Speaker 1: Simon called an extremely aggressive exchange and to the point
45:15
Speaker 1: that he considered bringing in a mediator. And in private
45:19
Speaker 1: messages to friends on Facebook, her frustration was unfiltered, saying, quote,
45:23
Speaker 1: This family, I swear to God, I thought his parents
45:27
Speaker 1: would want him to do the right thing, but it
45:29
Speaker 1: seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable and
45:32
Speaker 1: not wanting to get involved in their son's personal matters
45:35
Speaker 1: are overriding that, so them. And she would later insist
45:39
Speaker 1: the messages were nothing more than venting. Quote, I had
45:42
Speaker 1: a good relationship with Dawn and Gail, unquote. And Simon's brother, Matthew,
45:47
Speaker 1: had also noticed something. And Erin had stopped coming to
45:50
Speaker 1: some family events entirely. And at others, she would barely stay.
45:54
Speaker 1: And the warm Mother's Day text from May 2023, sent
45:58
Speaker 1: three months before that devastating lunch, had been delivered against
46:02
Speaker 1: a backdrop the Pattersons never knew existed. She was starting
46:05
Speaker 1: to try to build up that relationship again to make
46:08
Speaker 1: them want to come to a lunch that she was
46:10
Speaker 1: eventually going to host. So it was just a long
46:14
Speaker 1: game for Aaron. So on the morning of November 2nd, 2023,
46:19
Speaker 1: police arrived at Aaron's door with technology detector dogs, trained
46:23
Speaker 1: to locate hidden electronics like USB drives. I didn't know
46:26
Speaker 1: these existed. That's awesome. And Erin was placed under arrest.
46:31
Speaker 1: And Homicide Squad Detective Inspector Dean Thomas acknowledged the case
46:34
Speaker 1: had been subjected to incredibly intense levels of public scrutiny.
46:38
Speaker 1: And she was charged with three counts of murder for
46:40
Speaker 1: the deaths of Dawn Patterson, Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson.
46:44
Speaker 1: And five counts of attempted murder were filed alongside them.
46:48
Speaker 1: Two related to that July lunch. One for Ian Wilkinson,
46:51
Speaker 1: who had survived. And one for Simon, who had been invited...
46:55
Speaker 1: but stayed home. And now we realize why he stayed home,
46:58
Speaker 1: because they were not getting along at all. And the
47:02
Speaker 1: other three alleged she had attempted to murder Simon on
47:05
Speaker 1: separate occasions across 2021 and 2022. Let's take a quick
47:10
Speaker 1: pause to talk about something that nobody really talks about,
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47:22
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47:26
Speaker 1: my bank account in a coffee shop without it and
47:28
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47:32
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Speaker 1: now Surfshark is the first app I open. And here's
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Speaker 1: why I love it, because one subscription covers unlimited devices.
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Speaker 1: So My laptop, my phone, my husband's phone, all of it.
47:47
Speaker 1: It runs on basically everything. PC, Mac, iOS, Android, smart TVs,
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Speaker 1: even Xbox. And the email scam checker has flagged sketchy
47:55
Speaker 1: phishing attempts in my inbox more than once. And their
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48:02
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48:28
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Surfshark for protecting me on
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Speaker 1: the internet and for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel.
48:34
Speaker 1: And let's get back to it. So the trial opened
48:36
Speaker 1: on April 29th, 2025 inside the Supreme Court of Victoria,
48:41
Speaker 1: sitting at the Latrobe Valley Courts in Morwell. And the
48:44
Speaker 1: courtroom sat in a small town. The home where the
48:47
Speaker 1: lunch had taken place was less than an hour's drive away.
48:51
Speaker 1: And Justice Christopher Beal presided. And before the first witness
48:54
Speaker 1: was called, the charges had already shifted. And prosecutors dropped
48:59
Speaker 1: every count connected to Simon Patterson. And the three attempted
49:03
Speaker 1: murder charges alleging she had poisoned him on separate occasions
49:06
Speaker 1: in 2021 and 2022 were now gone. And so was
49:10
Speaker 1: the charge that she had tried to kill him at
49:13
Speaker 1: the July lunch. But what remained was the three counts
49:16
Speaker 1: of murder for Dawn Patterson, Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson.
