Three people, highly regarded in their communities, are dead. One is fighting for his life while the breathless reporting of what the lawyerly would describe as hearsay while the rest of us would be content with the term ‘salacious gossip’, is being presented as fact.
Police have announced that Erin Patterson, 48, is a suspect but no charges have been laid.
The Daily Mail hit peak Kent Brockman last night, reporting on “a new twist.” That twist was the arrival of Erin Patterson’s lawyers with instructions for their client only to find she wasn’t home.
I can almost hear Kent now. “In news at five, what the cat did.”
All this without the true crime podcasters who have yet to arrive. Trust me, they are on their way.
Today, there were 20-point font headlines on the Daily Mail website – ‘My Mushroom Hell’ lifting a story from the ABC’s 7.30 program of an interview with a Canberra man who inadvertently picked death cap mushrooms and was the only to consume them in the family’s spag bog that night. The man became extremely ill, was hospitalised at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital but his liver fought back and he survived.
There are stories (yes, I know it’s gossip) of some locals seeking to cash in on the belief that reporters are running around waving cheque books.
We all understand the fascination with this case. There are questions, so many questions without clear answers and in this turgid environment, media organisations are falling over one another to provide any vaguely relevant details.
I have a few questions for the Victoria Police Force and Victoria’s Department of Health that don’t rely on gossip but on more important matters like public health.
The Australian broke this story on Saturday 5 August. Associate Editor John Ferguson sought comment from police that morning and received a reply shortly thereafter.
That response was open-ended, indicating that police had become involved at or possibly before the time the first victim, Gail Patterson, was pronounced deceased on Friday 4 August. By the time the inquiry was made, Heather Wilkinson had also passed away.
Don Patterson died later on Saturday August 5 and VicPol issued another statement reported in The Australian.
“Police have been notified in relation to an incident where four people were taken to hospital with suspected poisoning on 30 July,’’ a spokeswoman said.
Police said they did not know the exact circumstances of the incident “and it is not known if the matter is suspicious.”
Divining police-speak is never easy but on the basis of the two statements issued by VicPol we still can’t be certain when police were notified. We do know police executed a search warrant on Erin Patterson’s property on 5 August.
Similarly, VicPol is yet to confirm the source of the poisoning and are awaiting toxicology reports which could take weeks. Death cap mushrooms are only suspected to be the culprits.
To understand the problem, we need to go back almost two weeks. What we know now is that four people fell ill after attending a lunch at Erin Robinson’s home on 29 July. Within a day, all four were in local hospitals and gravely ill. They were transferred to the Austin Hospital’s intensive care unit at some point over the next few days
On August 8, Homicide Squad Detective Inspector, Dean Thomas, told Melbourne radio:
“It’s a really interesting case, and at this stage I can say the deaths are really unexplained,” he said.
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of it, to understand what has actually occurred.
“What we do know is the four people – three who have passed away – attended a lunch in Leongatha on July 29.
“They had lunch then they left there, but about midnight on that Saturday night some of them started to fall ill.”
When did police form the belief that the poisonings were contained to Erin Patterson’s property?
At face value, there is a conflict between the police going quietly about a complex investigation, intent on keeping it from the media, and possibly ignoring the potential risk to the public of further illnesses or worse.
The police would have known that the three-ring circus was coming to South Gippsland and no doubt would have preferred that not to be the case. But between the period of the lunch on 29 July and the transfer of the four patients to the Austin Hospital’s Liver Unit, police and public health authorities could not have been certain there was no wider risk to the public.
There was a possibility of a food contamination outbreak, with products being available in stores in the local area and even across the state and country that could have posed a risk to public health.
As it stands three people are dead. A fourth, Ian Wilkinson, is in a critical condition and requires a liver transplant. It goes without saying, the Austin Liver Transplant Unit doesn’t have livers lying around on the shelf.
It’s a private matter for every Australian but we can do better than the rather dismal current figure of around 14 per cent of adult Australians registered as organ donors. Ticking the box when you renew a driver’s licence won’t do it. It takes a minute to register on the Commonwealth’s Organ and Tissue Authority website, donatelife.gov.au.
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It’s standing room only at the three-ring media circus in South Gippsland. The media has rolled the caravans in, desperate for any information on what has become known as the Leongatha poisonings.