Australia's mushroom murder trial
Last week, in a trial followed all over Australia and across the world, Erin Patterson took the stand. She is accused of three counts of murder, and one of attempted murder, allegedly by poisoning her relatives with deadly mushrooms inside four separate dishes of beef wellington.
As the Guardian Australia justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci explains, Patterson has always denied the charges. Though she admits the lunch she prepared in July 2023 killed her in-laws – as well as her estranged husband's aunt – she maintains it was a tragic accident.
As Michael Safi hears, it is a case that has drawn worldwide attention – from daily news reports to dozens of podcast series – and one that is due to reach a verdict soon.
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Daily Mail
42 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Beauty and the Geek star forced to deny involvement in grisly murder as identity of the alleged offender is suppressed
A former cast member of Beauty and the Geek has stepped forward to hit back at online rumours that she was part of a grisly murder, after the real alleged offender was suppressed. Kiera Johnstone, 26, took to her social media on Sunday with a lengthy statement declaring she has not been arrested and was not involved in 'any way' after a crime was reported in South Australia last week. Johnstone, who was crowned winner on the dating show in 2021, made her declaration after reports surfaced on Friday that a woman who starred on Beauty and the Geek had been charged with murder in Port Lincoln. A man's body was discovered in a home in the coastal town after emergency services were called to a property at about 3:25pm local time on Thursday following reports of a small fire. When crews arrived, they found a man dead inside the residence. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. A 34-year-old woman was arrested at the scene and later charged with murder. A suppression order preventing the publication of any information that could identify the woman, the victim, or the specific details surrounding the man's death was issued. Johnstone messaged her followers on her Stories on Sunday, after speculation surfaced online attempted to link her with allegations stemming from the police report - and demanded trolls to stop the gossip. 'Hi everyone,' she began, and continued, 'A former contestant from Beauty and the Geek has been charged with a very serious crime. 'Although no names have been released, for reasons beyond my understanding, there has been speculation online suggesting that I am involved. 'Let me be absolutely clear: I am not involved in any way. I have not been charged with a crime. 'I have literally never even had a parking fine. The allegations being discussed have nothing to with me, and the fact that I even need to says this is incredibly upsetting. 'It's deeply disturbing to see people spreading false information, making assumptions and sharing screenshots. 'I understand the internet can be quick to judge, but this kind of speculation is damaging and invasive and is something I take very seriously. 'If you are part of the group fuelling this - sharing, gossiping or silently watching - I ask you to please stop. 'This is not entertainment. This is a serious situation, that involves real victims. you're literally sick if you think this is at all funny. 'As this has nothing to do with me, this will be the only time I speak on the matter. 'Thank you to those who reached out with kindness and common sense.' It comes after The Courier Mail reported on Friday that the woman arrested for the alleged murder was once a contestant on reality show Beauty and the Geek. South Australia Police have confirmed the victim and the accused were known to each other and had been in a relationship. The woman was refused police bail and remains in custody. Assistant Commissioner Parrott said a cause of death had not yet been determined and no further details could be released, as the victim's family had not yet been notified. The woman did not apply for bail and has been detained under the Mental Health Act. She is expected to return to court in December. The suppression order is set to be reviewed by the court next week. Johnstone rose to fame as a contestant on Beauty and the Geek in 2021 when she was crowned winner alongside her match Lachlan Mansell. The pair broke down in tears as host Sophie Monk announced they'd won the life-changing $100,000 cash prize.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
All I wanted was to visit my friends in the US... but I was detained for 12 hours and sent back to Australia
An Australian writer has claimed he was turned away from the US border after being grilled on his views on the Gaza conflict and articles he wrote about pro-Palestinian protests. Alistair Kitchen, 33, boarded a flight from Melbourne to New York to visit friends on June 12 when he was pulled to one side by a Customs and Border Protection officer during a layover in Los Angeles. He was detained for 12 hours at Los Angeles International Airport before being put on a flight back to Melbourne. Mr Kitchen said he was refused entry to the US because of his political beliefs, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has since said this is 'unequivocally false'. The writer lived in the US for six years before moving back home to Castlemaine, in regional Victoria, last year, and between 2022 and 2024 he studied at Columbia University. Mr Kitchen claimed a customs officer told him he was being detained because of his views on the pro-Palestinian rallies that took place on campus at the New York university last year. 'I was interrogated about my beliefs on the crisis in Gaza. I told him what I believe: that the war is a tragedy in which all parties have blood on their hands, but which can and must come to an immediate end,' he wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. 'One party is dominant, and that party can end the death and destruction today.' Mr Kitchen recalled being asked to provide the officer with his phone passcode, which he did, and later admitted he regrets. The content of his phone is said to have been downloaded by border agents, who subsequently found evidence of prior drug use. He was told he had not declared drug use on his Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) form, was taken to immigration detention and put on a flight home. Mr Kitchen said he told the agents he had consumed drugs before in New York, where marijuana is legal, and that he had bought weed at dispensaries in the US. His phone was not returned to him until he landed back on Australian soil. 'The individual in question was denied entry because he gave false information on his [Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) application] regarding drug use,' a DHS spokesperson told ABC News. DHS did not specifically deny Mr Kitchen was asked about the Israel-Gaza conflict, but said the US, under President Donald Trump, had the 'most secure border' in American history. The spokesperson said lawful travellers 'have nothing to fear' from measures intended to protect the US's security. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) warned Australian travellers that entry requirements into the US were 'strict'. 'US authorities have broad powers to decide if you're eligible to enter and may determine that you are inadmissible for any reason under US law,' DFAT's Smarttraveller website reads. 'Officials may ask to inspect your electronic devices, emails, text messages or social media accounts. If you refuse, they can deny your entry. 'You can be refused entry if you provide false information or can't satisfy the officials you're visiting for a valid reason.'