49:21
Speaker 1: One count of attempted murder for Ian Wilkinson. And Erin
49:25
Speaker 1: pleaded not guilty to all charges because she's an evil
49:29
Speaker 1: piece of shit, as we now know. And the evidence
49:31
Speaker 1: phase alone consumed seven weeks, followed by six days of
49:35
Speaker 1: closing arguments and six and a half days behind the
49:38
Speaker 1: jury room door. And over those weeks, the courtroom heard
49:41
Speaker 1: two entirely different versions of the same woman. Prosecutor Nanette
49:46
Speaker 1: Rogers SC built her case around what she called Four
49:50
Speaker 1: calculated deceptions. First, a fabricated cancer diagnosis invented to lure
49:56
Speaker 1: the victims to a table. Second, death cap mushrooms placed
50:00
Speaker 1: into the Beep Wellingtons in quantities meant to kill. And
50:04
Speaker 1: Rogers pointed to the photographs recovered from Patterson's tablet, which
50:07
Speaker 1: were death caps on a set of kitchen scales. Doesn't
50:10
Speaker 1: get much more guilty than that. And fungi specialist Tom
50:13
Speaker 1: May had examined them and identified the mushrooms as amanita phalloids,
50:17
Speaker 1: quote unquote, with a high level of confidence. And Rogers
50:21
Speaker 1: argued Patterson had weighed the mushrooms to calculate the weight
50:24
Speaker 1: required for the administration of fatal dose for one person
50:28
Speaker 1: and the weight required for five fatal doses for five people, unquote.
50:33
Speaker 1: And third, a staged hospital visit meant to mimic poisoning
50:37
Speaker 1: symptoms she never had. And fourth, weeks of deliberate evidence
50:42
Speaker 1: destruction designed to keep anyone from finding out what she
50:46
Speaker 1: had done. The definition of premeditation is, and post-tampering. And
50:52
Speaker 1: then Erin took the stand, and she testified for eight days.
50:58
Speaker 1: She gave ground where she had to. Death cap mushrooms
51:02
Speaker 1: must have been in the meal, because she had foraged
51:05
Speaker 1: for wild mushrooms since 2019. And she had bought the dehydrator,
51:09
Speaker 1: then dumped it while her guests fought for their lives.
51:13
Speaker 1: And the cancer announcement was a fabrication. and she had
51:16
Speaker 1: factory reset her phone to hide photos of mushrooms and
51:19
Speaker 1: the dehydrator, and the hostile Facebook messages about Dawn and
51:22
Speaker 1: Gale were hers, though she dismissed them as simply venting.
51:27
Speaker 1: But on everything else, she held firm. She had never
51:30
Speaker 1: deliberately sought out death cap mushrooms, and she had never
51:33
Speaker 1: traveled to Locke to collect them, and she had never
51:36
Speaker 1: used iNaturalist to track where they grew... And she never
51:40
Speaker 1: weighed them to calculate a fatal dose. And on the
51:43
Speaker 1: cancer claim, she offered an alternative. She had led the
51:46
Speaker 1: group to believe she might be needing some treatment, she said.
51:50
Speaker 1: But the real issue had been an embarrassment over a
51:53
Speaker 1: gastric bypass consultation. And prosecutor Rogers pressed her. And she
51:57
Speaker 1: suggested Aaron had never planned to account for the cancer
52:00
Speaker 1: story because she had never expected to need to, quote,
52:05
Speaker 1: because you thought that the lunch guests would die, unquote.
52:08
Speaker 1: And quote, unquote, that's not true. Aaron would answer, but
52:12
Speaker 1: it is. You felt like you didn't have to account
52:14
Speaker 1: for any of this because you thought all of your
52:17
Speaker 1: victims would die. But luckily, one did not. And thank
52:21
Speaker 1: goodness he didn't. And the prosecution also called Simon Patterson
52:25
Speaker 1: to the stand. And he walked the jury through the
52:28
Speaker 1: crumbling marriage, the private hostility, and the night he had
52:31
Speaker 1: turned down the lunch invitation. And then Ian Wilkinson testified
52:36
Speaker 1: as well, the only person who had eaten the mushrooms
52:39
Speaker 1: at that table and survived. And he recounted the gray plates,
52:43
Speaker 1: the odd colored plate Erin had carried to her own seat,
52:47
Speaker 1: and the offer to help serve that she had turned away.
