Wellington beef stuffed with poisonous mushrooms, a questionable recipe – Liberation
It is a sophisticated recipe, reset to the English leader Gordon Ramsay. She bears the name of the Duke of Wellington, winner on the field of the battle of Waterloo in 1815 of the French Napoleon Bonaparte. The ingredients are simple, the formatting more complicated. You need a very good drizzle of beef, a puff pastry and, essential for the recipe, a mushroom stuffing. Most recipes suggest Paris mushrooms, Gordon Ramsey A Mixture of Wood Mushrooms. Some cooks are more adventurous.
This is the case of Erin Patterson, whose trial opened on Wednesday April 30 in a court in Victoria fascinates Australia. In July 2023, the 50 -year -old Australian spent hours developing the recipe, by decorating the farce of Phalloid amanitis, one of the most toxic mushrooms in the world. In her flirtatious house of Leongatha in the county of the South Gippsland Shire, in the far south-eastern Australia, she drew a pretty table, with four blue plates for her guests and an orange for her.
To serve with her Wellington beef, she had a good puree and green beans. As agreed, his ex-Beaux-Parents, Don and Gail Patterson, 70 years old, the sister of Gail, Heather Wilkinson, 66 and her husband, Pastor, Ian Wilkinson, 68, arrived at 12:30 p.m. for this lunch. Simon, Erin’s ex-husband,, on the other hand, declined the invitation at the last minute, explaining in a message that he did not feel « Very comfortable » to the idea of this meeting. What Ecrin has regretted. In a message on her phone, she explained to her ex “Having spent a little fortune on this drizzle of beef. I hope you will change your mind, it’s very disappointing ”. The excuse of this invitation, « Very rare » According to his ex-husband, who was the first witness heard this Thursday, May 1 at the trial, was a diagnosis of ovaries cancer and a discussion on how to announce it to the two children that the couple had. Erin Patterson has never suffered from cancer, the investigation revealed.
A few hours after the meal, his guests were seized with violent nausea. A few days later, hospitalized in emergency, the parents and the aunt of Simon died. Ian Wilkinson only survived after two months of hospital and a liver transplant. The investigation revealed that all were poisoned by the Welington beef mushrooms, which proved to be phalloid, terribly toxic amanitis.
Neither Erin Patterson nor his two children, then aged 9 and 14, were affected. The Australian initially said they had served them the remains of Wellington beef after having removed the farce of mushrooms that children, she said, did not like. She also started by saying that she had bought some of the dehydrated mushrooms in an Asian store, whose investigators have never found the trace. They ended up discovering that she had gone to collect Phalloid Amanites in a wood that had been reported on a website she had consulted.
Erin was charged with assassination and assassination attempt. She pleads not guilty. His defense explains the drama by a fatal error, a stupid accident, and his lies by his « panic » After having noticed the discomforts of the members of his ex-family.
Married in 2007, the couple had been definitively separated since 2015, after a fairly volatile relationship and several separations and reconciliations. Initially on good terms, the links between the two spouses, which are technically still married, had deteriorated in the last months before the drama. If poisoning with Phalloid amanitis is no doubt, underlined the prosecutor at the start of the trial, the stake of hearings, which should last six weeks, will be to determine intentionality or not of poisoning. Erin Patterson risks perpetuity.