BBC News
6 hours ago
- BBC News
The murder of John 'Goldfinger' Palmer in Essex still unsolved
In June 2015, John "Goldfinger" Palmer was shot six times in the garden of his secluded woodland mansion in Essex. But due to an oversight in the police response, the 65-year-old's death was put down to natural causes - until a murder investigation was eventually launched six days later. Ten years on, detectives are still hunting whoever killed the man once described as Britain's richest criminal. Palmer earned his nickname following the audacious 1983 Brink's-Mat men disguised in security uniforms stumbled upon £26m worth of gold, diamonds and cash in a warehouse just outside London Heathrow dealer Palmer was accused of melting down the gold in a shed in the garden of his mansion near years later, on 24 June 2015, he was gunned down as he was burning documents in the garden of his home in South Weald near prosecutors had charged him a month earlier with fraud, firearms possession and money laundering. At about 17:30 BST, a suspect believed to be a contract killer scaled his garden fence having seemingly watched him through a carved-out was killed in the only part of the garden not covered by was found unconscious by his son's girlfriend. Two police officers attended at about 19:20 and had assessed his death as "non-suspicious" on account of an operation wound from recent gall bladder surgery. A week later, a post-mortem examination revealed he was, in fact, shot in the chest, abdomen, arm, elbow, back and kidneys. "It's definitely not something I'm going to hide behind; we did make mistakes," said Det Supt Stephen Jennings of Essex Police, speaking to the BBC's Gangster podcast series in 2022."We didn't do enough background checks on John."Had we done that, the officers would have realised he had quite a substantial criminal background."They didn't really check the body well enough to discount any third-party involvement." Roy Ramm, former commander of specialist operations at New Scotland Yard, said it was a "very serious error"."You talk about the golden hour in investigations - that was lost, the day was lost, several days were lost - and I do not envy the senior investigating officer who picked up the case and tried to make progress with it," he told the BBC. "It was nigh on impossible."The two young police officers later faced disciplinary action. Humble beginnings Born in Solihull near Birmingham, Palmer was one of seven children raised in a poor single-parent was a serial truant and left school at 15 without learning to read or teenager worked in roofing but moved on to street trading, which included selling paraffin off the back of a moved to Bedminster in Bristol and made his first £100,000 (£2m in today's money) from a jewellery set up Scadlynn, a company trading precious scrap business partner Gareth Chappell was later jailed for 10 years for conspiring to handle stolen goods in connection with the Brink's-Mat raid. The gold When Palmer was identified as a Brink's-Mat suspect, he accused the Met Police of "overreacting"."I'm completely innocent of anything to do with this so-called 'Mats-Brink' bullion raid," he said, sitting beside a hotel pool in Tenerife in 1985, after being tracked down by BBC war reporter Kate continued to deliberately - or mistakenly - confuse the Brink's-Mat name when he stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1987, and it blew kisses to jurors after they found him not guilty of conspiring to handle stolen gold Brink's-Mat heist, and the cat-and-mouse chases that followed, have been dramatised in BBC One TV series The the final episode, which aired earlier this month, the fictional detective, played by Hugh Bonneville, signs off with: "It's Brink's-Mat - it's never over."Palmer seemed unable to shake off the spectre of the 1983 raid. Timeshare empire Instead of going to ground, Palmer became one of the biggest landowners in Ramm, who oversaw investigations into Palmer and the laundering of the Brink's-Mat gold in the 1990s, said his team was "convinced" he invested earnings from the robbery into the amassed an estimated fortune of £300m which he used to buy a West Country mansion, a French chateau with its own golf course, a jet, turboprop-powered helicopters, a £750,000 yacht, and a classic car collection including Porsches and and Elizabeth II were jointly ranked 105th in the Sunday Times Rich prosecutors accused him of masterminding a timeshare fraud which involved 16,000 victims who were scammed out of more than £ found him guilty of conspiracy to defraud at the Old Bailey and he was jailed for eight years in 2001. David Farrer KC, the lead prosecution counsel, described