Hello dear B1 and B2 listeners, I'm back again with another podcast.
As you can see I'm Publishing the podcast midweek because during the holiday it's easier for me to do it. during the week in the middle of the week instead of sundays and today i have a an interesting story for you, which is a true story.
It's been in the news... in the world news for quite some time, a few weeks, and it's about the mushroom murders.
A mushroom is a small plant which grows in woods and the countryside.
Some are usually edible that means we can eat them. but some are poisonous, and if you eat them, you can die of poisoning. from the toxins which the mushrooms contain.
There is one particular mushroom which is called the death cap mushroom.
In Latin, it's Amanita phalloides. And you can check that in your own language in Latin and find what it's called in your language.
And this mushroom is the center, was the center of this court case where somebody called Erin Patterson, a 50 year old lady from Victoria in Australia apparently murdered her guests at a lunch.
Now I'm not going to tell you the story. i am going to pass this over to the famous detective from agatha christie monsieur hercule and he will tell us. what happened and the events and facts of the case.
But before I pass over to Hercule Poirot, I would like to point out The grammatical focus of this podcast, which is the third conditional, This is possibly more a B2 level podcast rather than B1.
Though all my B1 guests are also invited, of course.
And... The third conditional is when we say something which has already happened.
Or... didn't happen but we're talking about the past something like if i had studied more I would have passed my Cambridge exams if I
Had studied. So that past perfect there in the first clause with the if.
If I had studied. more comma and then with a conditional I would have passed my exams, my Cambridge exams.
That's the structure. Listen out for it during the podcast.
Monsieur Hercule Poirot will be using... this structure a few times.
You can also go to my website practicingenglish.com podcast 239.
And there you can see the full transcript of what Hercule Poirot said about this case.
So I'm going to pass over now to Hercule Poirot and he will explain everything to you.
Here we go. Hello and welcome to Practicing English.
My name is Mike Bilbre and these are podcasts. for students of English at B1 or B2 levels for transcripts please go to practicingenglish.com This is a B2 level podcast for students studying B2.
And this is Ecu Poirot, who will be telling us about the famous mushroom murders.
Madame Patterson, Monsieur Wilkinson, Dr. Webster, Inspector Lestrade, please be seated.
I shall now go over the events and facts of this very interesting case.
First of all, madame erwin patterson invited her parents-in-law madame gail and monsieur don patterson and the mother-in-law's sister madame heather and her husband monsieur ian wilkinson overtook a lunch at her home in Leyongatha.
Victoria, Australia on July the 29th, 2023.
Madame Erin also invited her own husband, from whom she was then separated.
However, he turned down the invitation. Of that party, only Monsieur Wilkinson is able to be with us today. the other three members now dead from poisoning.
May their souls rest in peace. If Madame Erin's husband had gone to the lunch, he would have possibly died as well.
A lucky escape, one might say. though we don't know whether Erwin wanted to kill him. because there is no clear motive to why Madame Erin wanted to murder any of these people in the first place.
Motive? Motive. Do we need a motive for a crime to be committed?
Perhaps not always. People may do terrible things simply because they feel terrible about themselves.
That may be motive enough. However, if there had been a clear motive, this case might have been simpler and more straightforward. why did madame erin invite these people to lunch apparently they didn't get on madame erin and these people so inviting them to a special lunch might have sounded strange and suspicious.
I imagine that the guests obviously got on well enough to go to the lunch.
But perhaps they were also curious. The English say curiosity killed the cat.
How true this was on this occasion! At the lunch, Madame Erin said she'd invited them because she wanted to announce that she had cancer.
Yes, which as we know now wasn't and is not true.
Madame Erwin may have some health problems, but definitely not cancer.
And if all of the guests had died instantly, nobody else outside this party of people would have known about this strange announcement of having cancer.
Later, Madame Errin said she had really wanted to tell them that she was going to have major surgery. to remove excess fat from her body.
But she felt embarrassed about this at the time and said that she had cancer instead.
Hmm. Can we believe that? The dish she made was called Beef Wellington.
And these are the ingredients. Beef Wellington typically includes beef, Tenderloin fillet.
Duxelles. A mushroom and shallot mixture.
Shallots are like little onions. Prosciutto or Parma ham and puff pastry.
So, mushrooms are one of the essential ingredients.
Now it just so happens that a mushroom that grows in many countries of the world called the Death Cap Mushroom amanita phaloides also grows quite close to where madame erin lives In fact, in these places near her home,
Where you can find this deadly mushroom, there are even signs. placed for the public to beware of picking this mushroom for eating.
