The doctor who led the fight to save Erin Patterson’s victims of mushroom poisoning described the horrifying effects of the toxins that alarmed his team and raised suspicion that they were dealing with a killer.
Dr Stephen Warrillow, director of intensive care at Austin Health in Victoria, said the four patients who had eaten the beef wellington dish cooked by Patterson were among the sickest he had ever seen.
Patterson, 50, was found guilty this week of murdering her former husband’s parents Gail and Donald Patterson and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and of attempting to murder Heather’s husband Ian.
Patterson had invited them for a meal at her home in Morwell, Victoria, on 29 July 2023 and served them beef wellington containing toxic mushrooms.
They fell sick shortly afterwards and died, except Ian, who survived after a period in hospital.
She had also invited her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, to the lunch, but he cancelled the day before because he was feeling too “uncomfortable” amid rising tensions between them.
Dr Warrillow described to the ABC how each of the four guests spiralled into multi-organ failure despite the best efforts of his team.
The four patients were “devastatingly unwell”, Dr Warrillow recalled, but what rang the alarm bells for his team was they all showed the same pattern of organ failure, which pointed to a common and powerful toxin.
“Certainly, the sickest patients in the whole state,” he said, “but it is unusual to have four patients similarly afflicted and they were critically ill with multiple organ failure”.
The triple murder trial of Patterson – dubbed the death cap mushroom cook case – gripped Australia for over two months as shocking details emerged of how she had murdered three of her estranged husband’s relatives.
Patterson denied deliberate poisoning and contended she had no reason to murder her elderly in-laws. But the jury rejected her defence that the inclusion of toxic mushrooms in the meal was a terrible accident.
The death cap mushroom toxin first attacks the liver and the damage quickly spreads. Kidney failure follows, then circulatory collapse and broader metabolic failure.
“Once the liver fails, it tends to drag down all the other organs with it,” Dr Warrillow pointed out.
The four patients were put on mechanical ventilators and dialysis machines to purify their blood.
