CBS News
Alleged poison mushroom killer of 3, Erin Patterson, appears in Australian court again
Melbourne, Australia — A woman accused of serving her ex-husband’s parents and an aunt poisonous mushrooms with lunch appeared in an Australian court on Monday charged with three counts of murder and five of attempted murder.
Erin Patterson, 49, appeared briefly in the Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court by video link from a Melbourne prison where she’s been held since she was arrested in November last year.
Magistrate Tim Walsh said he would announce on May 7 whether Patterson will face a committal hearing in the same court in Morwell or in Melbourne. Morwell is a rural town near Patterson’s home about 90 miles east of Melbourne, the Victoria state capital.
Committal hearings determine whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to put charges before a jury in a Victorian Supreme Court trial.
It was Patterson’s second court appearance on the charges. She has yet to enter any pleas and has not applied to be released on bail.
Anita Lester /AAP image via AP
She is accused of killing her former parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.
All three died in a hospital days after consuming a meal at Patterson’s home in July last year.
She is also accused of the attempted murder of her ex-husband, Simon Patterson, at that lunch and on three previous occasions dating back to 2021. Simon Patterson did not accept an invitation to attend the lunch.
She also is charged with the attempted murder of Wilkinson’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, 68.
Ian Wilkinson spent seven weeks in a hospital following the lunch.
Police say the symptoms of the four sickened family members were consistent with poisoning from wild Amanita phalloides, known as death cap mushrooms.
The potential maximum sentence in Victoria for murder is life imprisonment, and for attempted murder is 25 years in prison.
Patterson appeared in court on Monday wearing a blue prison sweater.
Walsh asked if Patterson could hear at the outset of the hearing, and she replied, “Yes, thank you.”
Her lawyer, Colin Mandy, said his client wanted the committal hearing held in Morwell, even if that meant a delay until next year.
“If it happens next year, then Ms. Patterson’s content to wait for that,” Mandy told the magistrate.
Mandy said she wanted the hearing to take place close to her home.
Defense lawyers have provided prosecutors with a list of anticipated witnesses to be called at the committal hearing, which Mandy said he expected would last three weeks.
CBS News
H&R Block and Intuit drop on a report that Elon Musk’s DOGE may develop a new tax-filing app
H&R Block and Intuit shares dropped on Tuesday after the Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is run by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is looking at developing a free app for people to file their taxes.
The publication cited two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in reporting that the leaders of the incoming administration’s DOGE discussed the idea of crafting a mobile app to file income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
H&R Block shares tumbled 8.2%, while Intuit shed 5.1% on Tuesday. As the dominant players in tax preparation, H&R Block and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, generate billions in revenue annually by offering online and in-person services.
The Biden Administration in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program through the IRS in 12 states. It allows qualified taxpayers file directly through a federal portal. Additionally, the IRS provides services through its Free File program for those who made an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less.
More than 100,000 taxpayers used the new Direct File program to file their taxes this year, which marked the first time the system was in operation, according to the Treasury Department.
The DOGE, which has been directed by Trump to slash government spending and cut federal regulations, criticized the complexity of the U.S tax code in a Nov. 16 post on X, the social media service owned by Musk.
“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words,” its X account wrote. “Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year.”
Intuit and H&R Block also have free filing options.
That said, the Federal Trade Commission earlier in the year barred Intuit from advertising its popular TurboTax product as free when most people have to pay to use it. The FTC in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block, alleging it marketed its tax-prep products as free yet deleted the data as a way to pressure them to pay for pricier services. Both companies said they’d appeal.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Washington — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has selected Dr. Mehmet Oz — a celebrity heart surgeon who hosted a daytime television show — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and oversees Medicare, the federal portion of the Medicaid program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the federal health insurance marketplace. Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. Both positions require Senate confirmation.
“America is facing a health care crisis, and there may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement. “He is an eminent physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”
The president-elect said Oz will work with Kennedy, if he is confirmed, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” He also indicated there may be cuts to CMS, writing that Oz “will also cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation’s healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire national budget.”
Oz was defeated by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in the 2022 Senate race in Pennsylvania after receiving Trump’s endorsement.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
