Recently I invited a friend over for high tea. But when I opened the front door to greet her, she was holding a gorgeous moth orchid, its arc of waxy white blooms balancing gracefully on a long stake.

Australian woman Erin Patterson was convicted Monday of murdering her estranged husband’s family by poisoning them with death cap mushrooms. Patterson, 50, faces up to life in prison for the ...

Erin Patterson, the Australian woman accused of killing three relatives w ith a meal of death cap mushrooms baked in a Beef Wellington lunch, has been found guilty of three counts of murder and ...

An Australian woman murdered her husband's parents and aunt by lacing their beef Wellington lunch with toxic mushrooms, a jury found Monday at the climax of a trial watched around the world.But a ...

But the guests' blood was soon coursing with deadly amatoxin, a potent poison produced by death cap mushrooms to ward off hungry forest critters. Don, Gail and Heather died of organ failure within ...

And, as Patterson herself testified during the trial, that paste contained death cap mushrooms, which are among the most poisonous in the world. All four guests were hospitalized with gastrointestinal ...

According to the prosecution, Patterson prepared the meals with death cap mushrooms, which can lead to liver failure and death. They grow in several Australian locations — including in rural ...

It started as a home-cooked meal, ended in multiple deaths and a court sentence for Erin Patterson. Here's how the death cap became the center of a chilling murder case.

Poisonous mushrooms, including death caps, occur in Victoria during autumn as the weather becomes wetter and cooler. Cooking, peeling, or drying these mushrooms does not remove the poison.

Native to Europe, death cap mushrooms were first confirmed in Australia in the 1960s, and they almost always grow near introduced trees, namely oaks, according to Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.