52:51
Speaker 1: And he described Aaron as someone who, quote, And the
52:54
Speaker 1: relationship had been, quote, unquote, And he told the court
52:57
Speaker 1: what he had told the police. He had been happy
53:08
Speaker 1: about the lunch invitation, hopeful it might improve the relationship
53:12
Speaker 1: with Aaron. Defense counsel Colin Mandy SC offered a simpler story.
53:17
Speaker 1: What happened was a tragedy, a terrible accident. Aaron's lies,
53:22
Speaker 1: he argued, had been born from shock, not planning. She
53:26
Speaker 1: panicked because she was overwhelmed by the fact that these
53:29
Speaker 1: four people had become so ill because of the food
53:31
Speaker 1: that she'd served them. Not buying it, but keep going.
53:35
Speaker 1: And on motive, he pointed to its absence. She had
53:39
Speaker 1: no money issues, lived in a big house, and had
53:42
Speaker 1: almost full-time custody of her two young children. But in
53:45
Speaker 1: the closing, Rogers, the prosecutor, told the jury they did
53:49
Speaker 1: not need to know why. Quote, you do not have
53:52
Speaker 1: to be satisfied what the motive was or even that
53:56
Speaker 1: there was one, unquote. The why was unnecessary to convict.
54:00
Speaker 1: Because guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, doesn't necessarily mean that
54:04
Speaker 1: they have to have a motive. There just needs to
54:06
Speaker 1: be evidence as to if they did it, right? Motive helps,
54:10
Speaker 1: but it is not necessary. So on July 7th, 2025,
54:14
Speaker 1: the jury came back and all 12 members were in agreement.
54:19
Speaker 1: Guilty on every count. Just a round of applause for
54:25
Speaker 1: that jury. Three murders, one attempted murder, and media crews
54:29
Speaker 1: flooded the courthouse within minutes. And by then, the trial
54:33
Speaker 1: had become an international story. And sentencing came on September 8th,
54:37
Speaker 1: and Justice Beal handed down three concurrent life sentences for
54:41
Speaker 1: murder and 25 years for attempted murder. And the non-parole
54:45
Speaker 1: period was 33 years. And Erin, at this point, was
54:49
Speaker 1: 50 years old. And she won't be eligible for parole
54:52
Speaker 1: until 2056, when she'll be in her 80s. And Beale
54:57
Speaker 1: called her crimes, quote, And he identified five aggravating factors.
55:08
Speaker 1: substantial premeditation, an elaborate cover-up, a lack of pity, and
55:13
Speaker 1: the suffering of her victims and the betrayal of trust.
55:16
Speaker 1: And she had said nothing to the doctors fighting to
55:19
Speaker 1: save her guests. And never once she revealed what she
55:23
Speaker 1: had put in their food. Quote, unquote. And her complete
55:26
Speaker 1: absence of remorse, he added, quote, pour salt into all
55:41
Speaker 1: the victim's wounds, unquote. And the hearing ran almost 50
55:44
Speaker 1: minutes and was broadcast live. And the court received 28
55:48
Speaker 1: victim impact statements. Seven were read aloud. and Simon was
55:53
Speaker 1: absent from the hearing. And a relative read his words
55:56
Speaker 1: to the court. Quote, his children have been robbed of
55:59
Speaker 1: hope for the kind of relationship with their mother that
56:01
Speaker 1: every child naturally yearns for, unquote. And Ruth Dubois, one
56:05
Speaker 1: of the Wilkinsons' daughters, named the broader victims. Medical staff, investigators,
56:10
Speaker 1: shop owners, mushroom growers, the health department, and taxpayers all
56:15
Speaker 1: pulled into the aftermath. Quote, I am horrified that our
56:18
Speaker 1: family is even associated with through no choice of our own,
56:22
Speaker 1: with such destructive behavior towards the community, unquote. And Erin
56:26
Speaker 1: gave almost nothing away. And for most of the hearing,
56:29
Speaker 1: her eyes were closed. And when they were open, she
56:32
Speaker 1: looked at nothing. Because she is nothing. She's just an
56:36
Speaker 1: evil shit stain in this world, who I hope is
56:40
Speaker 1: having a terrible time rotting in jail. And Ian Wilkinson
56:45
Speaker 1: may have survived the lunch, but his body never came
56:48
Speaker 1: back to the way it had been before. And his
56:50
Speaker 1: liver function remains diminished, And respiratory problems followed him out
56:55
Speaker 1: of the hospital and never left. And he lives in Victoria,
56:58
Speaker 1: supported by the same church community that had held him
57:01
Speaker 1: up for decades. And he lost his wife of 44 years.
