August 12, 2025 • 45 mins
Erin Patterson went hunting for special mushrooms, Death Cap Mushrooms. She needed them for a very special meal she was preparing for her soon to be ex-in-laws. Her husband Simon was invited to be at the dinner with his parents and extended family but Simon decided not to be present. He had gotten sick too many times before when he wasn't able to watch his wife, Erin, prepare the food they ate. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack are covering this story, again, because there is finally a conclusion to the case. Was Erin Patterson wrongly accused of trying to kill her husband and his family with Beef Wellington and mushrooms, or was she using this very special dish as a weapon for murder?
Transcribe Highlights
00:04.45 Introduction - Favorite meals
02:11.60 Beef Wellington used for murder
07:17.61 Toxic Mushroom - Death Cap Mushroom
11:10.88 What was to goal?
15:39.31 Patterson picked deadly mushrooms on purpose
20:03.78 Family members die, one needs liver transplant
25:35.37 Husband, Simon, nearly died multiple times
30:05.28 Symptoms are the same, food is different
35:17.86 Doctor friend tells victim to keep food journal
40:19.74 Could not solve the problem
45:11.15 Children will be scarred
conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality dams, but that Joseph's gotten more. I bet that
folks will understand what I'm about to say. If you've
got a mama or a grandma out there that when
you were a kid, one of the ways they express
(00:22):
their love to you is preparation of meal. And it's
only something that that it might be simple if you're
a kid. For instance, you know, fried chicken or spaghetti.
Perhaps I still remember my grandmother's fried chicken. I put
(00:43):
it up against anybody in the world best fried chicken.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
A orrel.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
But you know, there's there's a lot of effort that
goes into preparing a meal. It's not something that you know,
mamas don't get the credit. Grandmas don't get the credit
that they need to because you know, most chefs that
are out there, they have this air of celebrity about them, right, well,
(01:12):
you know what they're absent that mamas and grandmas have
when they're making food. That's love and it's translated through food.
Many times, it wasn't my case, and I think the
more complex a recipe is it's almost demonstrative of love
(01:33):
because it takes so much time and I'm thinking a
meal I've always wanted to try. I've never had beef Wellington.
It is a process to create this meal. I've always
thought it would be delicious. But today we're going to
go back to a case that we have covered previously,
(01:57):
but now we have more information. It's a case of
a mama who used beef Wellington for murder. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks, Dave. I don't know
(02:19):
that I've ever asked you this question, thinking back, God
rest her soul, your mama, what was the favorite thing
that your mama made for you that you recall? Do
you recall what it was?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Corn beef hash that I liked it?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And the thing is that I didn't realize that you
made this really cheap dish, right, and because there are
seven people in our family, but it was one that
I liked, right, And so she would always cook us
our favorite meal for our birthdays growing up, and my
favorite meal varied from time to time, but it always
seemed to be and I didn't know this untill later,
that they loved my birthday because it was really cheap.
(02:57):
You know, whatever I was thinking was the cheapest thing
to make.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
As you're going with that, oh, that's all right, man,
I love cornby fash.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I really did learned later in life, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
We did.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
We didn't have a lot of money either. My My
favorite meal that my mama fixed was uh Swiss steak,
Oh wow, and she and it's it's a cheap cut
of meat and you cook it till it falls apart,
and it's got to mate a gravy with it. You
put it on white rice, which stopping coming from Louisiana. Uh,
(03:30):
I didn't grow up on potatoes. You know. Most people
grow up on mashed potatoes. And look, I like mashed
potato as much as it. But we we grew up
on rice. My favorite one of my favorite desserts that
my Granny Pearl used to make was her rice pudding.
There was nothing that could touch it. And the reason
(03:51):
I'm pointing this out is that recipes and food and
everything else are made. They're made with love, brother, I
mean they really are. And it does if you don't
have a lot of money, I think there's a lot
more love in it, dude.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
You know to say this, pasure, It's so funny that
you mentioned this because my mom was a good cook,
and I really took that for granted. I was much
older when I realized that my mom was a good
cook and the time, and then I realized the time
she spent preparing it right. But one day she made
she made meat loave, love for meat loaf, and I
(04:26):
went to my grannies. I went to my grannies, and
I found out that not all, not everybody can cook.
Her meat loaf was from the devil. It was the worst.
I was so excited, Oh we're having meat love awesome.
And one bite and I'm not kidding, I aged ten
years and lost hair. It was so bad. Oh my gosh.
(04:50):
I was a little kid thinking I've heard of kids
hiding food, you know, on each other plate, and I
was trying to find ways that I could cough and
get it in my napkin to hide it.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Oh, it's so bad. I would rather have been hungry
than before it stay. It was.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I'm like, how do you mess that up? My granny
could not cook at all?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Was her heart?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, you know, I can't say that. I never knew
my other grandmother, but my Granny Pearl could cook so good.
And here's the thing. When my mother, my mother didn't
know how to cook either, But you know who she
learned how to cook from my granny Pearl. And my
(05:34):
granny Pearl was not even her mother, oh was the
mother and my father. Yeah, my grandmother died while my
mother was playing the piano for and so she died
at like sixteen, And when my mother was sixteen, my
grandmother died while she's playing the piana for. Yeah, kind
of wild swary, But anyway, my mother had to learn
(05:57):
how to cook from my father.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Mother had kitchen to be in.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
It was, it was, and a lot of joy was there.
You know. That's that's one of the things that we
think about, don't we. We think about the joy that's
associated with just going into a kitchen with people that
love you and that are taken care of you, and
that kind of brings us around to you know, to
the story. And I'll go ahead and tell folks, we've
(06:23):
already done an episode on this, and I was so
so fascinated by it because I'd never in the course
of my work as a death investigator, I've never had
one of these. Really, I've never had like someone purposed
to prepare an entire meal based on a toxic substance.
(06:47):
Now we've I've had things we've covered things. You know,
everything from you know, cases with eyedrops, you know, all
that sort of thing you know that's entered into uh,
entered into a substance you know where people can you know,
drink it or ingest it that way. But this case, Dave,
(07:09):
is so I'll put it to you this way. This
thing is covered in intent. I love I love the
word intention or intent because it really puts you into
the mind of the person that's doing. This is not
something you can just kind of manifest out of nowhere,
you know, you this this requires thought, and the reason
(07:32):
it caused it requires thought is that it involves the
single most toxic mushroom on the face of the planet.
And a night of Floyd's is the actual you know,
mushrooms are fungus, so that's the actual scientific name of
(07:52):
this particular fungus. But the actual, the actual name that
it goes by and dig this is the death cap mushroom.
And it looks like no other species that's out there.
So this goes to intent, right. I mean, if you're
(08:14):
a mushroom hunter and I've got friends that do this,
you're looking at these species that are on the ground,
this thing is going to stand out like sorth On Man.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
You know, this is the update on the story of
Aaron Patterson in Australia who use death cap mushrooms as
a means of trying to kill family members and what
we have now found out. The reason we're doing the
update is because of course there's been a conviction. Not
of course there's been a conviction, but we would not
be doing the update had there not been a conviction.
So we're doing the update. But here's the reason for
(08:48):
the update. It's not just that she's been convicted. Kind
of saw that coming. Yeah, we now have information, Joe
about what the jury did not hear. And when you
follow cases, I will give you a quick example. Nancy
Grace labeled tot mom. You remember back in the day
(09:11):
and the reason she led. The story was covered many
many times, and the trial was covered full time twenty
four to seven. There were many things that you and
I saw as viewers that the jury was not privy to.
The jury did not hear everything we heard and did
(09:31):
not see everything we saw. The jury was kept away
from these things. So when the jury says not guilty,
we're like, how is that even possible? And it's because
of the information that we now know as part of
the story that they never knew the same thing here,
the only difference being that this woman was convicted. She
(09:53):
has not been sentenced yet, and yet now the gag
order that was put in place from the beginning has
been lifted and information is coming out that is fairly dramatic,
kind of similar to.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
B k and Idaho.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
After the sentencing that the evidence was released, you know
that we didn't know, well, this is here, and now
that we're finding out, Joe, it wasn't just the mushrooms
that was the that was the way she used at
the end, and I thought, there's something here psychologically, where's Bethany.