You would think that anybody searching for mushrooms to eat would be doubly cautious. the death cap mushroom, even if cooked, dried, frozen, or in any form.
The toxin, the poison in it, remains extremely dangerous.
One mushroom is enough to kill a human being.
The toxin attacks the liver. that vital organ in our bodies, and stops it working.
Death is not instant, but takes time. But there is no known treatment.
Once this mushroom is in your body, you will probably die.
Now we know that Madame Echin searched for places to find these mushrooms, and she researched what the symptoms were.
We know this because this information was found on her mobile phone. which she tried to get rid of by resetting the phone.
Nevertheless, The police found this information on the hard drive of her phone.
If the police had not found this essential information, Madame Hérén's case would have been even more difficult. to solve so if she had known that death from poisoning was not instant but might take days or weeks Why did she tell a lie about having cancer that her guests could tell police about before they died?
It doesn't make much sense to me. Or did she get her facts wrong?
Did she believe her guests would fall into a coma from which there was no escape but death?
Only Monsieur Ian Wilkinson survived. Although...
Only just after a long time in coma. And later, Monsieur Wilkinson told me that Echerin served her own plate of beef wellington. on a plate of a different color from the others.
She even apologized for it at the lunch, saying that she had no more plates of that color.
If she had served the food on plates of the same color, she might have made a mistake and served herself the poisoned food.
So, did she make two beef wellingtons? One without the poisoned mushroom, and another with?
We do not know, but perhaps we can guess.
We do know that Madame Echin dried the mushrooms before she cooked them.
She used a special machine for drying food which extracts the water so that it can be stored for longer periods.
We also know that he threw the drying machine out afterwards. but that later it was found by the police with remains of the toxic mushrooms.
Would she throw away this rather expensive kitchen appliance unless she wished to cover up the evidence?
But perhaps the biggest error that Madame Erin Patterson made was what she did after the lunch.
That night, all four of Erwin's guests went to the local hospital complaining of stomach ache.
But Madame Erin did not go. How could she miraculously escape the deadly poison?
I believe Madame Erwin Patterson assumed that the doctors in the little local village hospital would not know what was killing these people.
She believed that they would not know why they had become ill.
Agreed. So they might think that the stomach aches were due to the lunch they'd all eaten together.
But you know, sometimes food doesn't... doesn't, how do you say in English, agree with you.
But with others it has no effect. well madame erwin did go to the hospital after a few days she went to ask about her guests So she says, who she had heard were in hospital. now dr chris webster told me that he had sent a sample of the food from the stomachs of his patients to a laboratory where it was analyzed. the laboratory got back in touch with the doctor the next day and told him that without a shadow of a doubt the reason for the stomach aches was in fact because they had all eaten the death cap mushroom Amanita valoides.
And yet, Madame Erin did not want to be admitted to hospital for tests.
She refused to stay and insisted on leaving.
Very foolish, don't you think, if you have eaten the same food as your guests of mushrooms that will kill a person.
Madame Ehrin claims that she did feel a little ill, but after the lunch...
When her guests had left, she ate a huge cake and was sick afterwards.
Surely, she said. That was the reason she was not ill herself.
She had vomited the whole contents of the beef Wellington.
But then she lied again to the doctor. When he asked her where she had got the mushrooms from, From Woolworths, he said.
Woolworths, a reputable supermarket store known the world over.
How can anybody believe that Woolworths would sell the death cap mushrooms to his clients? if such a supermarket had sold these Makhshums to its customers.
There would have been hundreds, if not thousands of people dead at this time.
Madame Erin Patterson, your excuses and stories are all lies.
The coincidences are so many as to make this story a comedy of errors.
But, mesdames, messieurs, this is no comedy.
This is no laughing matter. Three people have been murdered.
Yes, murdered, Madam Erin Patterson. I accuse you of murdering your three guests with attempted murder of Monsieur Wilkinson.
Erin Patterson, aged 50, was convicted last week of deliberately serving death cap mushrooms in Beef Wellington at a lunch on July 29th, 2023, killing three people and injuring one.
In July 2025, she was found guilty and now faces life imprisonment.
You can find more facts if you just look up the Mushroom Murders Australia, Erin Patterson on the internet.
Did you hear the third conditionals? There were several of them there.
As I said, you can check this on my website at practicingenglish.com podcast 239.
Stay safe and don't go for lunch with strange people.
Until next time, goodbye for now.