57:05
Speaker 1: And he lost the couple he had described as the
57:08
Speaker 1: closest people to him after his wife and family. And quote,
57:12
Speaker 1: my life is greatly impoverished without them. And he told
57:15
Speaker 1: the court, quote, it's a truly horrible thought to live
57:19
Speaker 1: with that somebody could decide to take her life. I
57:22
Speaker 1: only feel half alive without her, unquote. Oh my God.
57:30
Speaker 1: It's just so heartbreaking. I just, I don't understand how
57:33
Speaker 1: someone could take somebody away. Like that. It's just, it's
57:38
Speaker 1: so devastating. And when given the chance to speak about
57:40
Speaker 1: the woman who poisoned him, he chose an unexpected path.
57:45
Speaker 1: And that path was forgiveness. And he offered it publicly
57:48
Speaker 1: and carefully, but only what was his to give. Because
57:52
Speaker 1: he could forgive the harm that was done to him.
57:54
Speaker 1: What had been done to the others, he said, was
57:56
Speaker 1: beyond his power to absolve. And he had one prayer
57:59
Speaker 1: for Erin. And that was, quote, that she will use
58:02
Speaker 1: her time in jail wisely to become a better person.
58:06
Speaker 1: And outside the courthouse, after it was done, he spoke
58:09
Speaker 1: to the press. And he thanked the police and the
58:11
Speaker 1: hospital workers for their efforts. And then he said what
58:14
Speaker 1: mattered to him most. Quote, I'd like to encourage all
58:18
Speaker 1: those involved to keep turning up and serving others. Our
58:21
Speaker 1: lives and the life of our community depends on the
58:24
Speaker 1: kindness of others, unquote. Aaron and Simon's two children live
58:28
Speaker 1: under a legal suppression order, and their identities are sealed
58:31
Speaker 1: from public view, but they're believed to be in their
58:33
Speaker 1: father's care. And court records noted they had, quote, settled
58:37
Speaker 1: into a new school better than expected, unquote. And Simon's
58:41
Speaker 1: victim impact statement noted that his children live in an
58:44
Speaker 1: irreparably broken home with only a solo parent. When almost
58:48
Speaker 1: everyone else knows their mother murdered their grandparents. And the
58:52
Speaker 1: media hasn't let them breathe. And the Patterson and Wilkinson
58:55
Speaker 1: family still carry the lasting damage of what happened. And
58:59
Speaker 1: one of the victim impact statements came from Dawn Patterson's mother.
59:03
Speaker 1: She was 100 years old. She outlived her own son.