We're Karen because she is death cap mushrooms, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
As the Yep.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, and again you know I hold, I hold, and
I will remain steadfast in this assessment. Poisoners are a
different breed. They are you remember we recently covered an
jet Lyles from back in the fifties.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And they are a different breed. They weasel their way
into people's lives where they want something. Now, this is
a mother, a daughter in law. I don't know how
you'd really frame it. She's got kids, But what is
she looking to extract from this action that she's porpetrating.
(11:17):
You know, with Angela Lyles, it was a money thing,
you know, because all these people had insurance policies and
all this. With this lady down there in Australia, I think,
correct me if I'm wrong. I think she was turning
(11:41):
in her pay slips for revenge relative to being in
a marriage she did not want to be in. It
was aimed at the not just her husband, but his parents.
And what's really amazing about this day is that her
hub husband was a preacher and she was a preacher's wife.
(12:19):
So Aaron Patterson set out in this preparation of this meal,
and the preparation is not just her standing in the
kitchen day. The preparation with this meal is her actually
slipping off to a very specific location to acquire these mushrooms.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Day.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That's you know, I talked about intent and purpose and
this sort of thing, and let me break this down
to you real quick. Did you know that the death
cat mushroom is not indigenous to Australia. It's not. Yeah,
it's not. It's actually it originates out of Europe. Now
(13:03):
we have them here in the US now so this
is something that at some point in time someone had
to import or bring in the spore or whatever it
was into Australia. Now look, I mean as far as
deadly things, Australia kind of has raised the bar for
(13:26):
everybody else. The last thing they needed was something called
the death cap mushroom.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'm just eticized that their flag doesn't have like skull
and crossbuns, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, yeah, it says poison like that. Lovely people. I
love my house. Yeah, but yeah, I got to tell you,
as Americans, you scare us. All right. I'll just put
it to you that one. I'm not going swimming. I'm
not going swimming. I'm checking it under my bed.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Let me ask you quickly, Joe.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Is there is the death cap mushroom only deadly if
prepared a certain way? Or is it I'm kicking around mushrooms,
I'm getting something from my spaghetti and hey, here's one.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
This one's just fine.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
It looks like everything else, and I put it in
there and I die.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I don't know that there's any way that you can
prepare this thing, okay for individuals without it being you know,
there's like that I'm going to get this wrong. I
know that folks out there that are gourmet types. Sure,
there is a fish that the Japanese prepare and it's
(14:31):
considered to be a delicacy, but it's also one of
the most deadly fish you know that's out there. So
even with that fish, you can still eat it if
it's prepared correctly. I'm going to take a long look
at the person that's preparing it. I got to know
who they are before I would put it in my mouth. Well,
I'm not going to put in my mouth. But with
death cap, I don't know that there's necessarily any way
(14:52):
that you can prepare a meal utilizing this thing so
that it's not toxic.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Man, and that somebody brought it to your country. Somebody
from outside said, you know what, we don't have this
kind of mushroom in Australia. Let's get There's no reason
it's going to kill you if you let's get it.
Let's let's get it here.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, even even animals. I think the the indigenous fauna
in Europe, in America, and I would assume in Australia
have they automatically recognize it and avoid it. So you're
talking about Aaron Patterson who goes out and yeah, she
(15:35):
recognized it, all right, but she's picking these things.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
On purpose, on purpose and other way. Puffer vision is
what you were looking at. I only know that from
the horrible Charlie's Angels remake that Drew made it back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, here's another thing. I don't know if it's transdermal
if it has to be ingested, So wouild she? I'm
assuming she would have worn glove to pick these things?
Is it? Is it a matter of tell? I know
that animals avoid it, So you're gonna put your hands
on this thing? I mean, you're really good. And here's
(16:10):
another thing that's kind of clever about this. I think
it's not like arsenic or strict nine or something like that,
where we've had these discussions about over the years, Dave,
you and I about well did they scream for it? Well,
they didn't screen for it. But you can go back
(16:31):
with other samples and look for it. Who the hell's
going to look for a death cat mushroom. It's something
that is exotic. It's almost like one of these things
that's like the perfect the perfect poison. I think if
you can get the person to ingest it, and how
are you going to do that? Not everybody. I know
(16:54):
a lot of people, my son included, that won't eat mushrooms.
There's just something they find repugnantle out them. They want me,
I'll sit there and I will. I will eat mushrooms.
You don't eat mushrooms.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
I want fast. I would fast before I did that. Yeah,
I don't.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
For instance, I don't eat carrots. Carrots all taste like
dirt to me. I come from a family of carriers
once you eat these. But mushrooms, you let me eat mushrooms.
I'll eat mushrooms all day long. So I don't know.
I may have been the person that would have ingested
when oh god, that looks great, but it doesn't look
great when you actually see the same day. First Off,
(17:34):
you know how mushrooms have kind of a dome on them, right,
these things don't have a dome. They're kind of they're flat.
The top end is not pitched like you think they're flat.
And here's the other big warning sign here. This thing
has got this odd green color to it. I mean
(17:56):
it's like when you see the thing, you know it
kind of captures. I urge anybody that has not seen
this thing. Please go out there. Just look it up,
death cap mushrooms. You'll see precisely. It almost looks like
if you turn the lights off, it would glow. That's
it's got that kind of that appearance, of that creepy appearance,
(18:18):
you know. And there are certain fun guy out there
that do, in fact glow. I don't think this is
one of it, but it looks like it has the
potential to glow. Thing in my mouth that can glow
all or that's that's this color day she went pick
these things under the guise of being a mushroom hunter.
(18:40):
I think from a forensic standpoint, I'd be curious what
else was in that house that had a level of
toxicity to it that maybe she had utilized over a
period of time trying to and again, like like we've
talked about before, you know, you know, poisoners are stealthy.
(19:06):
Were there any was there any other thing that you
would throw it. It's like this dentist recently to spend
in the news that has now been convicted. He literally
threw the kitchen sink. And this is a guy with
medical training, and he was using a combination of heavy
metals and other things just to throw it at his
wife put in her protein shake, and she had no
(19:28):
idea that this was coming. But the story Dave, the
story of her husband, that is Aaron Patterson's husband, is
something that will chill you to the bone, and that
on reflection, will make you double over in pain. I
(20:02):
want you to remember these names. Gail Patterson, she's seventy,
Don Patterson, he's seventy. These, by the way, are the
former and I say former in laws of Aaron Patterson.
Heather Wilkinson, who is the sister of Gail Patterson sixty six.
(20:28):
She's dead, all right. And then that brings us to
Pastor Ian Wilkinson, who is the husband of Heather Wilkinson.
He didn't die, but he's in the hospital awaiting a
(20:49):
liver transplant, and this particular mushroom attacks specifically the liver Dave.
There are not too many There are not too many
things that are more horrific than someone dying of liver failure.
It is not a quick death. It's something that requires
(21:14):
intensive medical intervention, and so much so the toxicity of
this mushroom is such that if you do survive all
the treatments leading up to a transplant, just going through
the detoxing those things. There's actually a process where they
have to detoxify your esophagus and your stomach through the
(21:39):
treatment plan in order to do this, which absolutely sounds horrific.
So the thing get you up to the level where
you can actually receive a new liver if there's one available.
This seems like a death sentence, Dave.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
It is the death cat mushroom and there you go.
But when we look at how Aaron Patterson has been
convicted of what she did to this group of family members,
there was one person that was supposed to be at
the dinner that was not there, and that was her
ex husband. Okay, they have children together, so getting together
(22:15):
and having family meals I say ex husband. They actually
were not divorced, Joe. They had separated and filed legal paperwork.
