Australian woman guilty of murdering relatives with toxic mushroom meal

Published

9 hours ago

July 7, 2025

Watch: Australia’s mushroom murder case… in under two minutes

Australian woman Erin Patterson is guilty of murdering three relatives with a toxic mushroom lunch, a jury has found.

The 50-year-old has also been found guilty of the attempted murder of the sole guest who survived the beef Wellington meal in 2023.

Patterson’s much-watched trial in the small Victorian town of Morwell heard evidence suggesting she had hunted down death cap mushrooms sighted in nearby towns, before trying to conceal her crimes by lying to police and disposing of evidence.

Her legal team had argued she unintentionally foraged lethal fungi, then “panicked” upon accidentally poisoning family members she loved. The jury on Monday ruled she did it intentionally.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal on 29 July 2023: Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather’s husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.

Patterson’s estranged partner Simon Patterson had also been invited to the lunch but pulled out at the last minute. She was originally accused of attempting to murder him too – on several occasions – but those charges were dropped on the eve of the trial and the allegations were not put to the jury.

The case captured the world’s attention, becoming one of the most closely watched trials in Australian history.

Over nine weeks, the Victorian Supreme Court heard from more than 50 witnesses – including Patterson herself. Detectives described rifling through her garbage bins for leftovers, doctors outlined the gradual but brutal decline of the victims’ health, and Patterson’s estranged husband emotionally explained the souring nature of their relationship.

The only thing the case was missing was a motive – something key to Patterson’s defence.

Prosecutors argued Patterson had faked a cancer diagnosis to coax the guests to her house, then poisoned them and feigned illness to ward off suspicion.

She admitted to lying to police and medical staff about foraging for wild mushrooms, dumping a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, and repeatedly wiping her mobile phone – all evidence of her guilt, prosecutors said.

From the witness box, Erin Patterson told the court she loved her relatives and had no reason to harm them.

She repeatedly denied intentionally putting the poisonous fungi in the meal, and said she realised days after the lunch that the beef Wellingtons may have accidentally included dried, foraged varieties that were kept in a container with store-bought ones.

She also told the court she had suffered from bulimia for years, and had made herself throw up after the beef Wellington meal – something her defence team said explained why she did not become as sick as the others who ate it.

The lie about having cancer was because she was embarrassed about plans to get weight-loss surgery, Ms Patterson said. She also claimed she didn’t tell authorities the truth about her mushroom foraging hobby because she feared they might blame her for making her relatives sick.

Ultimately, after a week of deliberation, the jury decided: returning four guilty verdicts which could see Patterson spend the rest of her life in jail.

The Patterson and Wilkinson families were not in court to hear the outcome of the case, and a representative said they would not be making a comment.

The Korumburra Baptist Church, where all of the victims attended and Mr Wilkinson was the pastor, said the trio were “very special people who loved God and loved to bless others”.

“We all greatly miss Heather, Don and Gail whether we were friends for a short time or over 20 years,” the statement posted to their noticeboard read.

Speaking briefly to media outside the courtroom, Victoria Police’s Detective Inspector Dean Thomas thanked the officers and prosecutors who had worked on the case.

“It’s very important that we remember that three people have died, and we’ve had a person that nearly died and was seriously injured,” he said.

“I ask that we acknowledge those people and not forget them.”

He added that the Patterson and Wilkinson families had asked for privacy, and urged that their wishes be respected.

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Texas floods: At least 75 dead in single county after flash floods, officials say as more rain expected

Published

2 hours ago

July 7, 2025

The Editors

Multiple factors contributed to these devastating floodspublished at 15:02 British Summer Time

Matt Taylor
BBC Weather

Several factors came together to create the devastating outcome
we saw in Texas last week.

First there was the weather patterns at the time.

The remnants
of an ex-tropical storm had become embedded within a broader area of very
unstable air within the region. Unstable air is air which has the ability to
rise rapidly to form large storm clouds.

