From Australia's Mushroom Murders To Kerala's Cyanide Killings: An Eerie Parallel

When an Australian court on Friday found that the three killings carried out by 'mushroom murderer' Erin Patterson were “carefully planned and deliberate”, rejecting her bid to overturn her convictions, it drew an uncanny parallel with another case that unfolded around 9,000 km away in Kerala's Kozhikode.

Continents Apart, But The Eerie Similarities

It was in October 2019 that a 47-year-old woman Jolly Joseph reportedly confessed to poisoning six members of her family over a 14-year period by adding cyanide to their food. The probe began in 2016 when police became suspicious that she may have forged his parents’ will. The case eventually grabbed headlines and shocked the nation and became known as the Koodathayi cyanide killings.

What led the police to consider her a suspect was her presence at the scene of all six deaths and each death occurred after eating a meal she had prepared. Given the long timeline of the incidents, these deaths were not initially suspected to be crimes.

The first poisoning was of Jolly’s mother-in-law, who died in 2002 after eating mutton soup followed by the deaths of her father-in-law and husband in 2008 and 2011 respectively. Both of them died after eating rice and curry prepared by Jolly. Police treated both the deaths as suicide caused by poisonous substance. Later on Jolly allegedly poisoned her husband’s uncle by giving him cyanide-laced coffee. In 2014, she allegedly killed the two-year-old daughter of her dead husband’s cousin, Scaria Shaju and then allegedly the cousin’s wife in 2016, only to marry Shaju a year later.

Now, coming back to the Patterson case, the similarity in the modus operandi is chillingly eerie -- calculated acts of poisoning allegedly carried out through food and victims who had little reason to suspect that an ordinary meal could prove fatal.

Patterson was convicted of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt, deliberately lacing their beef Wellington meal with highly toxic death cap mushrooms. She has also been convicted of attempting to murder her husband’s uncle who fortunately survived after weeks in hospital.

Patterson will now spend the rest of her life behind bars after the court upheld the prosecution's appeal against her sentence and ruled that she should not be eligible for parole. Such was the media attention surrounding her trial last year that it drew podcasters, film crews and crime fans to a courthouse in the rural town of Morwell in Victoria. That it made waves on the internet like a suspense thriller would hardly be an exaggeration.

However, Patterson's motive for the murders remains unknown.

How The Cases Became A Media Frenzy

Similarly, such was the media frenzy and widespread public obsession surrounding the Koodathayi cyanide killings that the case dominated national news for days. The Koodathayi home attracted large crowds of curious onlookers and swarms of media personnel as interest in the case intensified.

The trial in the Koodathayi cyanide killings is still ongoing and Jolly is currently lodged at the Kozhikode Sub-Jail. She even tried to die by suicide in prison in February 2020 as she was found bleeding in her cell after she allegedly tried to slit her vein with a blunt object.

From movies to web series, the Koodathayi cyanide killings caught the imagination of those engaged with the entertainment industry. While a film produced by Antony Perumbavoor has reportedly been planned with Mohanlal in the lead role, there was also a Netflix documentary on the case called Curry & Cyanide: The Jolly Joseph Case. Spotify launched a 10-episode original podcast, Death, Lies & Cyanide narrated by journalist Sashi Kumar while Jiostar Pvt. Ltd. plans to release a Hotstar web series called Anali based on the case.

Separated by continents and years, the two cases have one deeply unsettling element in common: the use or alleged use of food as an instrument of death. While Patterson's guilt has been established by an Australian court, the allegations against Jolly remain under judicial scrutiny.

Yet both cases leave behind a disturbing question. How can an ordinary family meal become the setting for an extraordinary crime?

Published on: Friday, October 30, 2026, 02:58 PM IST