Man, 31, arrested after teenager 'raped' in public toilet on beach
A 31-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident on Bournemouth Beach.
Dorset Police said they received a report at 1.57am that a woman in her late teens had been raped in a toilet near Undercliff Drive, a road that runs along the beach sheltered by low cliffsides.
The area has been cordoned off while detectives investigate.
The suspect remains in custody while specialist officers are supporting the victim.
A spokesperson for Dorset Police said: 'Officers are carrying out increased patrols in the area and we would encourage anyone with concerns to please speak with an officer.'
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MORE: Erin Patterson found guilty of murdering her three in-laws with death cap mushrooms
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Mummy blogger Constance Hall gets slammed for doubting Erin Patterson was guilty of triple murder in bizarre post after trial
Mummy blogger Constance Hall has been called out for doubting that Erin Patterson was guilty of mass murder. Patterson, 50, was found guilty on three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder on Monday after serving her in-laws beef Wellingtons poisoned with death cap mushrooms at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023. Following the verdict, Constance said she didn't think the mother-of-three looked 'like the mushroom poisoning super villain'. 'I mean, she just doesn't look like the mushroom poisoning super villain that she ended up being... You really never can tell, can you,' she wrote on Facebook. She went on to say she didn't think that uncovered message sent by Patterson which suggested she had very personal issues with Simon's parents was hat bad. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. 'I think my doubts stemmed from her messages... like if that was the worst they could get on her messages... well, I'd hate to see what they'd pin on me after reading mine,' Constance wrote. 'I mean, those messages revealed that she wasn't a fan of the ex and his family, but that's so common that it just doesn't feel like a motive. Ugh, my heart goes out to those kids.' Constance's followers flocked to the comments to slam the social media influencer. 'Do you honestly think they took two years to organise the case, sat for 10 weeks in court and took seven days to deliberate because all they were going off was a text message about her ex father and mother in law!? Seriously,' one person wrote. 'It was more than just text messages. The disposal of the phone and dehydrator, pretending she gave the leftovers to the kids, searching where to locate death cap mushrooms,' another said. 'What did you think a mushroom poisoning super villain would look like?' a person questioned. 'I never thought you would be one that would judge a book by the cover. Evil and goodness come in many shapes and forms,' another commented. One person wrote: 'Scary how we can forget that monsters don't look like monsters. The most dangerous people, perhaps, are the ones we don't see.' 'What do you mean doesn't look [like a villain]? How can anyone know anything by how someone looks?' another questioned. Patterson previously pleaded not guilty to the murders of Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson. They died after consuming death caps in the beef Wellingtons during lunch at Patterson's Leongatha home in southeast Victoria on July 29, 2023. Patterson faces a sentence of life in prison for the three murders and one attempted murder. The families of the murder victims, who died in hospital days after eating lunch at Patterson's home, were absent for the verdicts, as was sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson. During the trial, Victoria Police forensic data analyst Shamen Fox-Henry found a series of messages sent by Patterson that suggested she had very personal issues with Simon's parents. In the messages, Patterson described her in-laws as a 'lost cause' and exclaimed 'f**k them'. 'I mean clearly the fact that Simon refuses to talk about personal issues in part stems from the behaviour of his parents and how they operate,' she wrote around December 6, 2022. 'According to them, they've never asked him what's going on with us, why I keep kicking him out, why his son hates him, etc. It's too awkward or uncomfortable or something. So that's his learned behaviour. Just don't talk about this s**t.' Patterson claimed her father-in-law's solution to her relationship problems with his son was to 'pray'. 'Don rang me last night to say that he thought there was a solution to all this. If Simon and I get together and try to talk and pray together,' she wrote. 'And then he also said, Simon had indicated there was a solution to the financial issues if I withdraw this child support claim?!' Patterson claimed she told her in-laws she wanted them to be accountable for the decisions their son made concerning their grandchildren. 'I would hope they care about their grandchildren enough to care about what Simon is doing,' she wrote. 'Don said they tried to talk to him, but he refused to talk about it, so they're staying out of it, but want us to pray together. 'I'm sick of this s**t. I want nothing to do with them. I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing, but it seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable, and not wanting to get involved in their son's personal matters, are overriding that. So f**k them.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
We all became detectives in Erin Patterson's trial. But as a crime writer I can't help wonder, at what cost?