Palmer as the "biggest shark" in the timeshare waters - a quote that was rekindled for the final episode of The Palmer defended himself, Mr Farrer spent hours liaising with his opposite number in private."He could be quite pleasant and charming," said the retired barrister."That was invariably when he thought the case was going well for him. I've no doubt whatever of his potential violence. "If I had been anything other than prosecuting counsel he would have clouted me a few times."Mr Farrer recalled how during the trial, Palmer wore body armour and was shadowed by Special Branch officers because they were concerned a north London gang had put a contract out on him because he owed them served half his sentence, and in 2009, he moved in with partner Christina Ketley and their son at South Weald. Contract killer Speaking to the BBC's Crimewatch in 2016, Det Supt Jennings said the Spanish fraud prosecution - announced at the end of May 2015 - was the most likely motive for his was complicated when considering his links to the men behind the Hatton Garden heist of April 2015, the detective said, and because of recent "law enforcement intervention with organised crime families"."It was an opportunity for any one of those individuals at any subsequent trial to blame John for what took place and obviously he would not be in a position to answer that or refute it," said Det Supt Jennings. On the evening Essex Police revealed Palmer was murdered, Mr Farrer received an unexpected call from a Scotland Yard detective he had worked with more than 13 years earlier."I asked him, was it the Russians who did it?" Mr Farrer recalled."He said they thought it was much more likely this gang in north London, the Adams, and they certainly didn't think that it was directly anything to do with timeshare - in other words, the same people that caused Palmer to wear body armour during his trial."The Mail on Sunday singled out the Adams crime family as the brains behind the killing in a 2016 "Patsy" Adams, of Finsbury, north London, was jailed later that year for shooting an associate, and other members of the syndicate have received prison time in recent McCunn is more veteran lawyer led civil action against Palmer in the mid-1990s on behalf of insurers acting for the Brink's-Mat business."It could be linked to any number of activities he was known to be involved with," he told the BBC. 'Very dangerous people' A £100,000 reward was put up by Palmer's family and charity Crimestoppers in 2018 for information leading to a conviction - but that reward has Ramm said: "It is particularly important that this murder continues to be investigated because of who Palmer was, the role he played in the network of serious and organised criminals in the UK, in Spain - internationally."He offended and upset some very, very, dangerous people, and we need to know who they were." Palmer always maintained he did not know he had melted Brink's-Mat Ketley was due to stand trial in Madrid in 2019 in connection with the timeshare fraud, but the case against her was dropped. Other individuals were found guilty."Without doubt [Palmer] has made mistakes in his life; I believe he has paid for those mistakes," Ms Ketley told BBC Crimewatch."I was incredibly proud of the way he adjusted to a very normal life."She still owns the gated woodland property where Palmer was murdered. She did not respond to the BBC's approach for comment. A 43-year-old man from Rugby, Warwickshire, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder in 2015, but was released without February 2017, detectives said a 50-year-old man from Tyneside, who lived in southern Spain, was questioned on suspicion of murder in what was a voluntary interview. He faced no further Police says it has taken hundreds of witness statements, pursued hundreds of lines of inquiries and examined thousands of pieces of the failures on the day Palmer was murdered, a force spokesperson said on Friday: "It is always best to secure and preserve crime scenes as soon as possible to achieve the best forensic evidence and regrettably that was not the case in this incident."However, outdoor crime scenes by their very nature have less forensic opportunities."We believe this murder was a professional contract killing and our experiences of similar cases such as this are that these types of murderers are forensically aware, limiting our opportunity to secure evidence." Mr Ramm thinks detectives will need an organised criminal to hand over key information as "leverage"."I think that's probably the only way it's going to be solved - someone on the inside becomes an informer." Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
