Hundreds of people attended a ceremony in Australia to honor a couple who passed away after eating a mushroom beef dish made by their ex-daughter-in-law.
Gail and Don Patterson were two out of three people who died after having lunch at Erin Patterson’s house last month. This event has attracted a lot of attention from the entire country.
The police think that the Pattersons and Don’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, ate poisonous death cap mushrooms.
Ms Patterson claims she didn’t do anything wrong and the inclusion of mushrooms was unintentional.
All four of her guests became very sick shortly after they ate lunch. Ian Wilkinson, who is married to Ms. Wilkinson and is a pastor in the area, was the fourth person to come as a guest.
According to Australian media, Mr. Wilkinson is still in the hospital but he is getting better, even though his wife has also passed away.
The police think Erin Patterson might have done something wrong because she and her two children seemed fine after lunch. But she hasn’t been taken into custody and she isn’t being accused of any wrongdoing.
The cook says that the mushroom deaths in Australia were accidental.
On Thursday, she didn’t go to the memorial in the country town of Korumburra, which is a few hours drive south-east of Melbourne.
Her ex-husband Simon Patterson gave a speech at the funeral, which was also his first public statement about the tragic event. He was asked to come to a family lunch on July 29th, but he couldn’t go because something came up suddenly.
MrPatterson talked about his parents in the speech, but didn’t mention his ex-wife. He said that his parents were very religious Christians who used to be missionaries and were dedicated to their faith and helping others.
“He said that the fact they both died on consecutive days shows how closely they worked together to achieve their goals. ”
We were one of the few families who sat together at the tea table for dinner in the evening.
Mr Patterson said that his father, who is 70 years old, had to get a liver transplant while in the hospital. He mentioned that his father’s good health helped him survive the surgery.
“He said that unfortunately, the rest of his body was too sick to go any further than that point. ”
Mr Patterson could not hold back his tears. He said, “It was not a coincidence that my mom’s last text message in our family chat was ‘Lots of love to you all’, when she was in Dandenong Hospital. ”
Ever since the sad event happened to the family, Australia cannot stop thinking about the situation – and people are paying very close attention to all the details. Many people across the country were interested in the case, so a television crew came to the Thursday service and showed the footage on different channels.
Ms Patterson has consistently stated that she didn’t do anything wrong and mentioned that she had to go to the hospital because her stomach hurt after eating the meal.
Two weeks ago, she explained why she did what she did to the police.