Australian police have launched an investigation after three people died and a fourth was left needing a liver transplant after eating death cap mushrooms.
A food dehydrator found at a local landfill is apparently also being tested to see if there is any link, Melbourne’s Age newspaper reported, citing an anonymous police source close to the investigation.
Police have not named those who died, but according to local media reports, they were the host’s parents-in-law, Gail and Don Patterson, both aged 70, and Heather Wilkinson, 66.
In the fall of 2016, during an unusually large bloom in the San Francisco Bay Area, three people required liver transplants after eating the deadly mushrooms.
Several members of one household — including an 18-month-old girl — became seriously ill after eating grilled death caps given to them by someone who had apparently picked them in the mountains earlier that day.
In a potential twist in the Australia case that was seized on by local media, the lunch party host’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, nearly died last year from what he described as “serious gut problems.” In a Facebook post at the time, he said he collapsed at home and spent 16 days in an induced coma, undergoing several operations, mostly on his small intestine.
“I don’t think there’d be any person in this town who wouldn’t be feeling grief at the moment,” said local resident Leigh Spaull, whose children were taught by one of the victims.