But even now as we're doing this update on the
show where we're waiting for her to be sentenced, they
still are not divorced legally. So it would not be
an uncommon thing for them to all get together and
(22:36):
have a meal. Because of the children you were talking about,
grandchildren and nieces, nephews, those says you know that there
was a reason for the family to get together and eat.
What we're doing today is to update you on things
the jury didn't hear, which is the fact that Aaron
Patterson's husband, right was due at the dinner and she
(22:57):
prepared this beef wellington with mushroom sauce or gravy, whatever
you call it, she prepared it for him.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
That's who the target was.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Now the fact that all of his relatives, the people
he loved dearest in his life, you know, were all
there too. So that was just icing on top for
Aaron Patterson apparently. But the X didn't show up. He
did not he bowed out, he found a reason to
not go, and I'm guessing he got kind of anicky
feeling there's something going on here. So now, yeah, we
(23:30):
have this information that the jury never got. They came
to a guilty verdict. But oh my gosh, Joe, what
did the jury not hear about Aaron Patterson.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, the thing that they didn't hear about Aaron Patterson
is that her husband, Simon Patterson, he had been how's
a delicate way to put this, Well, we don't have
to be delicate. He had been poisoned before and he
had suspected this over a protracted period time dig this man.
He had he had had in fact been placed in
(24:04):
the hospital on at least three different times. She allegedly
and this is what the jury wound up finding, finding
out that she tried to murder him with pasta, cookies
and curry sauce and all of these involved the death
cap mushroom. And he was in he was in a
(24:27):
medically imagine this. He was in a medically induced coma
for sixteen days.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Isn't it weird how your eyes how you can be
blinded I think by you know, an emotional attachment or
whatever it is, to those commonalities when you're looking at
this from an investigative perspective, you know, when we don't
have a dog in the fight, if we're conducting an investigation,
we just want to know the truth, right, not why,
(24:57):
we just want to know the truth. What. Okay, there's
commonality that runs through this. Well, She's always present and
so when this information comes to the police, I believe
the investigators in Australia, when you begin to think about
Simon the husband, there is a history here of him
(25:18):
being just horribly ill, I mean white on the brink
of death. We would say one foot, one foot in
the grave and one foot on banana peel. I mean,
he's that close, and he's had to be induced into
a coma. He's had three emergency surgeries, and it's unclear
(25:40):
as to the nature of each one of these surgeries. However,
I'm suspecting with the toxicity of this mushroom, it's not
a native species, probably not a lot that the medical
community understands about it. These surgeries, to a certain extent
(26:04):
have to be exploratory. Imagine that because they're trying to
understand what they're looking at. It's almost like lifting the
hood on a car that is malfunctioning and you're trying
to make a diagnosis about, well, what's causing this rattle
inside of my car? And those things that you normally
think of I think as a mechanic where you're trying
(26:25):
to resolve something. Yeah, that might be part of it,
but there's a bigger picture here, and it's really hard
to understand this. But David, I don't know what you
think about it. I think that he had suspected this
for some time. That might be one of the reasons
he was not about to go to that house and
ingest anything.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I think you're right. We know that.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Now we're back to the information that the jury never heard,
and thankfully the jury heard enough to actually come up
with a conviction or what she did.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
But what they didn't here is that.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Simon the eggs had suffered and he used one example
in particular. It involved tupperware. Whenever you talk about tupperware,
you know, I'm thinking this was intentional if it was,
unless it was like leftovers. You know, you use tupperware
for leftovers and eat in the next couple of days,
you're all good. But if somebody is preparing something in tupperware, yeah,
(27:28):
you can do a lot with that. And apparently she
was doing something with beloney and I know that's the
improper way to say it when you're mixing up with
penny pasta and all that and making an actual dish bowlonaise.
But anyway, he eats this thing she prepares and this
is before the death, this is back several.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Years ago, and.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
After eating the food, Simon ended up spending the night
in the hospital after suffering from vomiting and diarrhea. How
bad is your vomiting and diarrhea that you go to
the hospital. Think about that for just a minute. How
many of us have had a bug and we've dealt
with it, you know, for a day or two and
you're like week, but yeah, no, it's going to pass.
And this is so bad, it is so intense that
(28:14):
you're going something is really wrong. As an adult, we
get to that point you're going, I'm thinking this guy,
Holy free holies, he must have been in misery.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Joe.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, And I think that it would have been the
type of gastro intestinal discomfort where he would have been
doubled over. I think that perhaps perhaps at if he
had died at that moment, tom at his autopsy, you
would have seen severe inflammation in his stomach and probably
(28:47):
in his upper intestinal track at that point in time. Wow,
it's something you would have appreciated. And of course, over
period tom as they are at the hospital trying to
resolve it, there will be uh, you know, the body
is going to heal of its own volition and it
will subside, and so any of those the irritated bowel,
(29:09):
the irritated stomach, those sorts of things are going to
dissipate over a period of time, so there won't be
necessarily you know, your body is going totabilize all of
this poison. But you have to have the help of
medical science in order to do this, to facilitate it. Wow, here,
let me throw this little spine chiller at you real quick.
(29:30):
Imagine being doubled over, you know, the porcelain throne, throwing
your guts up, and this grimlin is still in the
house with you. You know, maybe she's feigning trying to
comfort him or whatever it is. Drink knowing, yeah, knowing
good and well that the reason this is happening is
(29:54):
because of something she's initiated. Yeah, I would say, I
would say, yeah, the gag order was in place. I
would say that, you know now that that's been lifted.
This history of this just oh and this was not
a one off event, Dave.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
No, it happened again.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
And you mentioned Curry when we started, and it was
the first time was the Boloney penny pasta. But then
again again those symptoms are so bad. He goes to
the hospital with vomiting and diarrhea, recovers and then the
next time, boom, it's chicken this time, Joe, And this
is what he said. This is this is the pre
trial stuff that jury didn't hear A direct quote. We
(30:35):
had a chicken korma curry on the second night. While
Aaron was preparing food, I was getting the fire going,
so I didn't watch her prepare it. He ends up
with the same symptoms diarrhea, vomiting. And I'm gonna be honest, Joe.
One time I had a bad reaction to the food.
I'm okay with that. Yeah, happens the second time. The
(30:57):
second time I touch your food and I end up
in the toilet, I'm calling nine to one one headed
at the hospital and saying, lock her up.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Well, love is blond man. And you never know, uh,
you never know if the you know, if the forces
of evil have marshaled their forces on your border. At
this point in time, you don't suspect that, you know,
who actually goes through their life thinking, oh, yeah, my
wife is trying to murder me. And it's not until
(31:28):
we have I think we have these other souls that
have passed on and this horrific, this is a this
is a it's you know, we used to term masker
a lot and most of the I think most people
think about a masker is blood letting. And you know, again,
(31:50):
I asked folks to return back to we did an
episode recently on Jonestown and that was a massacre. And
yet there were there were people that died in that event,
that died as a result of gunshot wounds and those
sorts of things. But you know, a masker can take place,
I think, you know, by introducing this toxin into an environment.
(32:11):
Here's another piece that I was reflecting in my mind
that I forgot to say. Those kids were in the
house that night that this happened. She prepared a separate
meal for them. Yeah, there you got. I mean, talk
about intent, So you're going to prepare We weren't the
kids eating from the same dish as all of the adults.
(32:32):
And you can say, oh, well, they don't like mushrooms,
they don't like this, they don't like that. I can't
Actually that's how she said, Yeah, yeah, they don't like them.
Boy did she she saw utility in them? Dave. This
is just mind blowing that this woman could massacre the
family almost well, and you've still got another guy that
(32:55):
is so ill he's going to require a liver transplant.
I remember talking about about this the first time. I'm
wondering if the husband at this point, and this is
not really revealed in the stuff that was released other
than psychological scarring. I wonder, I wonder if he's going
(33:16):
to have long term impacts, you know, regarding this, these
things that he has endured at her hand, just physically,
you know, is it? You know, what's what's going to
be your prognosis, you know, moving out into the future.
