Justice, Mushrooms, and Motive

So. Erin Patterson has been convicted of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. She prepared a meal of beef wellington which she served to four elderly people – her parents in law, and her mother-in-law’s sister and her husband. The meal contained death cap mushrooms leading to three painful deaths. Gail Patterson, 70, Heather Wilkinson, 66, and Don Patterson, 70, died at the Austin Hospital in Victoria. Don had received a liver transplant but died within a day of surgery. Ian Wilkinson, then 69, remained hospitalised for more than seven weeks but survived the attempt on his life.

The case attracted interest around the world, including me and, to a lesser extent, Peter. During the early days we wondered if she’d actually done this deliberately or if it had just been an awful, terrible mistake. All we had to go on, of course, was what was reported in the news. But as the evidence accumulated – the ditched dehydrator that she claimed not to own, the meal cooked as individual parcels, not as a log as the recipe she used produced, the individual plates with hers being different, the fact she wasn’t particularly ill, and the endless lies… I was ready to say she did it but I wondered if a jury would find her guilty beyond reasonable doubt. And Peter pointed out that there didn’t appear to be a motive.

As it transpired, the jury saw evidence that was not disclosed in the media until after the verdict. And anyway, it’s different being there, hearing the evidence, watching the body language.

The motive?

After the verdict journalist Claire Harvey wrote an illuminating column in the Australian entitled If Erin Patterson was a man, we would know what the motive was. (It’s behind a paywall – sorry). She argues convincingly that this was a case of coercive control, or domestic violence. It’s the same sort of pattern you see when a woman tries to escape from a dominant spouse and he ends up killing her and the children. Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, was invited to the lunch but declined to attend. Wise of him, as it turns out. Her behaviour—isolating Simon, controlling access to family, emotional manipulation, belittlement, and retaliatory cruelty when he attempted to assert independence—mirrors the tactics commonly recognized in male abusers. The use of poison has distracted from what should be seen plainly: a dominant partner using emotional and psychological abuse to maintain power and punish disobedience, culminating in a deadly act when that control began to slip.

Sounds like a good theory to me. I expect we’ll never really know.

Back in the olden days when criminals were hanged the punishment was a public spectacle, with hundreds attending the event. We don’t do that anymore. We have a different form of voyeurism. As soon as the verdict appeared there was a slew of articles about the case, interviews with ‘experts’, opinion pieces (like the one above). Next, there’ll be books and ‘true crime’ tell-all TV programs. And of course, slightly ‘off’ jokes. For example, rumour has it Erin Patterson applied to work in the prison kitchens. She was knocked back.

Humans are a ghoulish lot.

Actually, I’ll confess to having some interest in true crime, especially cases committed in Australia. As the Patterson case concluded I was reading a memoir in which a reference was made to Eric Cooke, a mass murderer who terrorised my hometown around 1960. I found a fascinating book about his case and I wrote a review. The Night Stalker: when a city lost its innocence

And to finish, here’s a nice picture of Airlie Beach at sunset. Taken from the yacht club.