Tropical Storm Barry, that caused flooding across the Yucatan
Peninsula in Mexico a week earlier, had tracked across the Gulf of Mexico to decay
over north-east Mexico. This had meant there was already large supply of
moisture in the atmosphere.

Wind patterns across the region at the time also
resulted in a flow of humid, moisture-laden air from Gulf too.

The next factor was the geography and topography of the area: Kerr County, where the worst of the floods occurred, is a hillier area which forced moisture-laden
air upwards helping to build huge storm clouds.

The ones that formed over the area were so large they effectively became
their own weather system, producing huge amounts of rain over a larger area.

It was slow-moving, adding to the rain totals and creating further
thunderstorms along a zone that continued to affect the area containing the
Guadalupe River.

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Camp Mystic says it’s grieving 27 counselors and campers

Published

3 hours ago

July 7, 2025

By Jayme Lozano Carver

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Camp Mystic confirmed Monday it is “grieving the loss of 27 campers and counselors” following the devastating floods in Texas over the weekend.

The all-girls Christian camp, which has been a summertime retreat for generations of Texas girls, has become the focus of floods’ aftermath. The camp is Kerr County along the Guadalupe River, where water reached catastrophic levels overnight Friday. About 10 inches of rain fell within a few hours, causing the river to rise 26 feet in 45 minutes.

“Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” the camp wrote in a statement to their website. “We are praying for them constantly.”

The camp said it has been in communication with local and state authorities who are conducting searches for the missing girls.

Officials have confirmed at least 79 deaths as of Sunday from the floods in Central Texas, including 40 adults and 28 children in Kerr County. It was not immediately clear Monday morning how many of the girls from Camp Mystic were included in that official count. A press conference has been scheduled for 10 a.m.

Camp Mystic’s director Richard “Dick” Eastland is among those who have been confirmed dead. According to Eastland’s son, the director died trying to save campers as the floodwaters began engulfing the camp.

“We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support from community, first responders, and officials at every level,” the camp said on its website.

Questions about a lack of sufficient warnings have continued to grow since the flash floods. The National Weather Service issued a flood watch Thursday afternoon, predicting up to seven inches of isolated rainfall early Friday morning.

At 1:14 a.m. Friday, the NWS issued the first flash flood warning. At 4:03 a.m., the NWS issued a flash flood emergency, warning of an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation.”

Local and state officials have since said the NWS forecasts did not accurately predict the intensity of the rainfall.

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Jurassic World Rebirth smashes predictions at box office | Film

Published

4 hours ago

July 7, 2025

Andrew Pulver

Jurassic World Rebirth has outperformed expectations at the box office in its opening week, with the latest instalment of the dinosaur franchise recording over $318m in revenue worldwide after initial projections suggested it might make $260m.

The film opened over the Fourth of July holiday weekend in North America, releasing into US cinemas on Wednesday 2 July – a standard tactic to help boost opening-weekend figures. The film grossed more than $147m (£108m) over five days (Wednesday to Sunday) in the US and Canada, and recorded $171m (£126m) in the rest of the world.

The results are significantly better that what had been predicted: studio Universal had estimated it would score around $100m-$120m in North America, and just over twice that overseas. With an entirely new cast, led by Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey, producers were not overly optimistic of its chances, given that Independence Day is not a traditional moviegoing holiday. Critical reaction has been mixed, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw being particularly enthusiastic with a four star rating, saying: “It feels relaxed and sure-footed in its Spielberg pastiche, its big dino-jeopardy moments and its deployment of thrills and laughs”.

The film’s chances of profitability are also helped by the (relatively) restricted production budget, reported at $180m compared to the $845m spent on its two predecessors, Fallen Kingdom and Dominion.

However, analysis shows that the film’s figures fall somewhat short of previous Jurassic World films. Rebirth earned $91.5m over the actual weekend (Friday to Sunday), considerably less than Fallen Kingdom ($148m) and Dominion ($145m) over their equivalent periods, while the first franchise reboot Jurassic World took $208m in 2015.

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