I don't know. I don't know what that might be,
(33:38):
but it would be interesting. In these cases. I have
to say, Dave, these three cases just so I can
put this, put this in this framework. These three cases
are the people that died. This is the stuff of
forensic medical journals. Here, these three cases are going to
(34:01):
be something that in our world are going to be
studied scientifically. I submit to you that the tissue samples
alone will be presented at forensic seminars and meetings over
the next years where they'll actually take a blown up
image of a slide that say has come from the
(34:25):
upper and lower intestine, probably the stomach, the liver, and
they'll begin to describe on the screen this is what
they're seeing. And there will be you go to a
lot of these seminars and there are people that I've
come across, people that are just kind of sleeping in
the back. This will be one of those cases, or
these cases will be things where you will have knowledgeable
(34:47):
forensic scientists that will actually lean in. They're going to
lean in and they're going to really observe this and
try to understand it. And it's terrifying because you know,
as in the forensic world things you're always worried about
is that you're missing something. You're missing something, And my
Lord Dave, this case in and of itself is it
(35:10):
would be really easy to miss something. And then how
do you know that this perpetrator is still not out there?
And as it suns out, you know she was for
a period of time, you know, something kind of snapped
off real quick.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, something else we found out Joe during the Again
the things that jury did not hear. Simon actually the
X went further in describing other situations.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
It wasn't just a once or twice.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
There were several times where he had a bad reaction
to the food that now he's playing back in his head.
You know, that went on over different periods of time.
But one thing in particular that came out. He actually
goes to a friend of his who was a medical
doctor and was talking about the symptoms and things like
that and was he having some kind of food allergy?
Was there's something going on, you know, because things change
(36:02):
as we get older. Things that we might not have
been allergic to as a child were allergic to as
an adult, and vice versa. But the doctor said, you
need to keep a journal, you know, keep a food
journal of what you're doing in document when you know
you have these issues, maybe we can pinpoint it. And
being a medical doctor, you know, he was watching this.
But now we find out that when Simon went back
(36:26):
to the doctor and was talking to him that they
had a discussion about how Aaron Patterson, now convicted, actually
claimed that Simon's daughter had made a batch of cookies
for him and he kept asking she kept asking him,
have you tried the cookies yet? Have you tried the
cookies yet? And I'm gonna be honest, man, you asked
me once. I understand that you asked me two or
(36:48):
three times. I ain't touching those things, you know, And
so they actually it's not known, you know, what Aaron
had been doing, but investigators suspect that there was rat
poison in at least one occasion and probably in these
cookies that he never ate. And you know, it's just
(37:09):
interesting that you think, what did she put in those
that he didn't eat?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I mean, it just buggles the mind. And I can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
You know, they're taking and I say they, I mean
her taking a specific taking a shotgun approach to this thing. Okay,
where okay, this doesn't work, let me try this. And
it might not necessarily be the toxin that's been introduced.
It might be the way it's being introduced, you know,
(37:39):
because look, I've had people that have made cookies. Dude,
I'll be the first one to raise my hands say
I love cookies. I mean, I'd be insane not to
I love cookies and I'm going to gobble them down.
But I've had instances where cookies have been provided for
me and I've and worked cooked specifically for me, and
I didn't get a chance to eat them. All Right,
(38:02):
it all depends on the delivery mechanism for this. When
I think that when you look at this, and you
look at it from the perspective of what's fascinating to
me is that most of the time, with the death cap,
you've got this kind of long progression. It's not long.
(38:25):
It's like a period of about forty eight hours, saying
you immediate onset, you're going to have nausea and vomiting.
I don't think there's really delirium, but you're disoriented, that
sort of thing. And it's at that point in time
that this thing goes into kind of this phase where
(38:46):
it's kind of a latent phase. And that's after and
Layton just means it kind of sits there, right, so
you know how you were saying that, you know he
had gone to the hospital as a result of vomiting
that first time and it kind of passed. Well, you
go into a latent phase after that, and that can
be and it's kind of broad. It could be for
(39:09):
twelve to thirty six hours. Wo when that wave begins
to pass and silently in the background, the toxins are
still there and now they're being taken up. And what
are they attacking. Well, they've moved on at this point
(39:30):
from attacking the gastro intestinal system. Now they're hammering on
the kidneys and the liver. This is almost a perfect
a perfect toxin if you think about it, because if
you're being treated with standard medical course, the clinicians say, okay,
we got and passed it. We got passed it. He's
(39:52):
going to be fine. And then it kind of goes
into this mode of where symptomology disappears. All the while background,
your kidneys are being beginning to shut down, your liver
is failing. They're looking at this person on bed, can
you imagine, and they're starting to turn yellow because they're jaundiced,
and you know, you're a clinician thinking where am I
(40:14):
going to go?
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Now?
Speaker 1 (40:15):
You know what the how does this happen? Because I
you know, I think that they they're clearing at this
point in time, and then once they hit that phase
after the latent phase, it's at that point in time
that the airplane's flown into the side of the mountain.
At that point, there's no reasonable recovery except in certain
(40:36):
cases where this poor soul, this other poor soul is
you know, needs a liver. Now, if you can stem
it through the clinical course and you recognize it soon enough,
you're not going to be able to save the liver.
You're not going to be able. And I submit to you,
I think that, And this is why I'm really concerned
(40:58):
about the husband. What's going to be his prognosis because
I think that it attacks the liver and the kidneys.
Will he present down the road day where he's going
to need dialysis in his later years. This is what's
a yeah, And maybe it might it might be. It's hard,
(41:22):
it's hard to really know, Dave, but just think about
it might be where years down the road from now.
He's kind of stabilized at this point, but his his
organs have been compromised to the point where, say, if
he had not been exposed to it, otherwise it would
be a survivable event. But now you might be. And
(41:43):
this is this is her. Let this sink in. Just
this is her reaching through the bars of their cell
metaphorically of course, and still inflicting this pain on this man.
The proposition is that he might have liver failure in
the few future, He's going to have kidney failure in
the future, and not to mention all the other peripheral
(42:06):
toxic things that might manifest with this. I don't know.
I mean, I think the folks down in Australia, this
thing popped onto our radar. I remember when we did it.
It popped onto our radar and it made a big
splash because it was so incredibly bizarre that you and
(42:28):
I had never heard of this, we'd never seen it.
I told you I had never worked a case like
this before. I worked a case of poisonings. But Dave,
this is something that's naturally occurring, you know, out there
in the woods. You know, you can go and pluck
these things and bring them in, chop them up and
render them down and create a gravy out of them,
or whatever it is you're going to use, or maybe
(42:48):
slice and dice these things and lay them, you know,
all over this beautiful creation. And people are going to
stick this in their mouth. And it doesn't matter how
much heat you subjected to in the oven, it's still
going to be toxic, all right. And she she had
an understanding of this, I think investigatively, what would be fascinating.
(43:08):
Did she go onto an open source, an open source
on the internet, what could I use and suddenly stumbles
upon stumbles upon, you know, the mushroom. It's no different
than of course, they don't have many firearms down in
Australia anymore, but it's kind of like, what weapon do
(43:31):
I need to choose? Am I can use a thirty
eight caliber revolver or am I going to use you know,
I don't know an M four five point five six,
you know what, it's the same thing. You know, I'd
be interested to know if she had a browser history,
if they grabbed grabbed that and began to look through
(43:53):
it for her to kind of, you know, understand what's
going to be the best, the best solution for these
albums that she has in her life. And of course
she felt as though that it was going to be
killing the entire family.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Dave, I do have a tip for you.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
During the investigation, they were doing digital forensics on phones, computers,
things like that, and what they did find is that
she searched for pictures of death cap mushrooms so that
she could identify them, obviously because she went and take
them herself. So yeah, you've you've got that. And that happened,
(44:30):
of course before she cooked the meal. So yeah, you
talking about intent, there's your intent right there there is.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Her argument is, Oh, you don't understand I'm just interested
in mushrooms. You know, how many other things did you
search for in the you know, in this in this
in this family specifically bizarre case. I look, I you know,
I hope for the best, for this family, for this man,
(44:57):
the other gentleman that has suffered such such pain in
that initial attack. There's nothing that can ever assuage the
pain of what he's been through, and certainly the others
involved in this. These children are going to get past,
or have the ability to get past, because this is
(45:19):
something they will be scarred with for the rest of
their life. I'll put it to you this way. Every
time in the future that fork goes into food and
that's lifted to their lips, that memory of what their
mama and their wife had done will always linger in
(45:43):
the background. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs.
