OPINION
Are we doing it all over again? Is Australia whipping up another Chamberlain hysteria?
I vividly remember the whole circus. It’s astonishing in hindsight just how unhinged public commentary around the case became. From initially shooting and killing dingoes on sight, public opinion quickly did an about-face when, as satire group the D-Generation put it, Lindy Chamberlain “wore frumpy clothes in public and failed to weep on cue”. With chilling swiftness, a bizarre whisper campaign turned into howling hysteria. It was claimed that Azaria means “sacrifice in the wilderness” (in fact, the book 1001 Unusual Baby Names in which Lindy found the name gave it as meaning “Blessed of God”), that the Chamberlains always dressed Azaria in black, and that they had underlined a passage in the Bible describing a murder with a tent peg.
It’s all beginning to feel uncomfortably familiar in the saga of “Mushroom Lady” Erin Patterson.
As I’ve previously reported, three people have died and another remains in hospital, after a weekend lunch in country Victoria went badly wrong. Police are investigating. That’s all we know. The rumour mill, though, is going beserk.
The woman who cooked the deadly beef Wellington meal with toxic mushrooms suspected of killing three elderly people has lamented “being painted as an evil witch’’ and becoming a prisoner in her own home, unable to receive support […]
Ms Patterson, who broke up with husband Simon years ago, is a suspect in the deaths but detectives are keeping an open mind about what happened and her role in the scandal. “I lost my parents-in-law, my children lost their grandparents,’’ she told The Australian.
“And I’ve been painted as an evil witch. And the media is making it impossible for me to live in this town. I can’t have friends over. The media is at the house where my children are at. The media are at my sister’s house so I can’t go there. This is unfair.’’
We don’t even know for certain, at present, that the deaths were caused by ingesting poisonous mushrooms.
It could take weeks or even months for the toxicology reports to be finalised into how the three elderly people died, however police are confident it was the result of the victims having been served death cap mushrooms.
The Australian
It doesn’t help that Patterson has admitted to lying about when she disposed of a food hydrator which may or may not have been used to prepare the mushrooms. She puts the lie down to panic.
In the statement written by Ms Patterson, she said she used a mixture of mushrooms in the beef Wellington dish.
She said she bought button mushrooms at a supermarket near her home and dried mushrooms “months” earlier at an Asian grocery shop in Melbourne, the name of which she could not remember.
The 48-year-old said she served the meal and allowed her guests to choose their own plates at her Leongatha home on July 29.She said she took the last plate and ate a serving of the dish herself, in the statement believed to have been tendered in recent days
Ms Patterson said her two children were not at the lunch because they had gone to the movies – despite homicide squad detectives previously stating they were present at the lunch.She said her children ate leftovers from the lunch the following night, but she scraped the mushrooms off the dish because they did not like them.
The major reason Patterson became the subject of the investigation was that she alone apparently didn’t become ill. Her new statement denies this, and medical records appear to confirm her account.
Ms Patterson also said she was admitted to hospital after the lunch with bad stomach pains and diarrhoea.
She was put on a saline drip and given a “liver protective drug” before being taken by ambulance from the Leongatha Hospital to the Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne on July 31, she said.
Gippsland Southern Health Service confirmed a fifth person went to Leongatha Hospital on July 30 with suspected food poisoning and was sent to Monash
The Australian
Adding to the hysteria are lurid claims which are eerily reminiscent of the unhinged whispers which plagued the Chamberlains.
The previous home of Erin Patterson, the woman who prepared the fatal mushroom lunch, featured a “death wall” with disturbing children’s drawings of tombstones and messages like “you don’t [have] long to live”, according to a report.
NewsHub
On the other hand, it should be remembered that death cap mushrooms have caused a number of deaths in Victoria in recent years.
The case has sparked fresh concerns over death cap mushrooms that can resemble a straw mushroom when young or a white field mushroom when matured.
In 2011, they were also linked to the deaths of two Chinese migrant workers on New Year’s Eve.
The Australian
With such little facts to go on and so many wild rumours proliferating, it might be a time for a bit of public restraint, lest we do this sorry saga all over again. The truth will out, eventually.