She has become a notorious figure of international interest, shamelessly exploited for news cycles, commercial worth and career advancement. After a trial lasting nine weeks, conducted at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell, Victoria, Erin Patterson, a stocky, thick set mother of two was found guilty for three murders and an attempted murder. Date: July 29, 2023 in the town of Leongatha. Her weapon in executing her plot of Sophoclean extravagance: death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides) served in a beef Wellington. Her targets: in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, and Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson. Of the four, only Ian survived the culinary killings – barely. Prudently, estranged husband Simon chose not to attend.
News outlets thought it useful to produce graphics about this Australian’s terminating exploits. CNN produced one with voyeuristic relish, making it appear much like a Midsomer Murders episode. Details aplenty are provided, including the gruesome end for the victims. “Gail and Heather died on August 4 [2023] from multiorgan failure, followed by Don on August 5 after he failed to respond to a liver transplant.” Fortunately, Ian Wilkinson survived, but the rumour mongering hack journalist can barely take it, almost regretful of that fact: “after almost two months of intensive treatment”, he was discharged.
Having an opinion on this case has become standard fare, amassing on a turd heap of supposition, second guessing and wonder. The range is positively Chaucerian in its village variety. The former court official interviewed about the killer’s guilty mind and poisoning stratagems, stating the obvious and dulling. The criminologist, keen on career advancement and pseudo-psychology, attempted to get into Patterson’s mind, commenting on her patent ordinariness.
One example of the latter is to be found in The Conversation, where we are told by Xanthe Mallett with platitudinous and forced certainty how Patterson, speaking days after the incident, “presented as your typical, average woman of 50.” If attempting to kill four people using fungi is a symptom of average, female ordinariness of a certain age, we all best start making our own meals. But Mallett thinks it is precisely that sense of the ordinary that led to a public obsession, a mania with crime and motivation. “The juxtaposition between the normality of a family lunch (and the sheer vanilla-ness of the accused) and the seriousness of the situation sent the media into overdrive.”
This is certainly not the view of Dr. Chris Webster, who answered the Leongatha Hospital doorbell when Patterson first presented. Realising her link to the other four victims suffering symptoms of fungi poisoning, Webster explained that death cap mushrooms were suspected. Asking Patterson where she got them, she replied with one word: “Woolworths.” This was enough for the doctor to presume guilt, an attitude which certainly gave one of Australia’s most ruthless supermarket chains a graceful pardon. “She was evil and very smart to have planned it all and carried out but didn’t quite dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.”
The marketer, thrilled with branding and promotion, suggests how Patterson Inc. can become an ongoing concern of merchandise, plays and scripts. (Think of a shirt sporting the following: “I ate beef Wellington and survived”.) The ABC did not waste much time commissioning Toxic, a show created by Elise McCredie and Tony Ayres, aided by ABC podcaster Rachel Brown. Ayres hams it up by saying that, “True stories ask storytellers to probe the complexities of human behaviour. What really lies beneath the headlines? It’s both a challenge and a responsibility to go beyond the surface – to reveal, not just to sensationalise.” Given that this project is a child of frothy publicity born from sensationalism and hysteria, the comment is almost touching.
The media prompts and updates, mischaracterising Patterson as “The Mushroom Murderer”, leave the impression that she really did like killing fungi. But an absolute monster must be found, and the press hounds duly found it. Papers like the Herald Sun preferred the old Rupert Murdoch tactic: till the soil to surface level to find requisite dirt. According to a grimy bit of reporting from that most distinguished of Melbourne rags, “the callous murderer, whose maiden name was Scutter before marrying Simon Patterson in 2007, was secretly dubbed ‘Scutter the Nutter’ among her training group.” The Australian was in a didactic mood, unhappy that the judge did not make it even more obvious that a crime, committed by a woman involving poison and “not a gun or a knife”, was equally grave.
To complete matters was an aggrieved home cook, Nagi Maehashi, who also rode the wave of publicity by expressing sadness that her recipe had become a weapon for lethal effect. (Presumably, Maehashi did not have lethal mushrooms in her original recipe, but precision slides in publicity.) Overcome with false modesty in this glare of publicity, Maehashi did not wish to take interviews, but felt her misused work deserved a statement. “It is of course upsetting to learn that one of my recipes – possibly the one I’ve spent more hours perfecting than any other – something I created to bring joy and happiness, is entangled in a tragic situation,” she moaned on Instagram. Those familiar with Maehashi will note her tendency to megalomania in the kitchen, especially given recipes that have been created long before she turned to knife and spatula.
The ones forgotten will be those victims who died excruciatingly before their loved ones in a richly sadistic exercise. At the end of it all, the entire ensemble of babblers, hucksters and chancers so utterly obsessed with what took place in Leongatha should thank Patterson. Her murders have excited, enthralled and given people purpose. She will start conversations, fill pockets, extend careers and, if we are to believe some recent reporting, make meals for her fellow inmates in prison.