Quality dams, but that Joseph's gotten more. I bet that
folks will understand what I'm about to say. If you've
got a mama or a grandma out there that when
you were a kid, one of the ways they express
(00:22):
their love to you is preparation of meal. And it's
only something that that it might be simple if you're
a kid. For instance, you know, fried chicken or spaghetti.
Perhaps I still remember my grandmother's fried chicken. I put
(00:43):
it up against anybody in the world best fried chicken.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
A orrel.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
But you know, there's there's a lot of effort that
goes into preparing a meal. It's not something that you know,
mamas don't get the credit. Grandmas don't get the credit
that they need to because you know, most chefs that
are out there, they have this air of celebrity about them, right, well,
(01:12):
you know what they're absent that mamas and grandmas have
when they're making food. That's love and it's translated through food.
Many times, it wasn't my case, and I think the
more complex a recipe is it's almost demonstrative of love
(01:33):
because it takes so much time and I'm thinking a
meal I've always wanted to try. I've never had beef Wellington.
It is a process to create this meal. I've always
thought it would be delicious. But today we're going to
go back to a case that we have covered previously,
(01:57):
but now we have more information. It's a case of
a mama who used beef Wellington for murder. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks, Dave. I don't know
(02:19):
that I've ever asked you this question, thinking back, God
rest her soul, your mama, what was the favorite thing
that your mama made for you that you recall? Do
you recall what it was?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Corn beef hash that I liked it?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And the thing is that I didn't realize that you
made this really cheap dish, right, and because there are
seven people in our family, but it was one that
I liked, right, And so she would always cook us
our favorite meal for our birthdays growing up, and my
favorite meal varied from time to time, but it always
seemed to be and I didn't know this untill later,
that they loved my birthday because it was really cheap.
(02:57):
You know, whatever I was thinking was the cheapest thing
to make.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
As you're going with that, oh, that's all right, man,
I love cornby fash.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I really did learned later in life, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
We did.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
We didn't have a lot of money either. My My
favorite meal that my mama fixed was uh Swiss steak,
Oh wow, and she and it's it's a cheap cut
of meat and you cook it till it falls apart,
and it's got to mate a gravy with it. You
put it on white rice, which stopping coming from Louisiana. Uh,
(03:30):
I didn't grow up on potatoes. You know. Most people
grow up on mashed potatoes. And look, I like mashed
potato as much as it. But we we grew up
on rice. My favorite one of my favorite desserts that
my Granny Pearl used to make was her rice pudding.
There was nothing that could touch it. And the reason
(03:51):
I'm pointing this out is that recipes and food and
everything else are made. They're made with love, brother, I
mean they really are. And it does if you don't
have a lot of money, I think there's a lot
more love in it, dude.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
You know to say this, pasure, It's so funny that
you mentioned this because my mom was a good cook,
and I really took that for granted. I was much
older when I realized that my mom was a good
cook and the time, and then I realized the time
she spent preparing it right. But one day she made
she made meat loave, love for meat loaf, and I
(04:26):
went to my grannies. I went to my grannies, and
I found out that not all, not everybody can cook.
Her meat loaf was from the devil. It was the worst.
I was so excited, Oh we're having meat love awesome.
And one bite and I'm not kidding, I aged ten
years and lost hair. It was so bad. Oh my gosh.
(04:50):
I was a little kid thinking I've heard of kids
hiding food, you know, on each other plate, and I
was trying to find ways that I could cough and
get it in my napkin to hide it.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Oh, it's so bad. I would rather have been hungry
than before it stay. It was.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I'm like, how do you mess that up? My granny
could not cook at all?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Was her heart?
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, you know, I can't say that. I never knew
my other grandmother, but my Granny Pearl could cook so good.
And here's the thing. When my mother, my mother didn't
know how to cook either, But you know who she
learned how to cook from my granny Pearl. And my
(05:34):
granny Pearl was not even her mother, oh was the
mother and my father. Yeah, my grandmother died while my
mother was playing the piano for and so she died
at like sixteen, And when my mother was sixteen, my
grandmother died while she's playing the piana for. Yeah, kind
of wild swary, But anyway, my mother had to learn
(05:57):
how to cook from my father.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Mother had kitchen to be in.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
It was, it was, and a lot of joy was there.
You know. That's that's one of the things that we
think about, don't we. We think about the joy that's
associated with just going into a kitchen with people that
love you and that are taken care of you, and
that kind of brings us around to you know, to
the story. And I'll go ahead and tell folks, we've
(06:23):
already done an episode on this, and I was so
so fascinated by it because I'd never in the course
of my work as a death investigator, I've never had
one of these. Really, I've never had like someone purposed
to prepare an entire meal based on a toxic substance.
(06:47):
Now we've I've had things we've covered things. You know,
everything from you know, cases with eyedrops, you know, all
that sort of thing you know that's entered into uh,
entered into a substance you know where people can you know,
drink it or ingest it that way. But this case, Dave,
(07:09):
is so I'll put it to you this way. This
thing is covered in intent. I love I love the
word intention or intent because it really puts you into
the mind of the person that's doing. This is not
something you can just kind of manifest out of nowhere,
you know, you this this requires thought, and the reason
(07:32):
it caused it requires thought is that it involves the
single most toxic mushroom on the face of the planet.
And a night of Floyd's is the actual you know,
mushrooms are fungus, so that's the actual scientific name of
(07:52):
this particular fungus. But the actual, the actual name that
it goes by and dig this is the death cap mushroom.
And it looks like no other species that's out there.
So this goes to intent, right. I mean, if you're
(08:14):
a mushroom hunter and I've got friends that do this,
you're looking at these species that are on the ground,
this thing is going to stand out like sorth On Man.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
You know, this is the update on the story of
Aaron Patterson in Australia who use death cap mushrooms as
a means of trying to kill family members and what
we have now found out. The reason we're doing the
update is because of course there's been a conviction. Not
of course there's been a conviction, but we would not
be doing the update had there not been a conviction.
So we're doing the update. But here's the reason for
(08:48):
the update. It's not just that she's been convicted. Kind
of saw that coming. Yeah, we now have information, Joe
about what the jury did not hear. And when you
follow cases, I will give you a quick example. Nancy
Grace labeled tot mom. You remember back in the day
(09:11):
and the reason she led. The story was covered many
many times, and the trial was covered full time twenty
four to seven. There were many things that you and
I saw as viewers that the jury was not privy to.
The jury did not hear everything we heard and did
(09:31):
not see everything we saw. The jury was kept away
from these things. So when the jury says not guilty,
we're like, how is that even possible? And it's because
of the information that we now know as part of
the story that they never knew the same thing here,
the only difference being that this woman was convicted. She
(09:53):
has not been sentenced yet, and yet now the gag
order that was put in place from the beginning has
been lifted and information is coming out that is fairly dramatic,
kind of similar to.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
B k and Idaho.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
After the sentencing that the evidence was released, you know
that we didn't know, well, this is here, and now
that we're finding out, Joe, it wasn't just the mushrooms
that was the that was the way she used at
the end, and I thought, there's something here psychologically, where's Bethany.
We're Karen because she is death cap mushrooms, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
As the Yep.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, and again you know I hold, I hold, and
I will remain steadfast in this assessment. Poisoners are a
different breed. They are you remember we recently covered an
jet Lyles from back in the fifties.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And they are a different breed. They weasel their way
into people's lives where they want something. Now, this is
a mother, a daughter in law. I don't know how
you'd really frame it. She's got kids, But what is
she looking to extract from this action that she's porpetrating.
