The woman who cooked a meal that is believed to have contained poisonous mushrooms and led to the deaths of three people gives a lengthy written statement to police detailing her account of what happened, and revealing she was hospitalised after the incident.
She said she purchased them months ago from an Asian supermarket but can’t remember where. No doubt a cash transaction. I don’t believe for a second she purchased those commercially as there would doubtless be other contaminated batches if so.
Well, to play devil’s advocate, someone might have messed up in the store and gotten one death cap into a batch, and if it’s a small local producer, those would be chopped in small batches. However, the more you have to reach to believe someone’s story with multiple odd points, the less likely it is of course by the way of logic.
Yes, she may have obtained the mushrooms in a supermarket where someone by mistake put them in there, or somehow did it just to mess up some random persons life.
Yes, the trauma may have caused her to forget where she purchased them.
Yes, it may be a coincidence that she bought dessicated mushrooms and threw away a dessicator.
Yes, she might have thrown away the dessicator in fear of losing her children after she was asked about it.
Then again, I’m seeing multiple stories that falsely report she didn’t eat any herself, which clearly is false, so all of these odd points may be explained by elements we’re not aware of. However, based off the info so far, I’d say it’s a good thing the police are testing the dessicator for spores or other suspicious things, because something definitely feels off about this whole thing if you ask me.
As someone who forages for wild mushrooms, I would like to point out that death caps don’t resemble edible mushrooms. They are an amanita and are fairly distinctive. Obviously people do die eating these after somehow thinking they were edible, but it’s an amateur mistake.
So in that case, that adds yet another layer of suspicion as someone would have to be very inept then to add that to a mix. I’m assuming that even when dried, it’s obvious to people in the know that these mushrooms aren’t your normal ones? I was considering before that maybe the dessication angle could have been some kind of an attempt at an alibi.
It would not be so noticeable after they’ve been dehydrated and chopped up, no. They should still be identifiable as an amanita if they’re dehydrated and not chopped up, but it would be harder. But whoever gathered the mushroom should have been able to identify it as inedible, unless they were very inexperienced (and thus not likely to be somebody who forages and sells to stores).