59:07
Speaker 1: So Erin is serving her sentence, at the Dame Phyllis
59:11
Speaker 1: Frost Center, a maximum security women's prison in Melbourne. And
59:15
Speaker 1: she spends at least 22 hours of every day inside
59:18
Speaker 1: her cell. But the case isn't over, and two appeals
59:22
Speaker 1: sit before the Victorian Court of Appeal. And Erin filed
59:25
Speaker 1: them on November 3rd, 2025, seeking to have the guilty
59:28
Speaker 1: verdicts quashed and a retrial ordered. The point at the
59:32
Speaker 1: center of her case is during deliberations, the jury panel
59:36
Speaker 1: was booked into the same accommodation where police and members
59:39
Speaker 1: of the prosecution team were also staying. And she argues
59:43
Speaker 1: that arrangement alone constituted a fundamental irregularity that fatally undermined
59:49
Speaker 1: the integrity of the verdicts. And she raised multiple grounds,
59:53
Speaker 1: challenges to the phone tower evidence and iNaturalist data linking
59:57
Speaker 1: her to death cap mushroom locations. a claim that Facebook
1:00:01
Speaker 1: messages from her private group should have been excluded from
1:00:03
Speaker 1: the trial, and an argument Justice Beal aired by refusing
1:00:07
Speaker 1: to admit images and videos from an SD card found
1:00:10
Speaker 1: at her home, and an allegation of unfair and oppressive
1:00:13
Speaker 1: cross-examination by the prosecutor, and a charge that the prosecution
1:00:18
Speaker 1: shifted its position on motive between its opening and closing addresses,
1:00:22
Speaker 1: having opened with no motive and then implied one. The
1:00:26
Speaker 1: prosecution filed its own appeal earlier on October 6, 2025,
1:00:31
Speaker 1: arguing the sentence was manifestly inadequate. And prosecutors contend Justice
1:00:36
Speaker 1: Beal erred in finding a substantial chance Aaron would remain
1:00:40
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement for years, and that this finding infected
1:00:44
Speaker 1: his assessment of the non-parole period. Both sides must first
1:00:49
Speaker 1: seek leave to appeal. Three court of appeal judges will
1:00:53
Speaker 1: hear both if leave is granted. And if Erin's appeal succeeds,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: the court may acquit her or send the case back
1:01:00
Speaker 1: for retrial, which is insane to think. And if the
1:01:03
Speaker 1: prosecution's appeal succeeds, the court can impose a longer non-parole
1:01:07
Speaker 1: period or order a re-sentencing, which would probably be good
1:01:12
Speaker 1: because I feel like her sentencing wasn't adequate enough. But
1:01:15
Speaker 1: as of early 2026, no date has been set. And
1:01:18
Speaker 1: after the verdict, a gag order was lifted and testimony
1:01:22
Speaker 1: Simon had given at pretrial hearing became public. And he
1:01:25
Speaker 1: said he had turned down the lunch invitation because he
1:01:28
Speaker 1: believed she would poison him. And he described falling severely
1:01:32
Speaker 1: ill after eating food she had prepared on prior occasions.
1:01:36
Speaker 1: A penne bolognese pasta, a chicken korma curry, and a
1:01:40
Speaker 1: vegetable curry wrap. But the jury never heard any of it.
1:01:43
Speaker 1: And then there's the question that sits at the center
1:01:45
Speaker 1: of everything and has no answer, which is why. Prosecutors
1:01:50
Speaker 1: never offered a motive whatsoever. And they told the jury
1:01:53
Speaker 1: they didn't need one, which they don't. And Justice Beal
1:01:56
Speaker 1: wouldn't speculate. But there were frustrations. There were financial disputes.
1:02:00
Speaker 1: The slow erosion of a marriage and the sharper edges
1:02:03
Speaker 1: that followed. But none of it explains the leap from
1:02:06
Speaker 1: resentment to poisoning an entire family. But she planned for months,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: as we saw, tracked where death caps grew online, drove
1:02:14
Speaker 1: to the locations, bought a dehydrator, weighed the mushrooms on
1:02:17
Speaker 1: a kitchen scale, and folded them into a meal for
1:02:19
Speaker 1: people who loved her. Justice Beale found she intended to
1:02:23
Speaker 1: kill Simon too, had he shown up. Five intended victims.
1:02:27
Speaker 1: And when they started dying, she said nothing. She has
1:02:31
Speaker 1: never explained it. and she may never explain it. But
1:02:34
Speaker 1: Ian Wilkinson asked the only question worth asking, which was,
1:02:39
Speaker 1: foolishness possesses a person to think that murder could be
1:02:42
Speaker 1: the solution to their problems, especially the murder of people
1:02:46
Speaker 1: who have only good intentions towards her. A question no
1:02:50
Speaker 1: one can answer. And with that, that is the end
1:02:53
Speaker 1: of the mushroom murder case. As always, my heart goes
1:02:57
Speaker 1: out to the family. And I hope true justice is
1:03:00
Speaker 1: served and the prosecution's appeal goes forward. But let me
1:03:04
Speaker 1: know what other cases you would like me to dive into.
1:03:07
Speaker 1: I always read the comments. And until next time, please
1:03:09
Speaker 1: stay safe out there and I will see your beautiful
1:03:12
Speaker 1: face in the next one. Okay.