(11:17):
You know, with Angela Lyles, it was a money thing,
you know, because all these people had insurance policies and
all this. With this lady down there in Australia, I think,
correct me if I'm wrong. I think she was turning
(11:41):
in her pay slips for revenge relative to being in
a marriage she did not want to be in. It
was aimed at the not just her husband, but his parents.
And what's really amazing about this day is that her
hub husband was a preacher and she was a preacher's wife.
(12:19):
So Aaron Patterson set out in this preparation of this meal,
and the preparation is not just her standing in the
kitchen day. The preparation with this meal is her actually
slipping off to a very specific location to acquire these mushrooms.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Day.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That's you know, I talked about intent and purpose and
this sort of thing, and let me break this down
to you real quick. Did you know that the death
cat mushroom is not indigenous to Australia. It's not. Yeah,
it's not. It's actually it originates out of Europe. Now
(13:03):
we have them here in the US now so this
is something that at some point in time someone had
to import or bring in the spore or whatever it
was into Australia. Now look, I mean as far as
deadly things, Australia kind of has raised the bar for
(13:26):
everybody else. The last thing they needed was something called
the death cap mushroom.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'm just eticized that their flag doesn't have like skull
and crossbuns, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, yeah, it says poison like that. Lovely people. I
love my house. Yeah, but yeah, I got to tell you,
as Americans, you scare us. All right. I'll just put
it to you that one. I'm not going swimming. I'm
not going swimming. I'm checking it under my bed.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Let me ask you quickly, Joe.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Is there is the death cap mushroom only deadly if
prepared a certain way? Or is it I'm kicking around mushrooms,
I'm getting something from my spaghetti and hey, here's one.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
This one's just fine.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
It looks like everything else, and I put it in
there and I die.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I don't know that there's any way that you can
prepare this thing, okay for individuals without it being you know,
there's like that I'm going to get this wrong. I
know that folks out there that are gourmet types. Sure,
there is a fish that the Japanese prepare and it's
(14:31):
considered to be a delicacy, but it's also one of
the most deadly fish you know that's out there. So
even with that fish, you can still eat it if
it's prepared correctly. I'm going to take a long look
at the person that's preparing it. I got to know
who they are before I would put it in my mouth. Well,
I'm not going to put in my mouth. But with
death cap, I don't know that there's necessarily any way
(14:52):
that you can prepare a meal utilizing this thing so
that it's not toxic.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Man, and that somebody brought it to your country. Somebody
from outside said, you know what, we don't have this
kind of mushroom in Australia. Let's get There's no reason
it's going to kill you if you let's get it.
Let's let's get it here.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, even even animals. I think the the indigenous fauna
in Europe, in America, and I would assume in Australia
have they automatically recognize it and avoid it. So you're
talking about Aaron Patterson who goes out and yeah, she
(15:35):
recognized it, all right, but she's picking these things.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
On purpose, on purpose and other way. Puffer vision is
what you were looking at. I only know that from
the horrible Charlie's Angels remake that Drew made it back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, here's another thing. I don't know if it's transdermal
if it has to be ingested, So wouild she? I'm
assuming she would have worn glove to pick these things?
Is it? Is it a matter of tell? I know
that animals avoid it, So you're gonna put your hands
on this thing? I mean, you're really good. And here's
(16:10):
another thing that's kind of clever about this. I think
it's not like arsenic or strict nine or something like that,
where we've had these discussions about over the years, Dave,
you and I about well did they scream for it? Well,
they didn't screen for it. But you can go back
(16:31):
with other samples and look for it. Who the hell's
going to look for a death cat mushroom. It's something
that is exotic. It's almost like one of these things
that's like the perfect the perfect poison. I think if
you can get the person to ingest it, and how
are you going to do that? Not everybody. I know
(16:54):
a lot of people, my son included, that won't eat mushrooms.
There's just something they find repugnantle out them. They want me,
I'll sit there and I will. I will eat mushrooms.
You don't eat mushrooms.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
I want fast. I would fast before I did that. Yeah,
I don't.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
For instance, I don't eat carrots. Carrots all taste like
dirt to me. I come from a family of carriers
once you eat these. But mushrooms, you let me eat mushrooms.
I'll eat mushrooms all day long. So I don't know.
I may have been the person that would have ingested
when oh god, that looks great, but it doesn't look
great when you actually see the same day. First Off,
(17:34):
you know how mushrooms have kind of a dome on them, right,
these things don't have a dome. They're kind of they're flat.
The top end is not pitched like you think they're flat.
And here's the other big warning sign here. This thing
has got this odd green color to it. I mean
(17:56):
it's like when you see the thing, you know it
kind of captures. I urge anybody that has not seen
this thing. Please go out there. Just look it up,
death cap mushrooms. You'll see precisely. It almost looks like
if you turn the lights off, it would glow. That's
it's got that kind of that appearance, of that creepy appearance,
(18:18):
you know. And there are certain fun guy out there
that do, in fact glow. I don't think this is
one of it, but it looks like it has the
potential to glow. Thing in my mouth that can glow
all or that's that's this color day she went pick
these things under the guise of being a mushroom hunter.
(18:40):
I think from a forensic standpoint, I'd be curious what
else was in that house that had a level of
toxicity to it that maybe she had utilized over a
period of time trying to and again, like like we've
talked about before, you know, you know, poisoners are stealthy.
(19:06):
Were there any was there any other thing that you
would throw it. It's like this dentist recently to spend
in the news that has now been convicted. He literally
threw the kitchen sink. And this is a guy with
medical training, and he was using a combination of heavy
metals and other things just to throw it at his
wife put in her protein shake, and she had no
(19:28):
idea that this was coming. But the story Dave, the
story of her husband, that is Aaron Patterson's husband, is
something that will chill you to the bone, and that
on reflection, will make you double over in pain. I
(20:02):
want you to remember these names. Gail Patterson, she's seventy,
Don Patterson, he's seventy. These, by the way, are the
former and I say former in laws of Aaron Patterson.
Heather Wilkinson, who is the sister of Gail Patterson sixty six.
(20:28):
She's dead, all right. And then that brings us to
Pastor Ian Wilkinson, who is the husband of Heather Wilkinson.
He didn't die, but he's in the hospital awaiting a
(20:49):
liver transplant, and this particular mushroom attacks specifically the liver Dave.
There are not too many There are not too many
things that are more horrific than someone dying of liver failure.
It is not a quick death. It's something that requires
(21:14):
intensive medical intervention, and so much so the toxicity of
this mushroom is such that if you do survive all
the treatments leading up to a transplant, just going through
the detoxing those things. There's actually a process where they
have to detoxify your esophagus and your stomach through the
(21:39):
treatment plan in order to do this, which absolutely sounds horrific.
So the thing get you up to the level where
you can actually receive a new liver if there's one available.
This seems like a death sentence, Dave.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
It is the death cat mushroom and there you go.
But when we look at how Aaron Patterson has been
convicted of what she did to this group of family members,
there was one person that was supposed to be at
the dinner that was not there, and that was her
ex husband. Okay, they have children together, so getting together
(22:15):
and having family meals I say ex husband. They actually
were not divorced, Joe. They had separated and filed legal paperwork.
But even now as we're doing this update on the
show where we're waiting for her to be sentenced, they
still are not divorced legally. So it would not be
an uncommon thing for them to all get together and
(22:36):
have a meal. Because of the children you were talking about,
grandchildren and nieces, nephews, those says you know that there
was a reason for the family to get together and eat.
