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Speaker 1: High listeners. This is Brook Grubert Craig from the Mushroom Cook.

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Speaker 1: While we wait for further developments in the case of

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Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson, we thought would bring you an episode of

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Speaker 1: our sister show, Life and Crimes. In it, host Andrew

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Speaker 1: Rule delves into women who poison and if you want

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Speaker 1: true crime stories, search Life and Crimes wherever you get your.

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Speaker 2: Podcasts Andrew Rule. This is Life and Crimes today. We

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Speaker 2: come to you from a village in Wales, so if

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Speaker 2: the sound quality is not great, I apologize in advance.

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Speaker 2: The reason we're doing this is because I happen to

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Speaker 2: be in the UK at the same time that the

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Speaker 2: murder verdict came down in the Aaron Patterson Mushroom case,

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Speaker 2: and I have to say it is amazing how big

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Speaker 2: that story is in the UK. The BBC World News

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Speaker 2: coverage has carried the Eron Patterson trial faithfully most days,

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Speaker 2: and when the verdict came down earlier this week, the

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Speaker 2: BBC and other news services carried the story either at

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Speaker 2: the top of the bulletin or very close to it.

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Speaker 2: It's quite an amazingly thorough coverage and they're throwing to

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Speaker 2: their reporters in mar Will which they describe as a

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Speaker 2: small town in Victoria and give their viewers the full treatment.

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Speaker 2: And people here are very familiar with the case. It's

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Speaker 2: so pervasive here that it's even affected the way that

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Speaker 2: news magazines have selected stories. And last weekend, when the

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Speaker 2: jury retired to consider its verdict in the Patterson case,

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Speaker 2: obviously the guilty verdict, the Sunday Times magazine here ran

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Speaker 2: a massive magazine piece, not about the Mushroom case, but

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Speaker 2: about other cases in history women have poisoned men, and

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Speaker 2: they selected as the main example a story from one

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Speaker 2: hundred years ago in a Hungarian town where a group

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Speaker 2: of women got their heads together and decided that their

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Speaker 2: husbands were violent, drunken lunatics, which some of them obviously were,

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Speaker 2: and under the guidance of a local midwife who knew

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Speaker 2: a lot about poisons, they cooked up arsenic poisons by

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Speaker 2: boiling up flypaper paper that is made up for poison

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Speaker 2: flies and insects. It was made up in those days

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Speaker 2: using arsenic and US think it was a very common

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Speaker 2: item in household products that they'd use it for poisoning rats.

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Speaker 2: It was also used in some tonics for livestock. It

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Speaker 2: was relatively easy to get and the fly paper trick

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Speaker 2: was one that was used in Hungary and also by

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Speaker 2: poisoners in England and elsewhere. They popped the fly light

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Speaker 2: paper in boiling water for a certain time and then

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Speaker 2: strain it off, and the resulting mixture was heavy in

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Speaker 2: arsenic and they could use it to lace the target

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Speaker 2: victims their tea or their coffee, or their whisky or

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Speaker 2: wine or whatever it might be. And this group of women,

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Speaker 2: led by this midwife, over the span of eighteen years

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Speaker 2: from nineteen eleven until nineteen twenty nine, they killed at

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Speaker 2: least one hundred men, but the real figures might have

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Speaker 2: been higher. Of course, it was a time when post

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Speaker 2: mortems were not routine and probably not that accurate, and

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Speaker 2: so there were a lot of unexplained deaths that were

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Speaker 2: probably put down to heart attacks or whatever that went

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Speaker 2: unnoted at the time. But the real number of victims

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Speaker 2: in that eighteen year period might have been approaching more

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Speaker 2: like three hundred, and so we have here somewhat of

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Speaker 2: a history of poison of men by women who thought

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Speaker 2: it was the easiest way to get rid of the

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Speaker 2: men in their life that were causing trouble. And this

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Speaker 2: was something that was reasonably well known in England back

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Speaker 2: in the Victorian era, when there was a space of

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Speaker 2: poisonings from eighteen sixties onwards, often using that same flypaper

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Speaker 2: method of getting hold of arsenic or using rat poison

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Speaker 2: that was based on arsenic or other poisons that were

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Speaker 2: available on farms and households and refining them to get

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Speaker 2: the arsenic so they could poison people. None of them, interestingly,

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Speaker 2: seemed to be using death cap mushrooms. Obviously, the effect

