The tale of a deadly mushroom meal transfixes the world in the search for truth
The story of how three guests dropped dead after a simple meal has captured the world but only two people can properly describe the Leongatha lunch and one has been charged with murder.
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It was the little lunch that captured the world, yet also a private meal of which we still know so little.
A Saturday catch-up with friends and family. A coming together after an apparently amicable separation between a husband and a wife.
Then, the guests dropped dead in the days afterwards – in allegedly dreadful ways which trumped the herculean efforts of teams of surgeons.
Their purported symptoms – vomiting, stomach cramps, liver failure – matched the markers for death cap mushroom ingestion.
In the deep shade of facts, of the toxicology reports which would take months, and the flat denials of wrongdoing, sinister theories would always bloom.
The guests had eaten beef wellington, we knew that much, in a lunch prepared by host Erin Patterson.
The fact that has driven lively barbecue debates ever since? That Patterson herself did not die after the meal.
She was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder on Thursday, amid the obligatory media clamour for her every movement and expression in an investigation described by a senior police officer as unmatched for public scrutiny and curiosity.
The police stayed in her Leongatha home for six hours before taking her to the police station at nearby Wonthaggi.
Sniffer dogs darted about the yard as searches began on the Red MG in the driveway. Suitcases – presumably loaded with evidence – accumulated in the pathway.
A journalist likened his (thwarted) anticipation of sighting Patterson to Roald Dahl’s crowds waiting at the gates for a glimpse of Willy Wonka.
Patterson has presented a pained front since July, all untamed hair and mumbled hostility for the uproar.
After an intrepid journalist knocked at her door, a sign warning of the prosecution of trespassers materialised on her property fence.
She has said she bought dried mushrooms at an Asian grocer, and that she dumped a mushroom dehydrator in a panic.
She has also said that she has done nothing wrong.
Only two people can properly describe the July 29 lunch. One is Patterson. The other is Ian Wilkinson, a pastor who has since recovered from the brink of death to face a future without his wife, Heather.
No one could say when or indeed if a Patterson arrest would happen. Many observers assumed the investigation would drag on because of its inherent complexities.
Police have worked in the shadows, a sole press conference days after the deaths their only public utterances – until Thursday.
One now dispelled theory went that the case would leach into 2025 without fresh bombshell scenes.
Events were not clarified by Detective Inspector Dean Thomas, who fronted for journalists at Victoria Police headquarters.
He read a statement but took no questions. “I know people have many questions in relation to this matter … however it’s not that simple,” he explained.
“(The) arrest is just the next step in what has been a complex and thorough investigation ... that is not yet over.”
Patterson did not sign the statement she gave to police and which was released to the media in August. Investigators will have to corroborate its contents nevertheless.
Patterson said her children were at the local cinema when the lunch happened. Inspector Thomas has said that they were at the house and he has not shifted from that public position since.
Technology would always play a big role in this inquiry.
Examination of CCTV, credit card usage, internet history, tollway movements and phone data is part of almost every modern investigation.
This element got an extra dimension when technology detection dogs were deployed on Thursday. The canines are trained to sniff out mobile phones and things like SIM cards which someone may not want found.
Poisonings hold a ghastly fascination that date back to Ancient Greece.
Deliciously diabolical, they command a unique gallows humour that can seem so at odds with their murderous intent.
Victims boast no clues to the doom that they themselves, unwittingly, propel by the most automatic of functions. Sipping a cup of tea. Nibbling on a biscuit.
Many observers are poised to add beef wellington, a darling go-to concoction of the 1970s, to the list of lethal weapons. For this case, if prosecuted, invites the mystery of Azaria Chamberlain and the bald claims of innocence from Mary Mallon, known for posterity as Typhoid Mary.
Thursday’s events may be a small step in deciphering inexplicable circumstances.
There is no middle ground in this search for truth. Did evil erupt on July 29? Or was there a coincidence of wretched misfortune?
Until we know, the chatter about a little lunch in a small place will not dim. Except in South Gippsland, that is, where locals on Thursday offered little except prayers in speaking about this sorry story.
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