What we're doing today is to update you on things
the jury didn't hear, which is the fact that Aaron
Patterson's husband, right was due at the dinner and she
(22:57):
prepared this beef wellington with mushroom sauce or gravy, whatever
you call it, she prepared it for him.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
That's who the target was.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Now the fact that all of his relatives, the people
he loved dearest in his life, you know, were all
there too. So that was just icing on top for
Aaron Patterson apparently. But the X didn't show up. He
did not he bowed out, he found a reason to
not go, and I'm guessing he got kind of anicky
feeling there's something going on here. So now, yeah, we
(23:30):
have this information that the jury never got. They came
to a guilty verdict. But oh my gosh, Joe, what
did the jury not hear about Aaron Patterson.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, the thing that they didn't hear about Aaron Patterson
is that her husband, Simon Patterson, he had been how's
a delicate way to put this, Well, we don't have
to be delicate. He had been poisoned before and he
had suspected this over a protracted period time dig this man.
He had he had had in fact been placed in
(24:04):
the hospital on at least three different times. She allegedly
and this is what the jury wound up finding, finding
out that she tried to murder him with pasta, cookies
and curry sauce and all of these involved the death
cap mushroom. And he was in he was in a
(24:27):
medically imagine this. He was in a medically induced coma
for sixteen days.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Isn't it weird how your eyes how you can be
blinded I think by you know, an emotional attachment or
whatever it is, to those commonalities when you're looking at
this from an investigative perspective, you know, when we don't
have a dog in the fight, if we're conducting an investigation,
we just want to know the truth, right, not why,
(24:57):
we just want to know the truth. What. Okay, there's
commonality that runs through this. Well, She's always present and
so when this information comes to the police, I believe
the investigators in Australia, when you begin to think about
Simon the husband, there is a history here of him
(25:18):
being just horribly ill, I mean white on the brink
of death. We would say one foot, one foot in
the grave and one foot on banana peel. I mean,
he's that close, and he's had to be induced into
a coma. He's had three emergency surgeries, and it's unclear
(25:40):
as to the nature of each one of these surgeries. However,
I'm suspecting with the toxicity of this mushroom, it's not
a native species, probably not a lot that the medical
community understands about it. These surgeries, to a certain extent
(26:04):
have to be exploratory. Imagine that because they're trying to
understand what they're looking at. It's almost like lifting the
hood on a car that is malfunctioning and you're trying
to make a diagnosis about, well, what's causing this rattle
inside of my car? And those things that you normally
think of I think as a mechanic where you're trying
(26:25):
to resolve something. Yeah, that might be part of it,
but there's a bigger picture here, and it's really hard
to understand this. But David, I don't know what you
think about it. I think that he had suspected this
for some time. That might be one of the reasons
he was not about to go to that house and
ingest anything.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
I think you're right. We know that.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Now we're back to the information that the jury never heard,
and thankfully the jury heard enough to actually come up
with a conviction or what she did.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
But what they didn't here is that.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Simon the eggs had suffered and he used one example
in particular. It involved tupperware. Whenever you talk about tupperware,
you know, I'm thinking this was intentional if it was,
unless it was like leftovers. You know, you use tupperware
for leftovers and eat in the next couple of days,
you're all good. But if somebody is preparing something in tupperware, yeah,
(27:28):
you can do a lot with that. And apparently she
was doing something with beloney and I know that's the
improper way to say it when you're mixing up with
penny pasta and all that and making an actual dish bowlonaise.
But anyway, he eats this thing she prepares and this
is before the death, this is back several.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Years ago, and.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
After eating the food, Simon ended up spending the night
in the hospital after suffering from vomiting and diarrhea. How
bad is your vomiting and diarrhea that you go to
the hospital. Think about that for just a minute. How
many of us have had a bug and we've dealt
with it, you know, for a day or two and
you're like week, but yeah, no, it's going to pass.
And this is so bad, it is so intense that
(28:14):
you're going something is really wrong. As an adult, we
get to that point you're going, I'm thinking this guy,
Holy free holies, he must have been in misery.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Joe.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, And I think that it would have been the
type of gastro intestinal discomfort where he would have been
doubled over. I think that perhaps perhaps at if he
had died at that moment, tom at his autopsy, you
would have seen severe inflammation in his stomach and probably
(28:47):
in his upper intestinal track at that point in time. Wow,
it's something you would have appreciated. And of course, over
period tom as they are at the hospital trying to
resolve it, there will be uh, you know, the body
is going to heal of its own volition and it
will subside, and so any of those the irritated bowel,
(29:09):
the irritated stomach, those sorts of things are going to
dissipate over a period of time, so there won't be
necessarily you know, your body is going totabilize all of
this poison. But you have to have the help of
medical science in order to do this, to facilitate it. Wow, here,
let me throw this little spine chiller at you real quick.
(29:30):
Imagine being doubled over, you know, the porcelain throne, throwing
your guts up, and this grimlin is still in the
house with you. You know, maybe she's feigning trying to
comfort him or whatever it is. Drink knowing, yeah, knowing
good and well that the reason this is happening is
(29:54):
because of something she's initiated. Yeah, I would say, I
would say, yeah, the gag order was in place. I
would say that, you know now that that's been lifted.
This history of this just oh and this was not
a one off event, Dave.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
No, it happened again.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
And you mentioned Curry when we started, and it was
the first time was the Boloney penny pasta. But then
again again those symptoms are so bad. He goes to
the hospital with vomiting and diarrhea, recovers and then the
next time, boom, it's chicken this time, Joe, And this
is what he said. This is this is the pre
trial stuff that jury didn't hear A direct quote. We
(30:35):
had a chicken korma curry on the second night. While
Aaron was preparing food, I was getting the fire going,
so I didn't watch her prepare it. He ends up
with the same symptoms diarrhea, vomiting. And I'm gonna be honest, Joe.
One time I had a bad reaction to the food.
I'm okay with that. Yeah, happens the second time. The
(30:57):
second time I touch your food and I end up
in the toilet, I'm calling nine to one one headed
at the hospital and saying, lock her up.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Well, love is blond man. And you never know, uh,
you never know if the you know, if the forces
of evil have marshaled their forces on your border. At
this point in time, you don't suspect that, you know,
who actually goes through their life thinking, oh, yeah, my
wife is trying to murder me. And it's not until
(31:28):
we have I think we have these other souls that
have passed on and this horrific, this is a this
is a it's you know, we used to term masker
a lot and most of the I think most people
think about a masker is blood letting. And you know, again,
(31:50):
I asked folks to return back to we did an
episode recently on Jonestown and that was a massacre. And
yet there were there were people that died in that event,
that died as a result of gunshot wounds and those
sorts of things. But you know, a masker can take place,
I think, you know, by introducing this toxin into an environment.
(32:11):
Here's another piece that I was reflecting in my mind
that I forgot to say. Those kids were in the
house that night that this happened. She prepared a separate
meal for them. Yeah, there you got. I mean, talk
about intent, So you're going to prepare We weren't the
kids eating from the same dish as all of the adults.
(32:32):
And you can say, oh, well, they don't like mushrooms,
they don't like this, they don't like that. I can't
Actually that's how she said, Yeah, yeah, they don't like them.
Boy did she she saw utility in them? Dave. This
is just mind blowing that this woman could massacre the
family almost well, and you've still got another guy that
(32:55):
is so ill he's going to require a liver transplant.
I remember talking about about this the first time. I'm
wondering if the husband at this point, and this is
not really revealed in the stuff that was released other
than psychological scarring. I wonder, I wonder if he's going
(33:16):
to have long term impacts, you know, regarding this, these
things that he has endured at her hand, just physically,
you know, is it? You know, what's what's going to
be your prognosis, you know, moving out into the future.
I don't know. I don't know what that might be,
(33:38):
but it would be interesting. In these cases. I have
to say, Dave, these three cases just so I can
put this, put this in this framework. These three cases
are the people that died. This is the stuff of
forensic medical journals. Here, these three cases are going to
(34:01):
be something that in our world are going to be
studied scientifically. I submit to you that the tissue samples
alone will be presented at forensic seminars and meetings over
the next years where they'll actually take a blown up
image of a slide that say has come from the
(34:25):
upper and lower intestine, probably the stomach, the liver, and
they'll begin to describe on the screen this is what
they're seeing. And there will be you go to a
lot of these seminars and there are people that I've
come across, people that are just kind of sleeping in
the back. This will be one of those cases, or
these cases will be things where you will have knowledgeable
(34:47):
forensic scientists that will actually lean in. They're going to
lean in and they're going to really observe this and
try to understand it. And it's terrifying because you know,
as in the forensic world things you're always worried about
is that you're missing something. You're missing something, And my
Lord Dave, this case in and of itself is it
(35:10):
would be really easy to miss something. And then how
do you know that this perpetrator is still not out there?