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Speaker 2: of death cap mushrooms was known to people for centuries

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Speaker 2: that people would avoid eating them by trial and error,

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Speaker 2: animals and birds and everything else that fairly careful with

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Speaker 2: what's poison and what's not, and people, especially in the

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Speaker 2: country area, knew from a very young age which things

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Speaker 2: were edible and which weren't. But it's interesting that death

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Speaker 2: cap mushrooms don't come up a lot in the literature

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Speaker 2: of poisoning in the way that arsenic does. Interestingly, one

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Speaker 2: of the big poisoning cases in Victoria back home in

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Speaker 2: Victoria also involved arsenalk. Now this was the case that

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Speaker 2: some of our listeners will recall vaguely, and that's the

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Speaker 2: case of Lorraine Moss. The Bendigo housewife who back in

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Speaker 2: the eighties decided to poison her husband, Johnny. His real

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Speaker 2: name was Leonard Moss. He was known by everyone as Johnny,

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Speaker 2: popular figure at the local abatars where he worked. He

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Speaker 2: was a meat worker, a good guy apparently. I think

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Speaker 2: they had two or three daughters. They lived, you know,

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Speaker 2: quiet life in suburban Bendigo. But Lorraine Moss decided that

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Speaker 2: she no longer wanted to be with her husband john

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Speaker 2: but she didn't want to actually go through the routine

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Speaker 2: of divorceal things like that. She had started an affair

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Speaker 2: with one of his workmates, a guy called Robert White,

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Speaker 2: and her way out of this tricky domestic situation was

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Speaker 2: to get hold of some poison that was used. I

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Speaker 2: think this poison might have been used at the meatworks

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Speaker 2: to kill rats or things like that. But anyway, she

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Speaker 2: was able to get hold of the poison fairly easily,

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Speaker 2: and she started to lace her husband's sandwiches for his

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Speaker 2: lunch with the poison instead of making his own sandwiches,

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Speaker 2: which would have been wise. She had the habit of

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Speaker 2: making them, and she would sprinkle this powder in the sandwiches,

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Speaker 2: and it was noticeable that Johnny Moss got sicker and sicker.

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Speaker 2: This is in about eighty two eighty three, And in fact,

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Speaker 2: one day he felt sick and he didn't want to

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Speaker 2: eat his lunch. A couple of his mates had his

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Speaker 2: lunch instead, and they got very sick. In fact, one

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Speaker 2: of them was so sick that he couldn't work for months.

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Speaker 2: This is how potent this poison was. And Johnny Moss

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Speaker 2: would get very sick, and then he would be taken

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Speaker 2: to hospital, and Moss would make a great show of

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Speaker 2: being the concerned wife and all the rest of it.

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Speaker 2: And when he was in the hospital he would recover.

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Speaker 2: He would get hospital food and hospital care, and she

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Speaker 2: wasn't supplying the food anymore to him, and he would

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Speaker 2: gradually get better, and he'd come home and he go

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Speaker 2: back to work, only to sick him again, because of

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Speaker 2: course she would start poisoning his food again. Now this

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Speaker 2: went on for I think I said eighteen months, and

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Speaker 2: he died in early nineteen eighty four. John Moss's death

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Speaker 2: should have really sparked a searching inquest that would have

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Speaker 2: pointed to suspicious circumstances and pointed to Lorraine Moss's complicity.

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Speaker 2: But a strange thing happened. Lorrain Moss, not a terribly

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Speaker 2: intelligent woman, got very lucky for a while. It turned

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Speaker 2: out that there was a report made up about the

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Speaker 2: poisoning of Johnny Moss at the Austin Hospital. He'd been

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Speaker 2: sent down there and they'd done some tests and a

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Speaker 2: report was completed by the doctors and other medicas which

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Speaker 2: indicated that he'd been poisoned with arsening. Now, that report,

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Speaker 2: had it been produced at his inquest, would have pointed

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Speaker 2: squarely to Lorraine Moss poisoning her husband, and it would

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Speaker 2: have led to charges, and she would have been prosecuted

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Speaker 2: for murder or manslaughter at least homicide back then, back

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Speaker 2: when it all happened in the early eighties. But that

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Speaker 2: didn't happen simply because that report got lost, and in

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Speaker 2: the absence of the report, a very kindly coroner, a

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Speaker 2: coroner took it upon himself to say there was no

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Speaker 2: evidence that Lorraine Moss had poisoned her husband, despite the

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Speaker 2: fact that he clearly had been poisoned by something. And

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Speaker 2: so she got away with it, and she in fact.

