Ex-husband’s parents and aunt got poisonous mushrooms

The host of a weekend circle of relatives lunch at her Australian u . s . a . home was charged Thursday with murdering her ex-husband’s mother and father and aunt with poisonous mushrooms and trying to homicide a fourth visitor, police said.

Police arrested Erin Patterson, forty nine, at her domestic within the Victoria nation city of Leongatha, where her former husband’s parents, Gail and Don Patterson, each 70, Gail Patterson’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, and Wilkinson’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, 68, were invited for lunch on July 29.

All four guests had been hospitalized the next day, and best Ian Wilkinson survived.

Patterson has publicly denied any wrongdoing.

“I’m devastated. I loved them. i can’t accept as true with that this has took place and i’m so sorry,” she tearfully informed reporters days after the 1/3 death.

Patterson become also charged with three counts of trying to murder her ex-husband, Simon Patterson, 48, who have become ill after eating three food in 2021 and 2022, a police declaration said. He did not attend the July lunch.

Police say the symptoms the 4 family contributors who did attend skilled were consistent with poisoning from wild Amanita phalloides, referred to as loss of life cap mushrooms.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. pronounced that Patterson wrote in a assertion that she cooked a pork Wellington steak dish for the lunch the usage of mushrooms offered from a first-rate supermarket chain and dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery shop.

She wrote that she also ate the meal and later had stomach pains and diarrhea.

Ian Wilkinson, a Baptist pastor, changed into released from a hospital in overdue September and police say he maintains to recover.

homicide in Victoria includes a potential most sentence of 25 years in jail. Patterson turned into predicted to stay in police custody till she appears in a neighborhood court docket on Friday, while she can doubtlessly follow to be released on bail.

Bail requests for defendants charged with homicide are commonly referred to a better court.