And as it suns out, you know she was for
a period of time, you know, something kind of snapped
off real quick.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, something else we found out Joe during the Again
the things that jury did not hear. Simon actually the
X went further in describing other situations.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
It wasn't just a once or twice.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
There were several times where he had a bad reaction
to the food that now he's playing back in his head.
You know, that went on over different periods of time.
But one thing in particular that came out. He actually
goes to a friend of his who was a medical
doctor and was talking about the symptoms and things like
that and was he having some kind of food allergy?
Was there's something going on, you know, because things change
(36:02):
as we get older. Things that we might not have
been allergic to as a child were allergic to as
an adult, and vice versa. But the doctor said, you
need to keep a journal, you know, keep a food
journal of what you're doing in document when you know
you have these issues, maybe we can pinpoint it. And
being a medical doctor, you know, he was watching this.
But now we find out that when Simon went back
(36:26):
to the doctor and was talking to him that they
had a discussion about how Aaron Patterson, now convicted, actually
claimed that Simon's daughter had made a batch of cookies
for him and he kept asking she kept asking him,
have you tried the cookies yet? Have you tried the
cookies yet? And I'm gonna be honest, man, you asked
me once. I understand that you asked me two or
(36:48):
three times. I ain't touching those things, you know, And
so they actually it's not known, you know, what Aaron
had been doing, but investigators suspect that there was rat
poison in at least one occasion and probably in these
cookies that he never ate. And you know, it's just
(37:09):
interesting that you think, what did she put in those
that he didn't eat?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I mean, it just buggles the mind. And I can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
You know, they're taking and I say they, I mean
her taking a specific taking a shotgun approach to this thing. Okay,
where okay, this doesn't work, let me try this. And
it might not necessarily be the toxin that's been introduced.
It might be the way it's being introduced, you know,
(37:39):
because look, I've had people that have made cookies. Dude,
I'll be the first one to raise my hands say
I love cookies. I mean, I'd be insane not to
I love cookies and I'm going to gobble them down.
But I've had instances where cookies have been provided for
me and I've and worked cooked specifically for me, and
I didn't get a chance to eat them. All Right,
(38:02):
it all depends on the delivery mechanism for this. When
I think that when you look at this, and you
look at it from the perspective of what's fascinating to
me is that most of the time, with the death cap,
you've got this kind of long progression. It's not long.
(38:25):
It's like a period of about forty eight hours, saying
you immediate onset, you're going to have nausea and vomiting.
I don't think there's really delirium, but you're disoriented, that
sort of thing. And it's at that point in time
that this thing goes into kind of this phase where
(38:46):
it's kind of a latent phase. And that's after and
Layton just means it kind of sits there, right, so
you know how you were saying that, you know he
had gone to the hospital as a result of vomiting
that first time and it kind of passed. Well, you
go into a latent phase after that, and that can
be and it's kind of broad. It could be for
(39:09):
twelve to thirty six hours. Wo when that wave begins
to pass and silently in the background, the toxins are
still there and now they're being taken up. And what
are they attacking. Well, they've moved on at this point
(39:30):
from attacking the gastro intestinal system. Now they're hammering on
the kidneys and the liver. This is almost a perfect
a perfect toxin if you think about it, because if
you're being treated with standard medical course, the clinicians say, okay,
we got and passed it. We got passed it. He's
(39:52):
going to be fine. And then it kind of goes
into this mode of where symptomology disappears. All the while background,
your kidneys are being beginning to shut down, your liver
is failing. They're looking at this person on bed, can
you imagine, and they're starting to turn yellow because they're jaundiced,
and you know, you're a clinician thinking where am I
(40:14):
going to go?
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Now?
Speaker 1 (40:15):
You know what the how does this happen? Because I
you know, I think that they they're clearing at this
point in time, and then once they hit that phase
after the latent phase, it's at that point in time
that the airplane's flown into the side of the mountain.
At that point, there's no reasonable recovery except in certain
(40:36):
cases where this poor soul, this other poor soul is
you know, needs a liver. Now, if you can stem
it through the clinical course and you recognize it soon enough,
you're not going to be able to save the liver.
You're not going to be able. And I submit to you,
I think that, And this is why I'm really concerned
(40:58):
about the husband. What's going to be his prognosis because
I think that it attacks the liver and the kidneys.
Will he present down the road day where he's going
to need dialysis in his later years. This is what's
a yeah, And maybe it might it might be. It's hard,
(41:22):
it's hard to really know, Dave, but just think about
it might be where years down the road from now.
He's kind of stabilized at this point, but his his
organs have been compromised to the point where, say, if
he had not been exposed to it, otherwise it would
be a survivable event. But now you might be. And
(41:43):
this is this is her. Let this sink in. Just
this is her reaching through the bars of their cell
metaphorically of course, and still inflicting this pain on this man.
The proposition is that he might have liver failure in
the few future, He's going to have kidney failure in
the future, and not to mention all the other peripheral
(42:06):
toxic things that might manifest with this. I don't know.
I mean, I think the folks down in Australia, this
thing popped onto our radar. I remember when we did it.
It popped onto our radar and it made a big
splash because it was so incredibly bizarre that you and
(42:28):
I had never heard of this, we'd never seen it.
I told you I had never worked a case like
this before. I worked a case of poisonings. But Dave,
this is something that's naturally occurring, you know, out there
in the woods. You know, you can go and pluck
these things and bring them in, chop them up and
render them down and create a gravy out of them,
or whatever it is you're going to use, or maybe
(42:48):
slice and dice these things and lay them, you know,
all over this beautiful creation. And people are going to
stick this in their mouth. And it doesn't matter how
much heat you subjected to in the oven, it's still
going to be toxic, all right. And she she had
an understanding of this, I think investigatively, what would be fascinating.
(43:08):
Did she go onto an open source, an open source
on the internet, what could I use and suddenly stumbles
upon stumbles upon, you know, the mushroom. It's no different
than of course, they don't have many firearms down in
Australia anymore, but it's kind of like, what weapon do
(43:31):
I need to choose? Am I can use a thirty
eight caliber revolver or am I going to use you know,
I don't know an M four five point five six,
you know what, it's the same thing. You know, I'd
be interested to know if she had a browser history,
if they grabbed grabbed that and began to look through
(43:53):
it for her to kind of, you know, understand what's
going to be the best, the best solution for these
albums that she has in her life. And of course
she felt as though that it was going to be
killing the entire family.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Dave, I do have a tip for you.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
During the investigation, they were doing digital forensics on phones, computers,
things like that, and what they did find is that
she searched for pictures of death cap mushrooms so that
she could identify them, obviously because she went and take
them herself. So yeah, you've you've got that. And that happened,
(44:30):
of course before she cooked the meal. So yeah, you
talking about intent, there's your intent right there there is.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Her argument is, Oh, you don't understand I'm just interested
in mushrooms. You know, how many other things did you
search for in the you know, in this in this
in this family specifically bizarre case. I look, I you know,
I hope for the best, for this family, for this man,
(44:57):
the other gentleman that has suffered such such pain in
that initial attack. There's nothing that can ever assuage the
pain of what he's been through, and certainly the others
involved in this. These children are going to get past,
or have the ability to get past, because this is
(45:19):
something they will be scarred with for the rest of
their life. I'll put it to you this way. Every
time in the future that fork goes into food and
that's lifted to their lips, that memory of what their
mama and their wife had done will always linger in
(45:43):
the background. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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