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Speaker 3: Married her lover, Bob White or Robert White, and they

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Speaker 3: lived happily or unhappily in Bendigo forever after until about

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Speaker 3: twenty years later, Lorraine Moss did a silly thing.

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Speaker 2: Lorraine, for some strange reason, had it in her head.

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Speaker 2: She had this notion that once twenty years had gone past,

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Speaker 2: or something like twenty years a gone past, that she'd

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Speaker 2: be home clear that she couldn't be prosecuted. And she

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Speaker 2: must have been thinking about this because she brought it

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Speaker 2: up with one of her daughters. Lorraine Moss was talking

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Speaker 2: to her, I think her oldest girl, and said something

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Speaker 2: strange about, well, at least at this stage, I can't

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Speaker 2: be prosecuted over your father, or words to that effect,

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Speaker 2: and the daughter said, what do you mean. She said

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Speaker 2: enough to the daughter to suggest that she had had

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Speaker 2: something to do with poisoning the girl's father, Johnny Moss,

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Speaker 2: and the daughter took this in and understood what she said,

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Speaker 2: and she went to the police because she loved her father,

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Speaker 2: as did her sister, and she was shocked and horrified.

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Speaker 2: She might also have had her own suspicions because of

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Speaker 2: her mother's relationship with this guy.

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Speaker 3: White that she married.

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Speaker 2: So the daughter goes to the police, and the police

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Speaker 2: put her in touch with the homicide squad and the

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Speaker 2: homicide squad say, we want you to talk to your

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Speaker 2: mother about this, and they wired her for sound and

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Speaker 2: she spoke to her mother about the death of her father,

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Speaker 2: Johnny Moss, and the mother, Lorraine Moss, said enough to

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Speaker 2: her that was taped to essentially implicate her in murder,

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Speaker 2: and that was what led the homicide squad to charge

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Speaker 2: Lorraine Moss with the murder of her husband, Johnny Moss

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Speaker 2: all those years before. And I think we've visited this

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Speaker 2: story at least once in our time doing Life and Crimes,

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Speaker 2: and we'd be remiss not to point out that when

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Speaker 2: the homicide squad would visit Lorraine Moss to interview her,

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Speaker 2: which they did on more than one occasion, she would

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Speaker 2: always offer them a cup of tea, but those very

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Speaker 2: wise detectives would always decline it. They didn't want to

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Speaker 2: be poisoned as well. Regular listeners of Life and Crimes

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Speaker 2: will know that we have visited this topic in the past,

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Speaker 2: and that there are several women in Victoria who have

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Speaker 2: murdered their husbands and some have got away with it

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Speaker 2: and some haven't. But those who are interested in this

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Speaker 2: topic might revisit the episode where we talked about the

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Speaker 2: murders of a man called Utley, a man called Osland

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Speaker 2: again at Bendigo, and a third case which was out

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Speaker 2: near Paculum, where no one was convicted because the young

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Speaker 2: daughter of the woman who was the chief suspect put

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Speaker 2: her hand up late in the piece and said I'd

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Speaker 2: done it, I killed my dad, and that threw the

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Speaker 2: prosecution into a confusion and ultimately no one was convicted.

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Speaker 2: That's the case of Diane Griffy. Diane Griffy was the

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Speaker 2: wife involved there and in the other cases we had

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Speaker 2: Heather Osland and Margaret Utley, and those stories are well

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Speaker 2: worth looking up if anyone's interested in the ongoing topic

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Speaker 2: of women who kill. And that's Andrew Rule signing off

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Speaker 2: in the village of Pinelli in Pembrokeshire in Wales on assignment,

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Speaker 2: but always keeping an eye open for a story for

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Speaker 2: Life and Crimes.

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Speaker 4: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald

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Speaker 4: Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.

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Speaker 4: For my columns, features and more, go to Heraldsun dot

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Speaker 4: com dot au forward slash Andrew Rule one word For

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Speaker 4: advertising inquiries, go to News Podcasts sold at news dot

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Speaker 4: com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold.

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Speaker 4: And if you want further information about this episode, links

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Speaker 4: are in. The description is.

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Speaker 2: Coported, perfected Can I Go