The ex-husband of a woman who served a lunch that proved fatal to three people has claimed she tried to poison him.
Erin Patterson, 48, was the only one who did not get sick after eating the meal at her home in Leongatha in Victoria, southeast Australia, on Saturday 29 July.
Her former spouse, Simon Paterson, who nearly died from an unknown gut malady last year, has now revealed he “suspects” she was trying to poison him.
“Simon suspected he had been poisoned by Erin,” a source close to the family told the Herald Sun.
“There were times he had felt… a bit off and it often coincided when he spent time with her.”
In a social media post from last year Mr Paterson wrote: “I collapsed at home, then was in an induced coma for 16 days through which I had three emergency operations mainly on my small intestine, plus an additional planned operation,” he wrote.
“My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live.”
More on Australia
Related Topics:
The former couple are now separated but their split was described as “amicable”.
Mrs Paterson’s former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, were among those who ate the meal which allegedly contained the poisonous fungi.
Advertisement
Gail Patterson’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, and her husband Reverend Ian Wilkinson, 68, were also at the table.
All four felt unwell by midnight that evening before Mrs Patterson and Mrs Wilkinson died nearly a week later on Friday 4 August.
Don Patterson died the next day.
Reverend Wilkinson, a pastor at Korumburra Baptist Church, is still fighting for his life in hospital.
Erin Patterson’s two children were also at the lunch but were given a different meal from the others.
They have reportedly been taken into state care as a “precaution”.
What makes death cap mushrooms so lethal?
The death cap is one of the most toxic mushrooms on the planet and is involved in the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide.
The species contains three main groups of toxins: amatoxins, phallotoxins, and virotoxins.
From these, amatoxins are primarily responsible for the toxic effects in humans.
The alpha-amanitin amatoxin has been found to cause protein deficit and ultimately cell death, although other mechanisms are thought to be involved.
The liver is the main organ that fails due to the poison, but other organs are also affected, most notably the kidneys.
The effects usually begin after a short latent period and include gastrointestinal disorders followed by jaundice, seizures, coma, and, eventually, death.
The case has gripped Australia after police opened a homicide investigation and confirmed Mrs Patterson is a suspect.
It is suspected the four people were served mushrooms known as death caps – which are responsible for 90% of all toxic mushroom-related fatalities.
Speaking outside her home on Monday, Mrs Patterson broke down in tears over the loss of “some of the best people I’ve ever met”.
“The loss to the community and to the families and my own children who have lost their grandmother… I just can’t fathom what has happened,” she said.
“I’m so sorry that they have lost their lives. I just can’t believe it.”
Mrs Patterson did not answer questions from reporters about the meal she cooked or where the mushrooms came from.
However, she denied any wrongdoing when she was reminded she was a suspect in the investigations.
“I didn’t do anything, I love them and I’m devastated they are gone,” she said.
Police have said the fact Mrs Patterson is being investigated doesn’t mean the deaths weren’t a tragic accident.
Detective Inspector Dean Thomas said: “I’m not aware of an investigation where we’ve had three people die as a result of an apparent food poisoning, whether that be by a mushroom or something else – so yes, it is quite unique.
“(Mrs Patterson) has not presented with any symptoms. So again, that forms part of our investigation whether she did or didn’t eat any of the mushrooms or anything else that may have been eaten on that particular day.”
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
Advertisement
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.