From the moment we saw Erin Patterson sobbing and wiping her eyes in her driveway in Leongatha, we started to judge her. The tone of her voice. The mournful tilting back of her head as she tried to control her emotion. The strange examining of her own fingers for tears. Was the performance real, or was she faking it? We had to decide. We had to participate. The public's natural hunger for participation in solving crimes has fuelled a billion-dollar podcast industry rooted in true crime. It's elevated crime fiction to the leading genre in the book world. Overwhelmingly, true crime podcasts that deal with unsolved mysteries dominate the hit lists, and the industry celebrates crime novels with unexpected twists and unreliable narrators. That's because the public wants to get involved. To join in. The human brain is made for solving puzzles and we hate to be fed answers. The media is riddled with advertising for opportunities to be a crime-fighting hero, from subscriptions to mail-out mystery solving games to in-person crime nights. Sydney-siders can now experience a simulated courtroom environment and be seated on a mock jury with The Jury Experience. The website boasts that 'the power to deliver justice is entirely in your hands!' Just $39 a ticket. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email The problem is that armchair detectives and their untrained analysis of apparent shock and grief has been historically (and, for the victims, very painfully) wrong. The plight of Joanne Lees, whose boyfriend Peter Falconio disappeared during a terrifying abduction attempt by Bradley John Murdoch in the Australian outback, is an example of the savagery of mob crime-solving. Deep-breathing and tearless, her seemingly calm walk down a corridor to front the press, and her choice of a singlet top emblazoned with the words 'cheeky monkey', turned the tide of opinions against her. Her account of crouching in bushland, evading her would-be attacker and his dog, was shredded at watercooler conversations nationwide. The whole time, Joanne was telling the truth. She was traumatised and grieving and being called a liar. The wrongful public-opinion (and legal) convictions of Kathleen Folbigg and Lindy Chamberlain should have made us cautious about believing we can spot a killer by how they appear and behave. They didn't. Erin's driveway performance was viewed with suspicion. So it was time to examine the evidence. What didn't make sense in the mushroom saga is the apparent weight of the premeditation against Erin's utter lack of after-crime planning. We were told by the prosecution of the coldness and calculation with which she researched, accessed and concealed the deadly mushrooms, going so far as to dehydrate and blitz them in a blender. There was, they argued, a conceited lie constructed to make the victims come to the lunch. Stringent physical measures taken to ensure only her victims, and not herself or her children, fell ill. It seemed that Erin risked her own life, and those of her kids, to make this murder plot come to fruition. She apparently wanted her in-laws dead that badly. What then did we make of Erin's lack of any real plan to explain why three people had suddenly died after attending the lunch? Erin's accounting for her actions in court seemed half-hearted and ham-fisted. I lied. I panicked. I was mistaken. I don't remember. TikTok-trained psychoanalysis of Erin's explanations was bandied around WhatsApp group chats and office lunch rooms. She's a narcissist. She's a sociopath. She's an idiot. What makes the public's insatiable hunger to play detective, jury member, behavioural analyst and forensic scientist so worrying is that, when we do it, we lose sight of the victims entirely. The Pattersons, the Wilkinsons and their community will never recover from Erin's senseless act. Erin herself will likely spend her life behind bars and her children will have to somehow get through the loss of their grandparents, a great-aunt and their own mother. Right now, that family is trying to learn how to function again, having been hit with unfathomable pain. And they'll have to do it while mushroom murder memes are shared around and influencers break down the case into 60-second soundbites over trending audio. The line between real life and fiction is blurring, helped along by AI, the fake news movement and the pursuit of likes. But it comes at the expense of truth. Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion I'm guilty of wandering that line myself, as a crime fiction author who keeps a close eye on court cases as a means of research. I've wondered many times during the mushroom trial how I'd fictionalise something like this, where I'd set it, whose perspective I would write it from. I worry that the true crime and crime fiction industry, of which I am a maker and a consumer, is making a professional crime-solver of all of us. Candice Fox is a bestselling Australian crime novelist based in Sydney
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
We have answers to most questions about Erin Patterson. But THIS explosive camera footage raises an alarming mystery about her pink Samsung
A mountain of evidence saw mushroom killer Erin Patterson convicted of murdering her ex-husband's parents and aunt, but one item was noticeably missing from the prosecution's case. Despite hunting down Patterson's deadly beef Wellington, dehydrator and photos of poisonous death cap mushrooms, officers were unable to find the 50-year-old's main phone. Patterson on Monday was found guilty of killing her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson. She was also found guilty of attempting to murder Heather's husband, Pastor Ian Wilkinson. She had pleaded not guilty to the deaths and claimed the poisoning was accidental. Patterson had invited the group to her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023, where she served them individually wrapped beef Wellingtons containing lethal mushrooms. The killer initially feigned grief as the fatal lunch made headlines around Australia and Victoria Police charged her over the deaths in November 2023. However, concerns soon grew that one of Patterson's phones was missing, and investigators believed they'd been given a dud device. CCTV vision from July 31, 2023 - released by the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday - showed the murderer in hospital after the incident with a Samsung phone in a pink case. That phone, dubbed Phone A, was never found. Instead, when officers searched Patterson's home on August 5, 2023, she handed them Phone B. Police claimed Patterson had primarily used Phone A from February 2023 until August 2023, which Patterson agreed with. She argued she gave officers Phone B as she was in the process of switching devices because she didn't want her estranged husband, Simon, to reach her. As for why two factory resets had been performed on Phone B before it was surrendered, Patterson told the court, 'I knew that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator and I just panicked'. However, the prosecution believed the phone swap was a poorly executed attempt at hiding evidence. It's understood the killer may have gone as far as swapping the devices' SIM cards while detectives were searching her property in August 2023. Despite missing a key piece of evidence, detectives were still able to track down a large amount of other damning proof from her electronics. That evidence included a photo of death cap mushrooms on a scale and her online history of accessing the plant database and networking site, iNaturalist. Internet history showed Patterson had viewed an iNaturalist post flagging death cap mushrooms in two areas of Victoria on at least one occasion. Her mobile phone location later tracked her visiting both locations and buying a food dehydrator on her way home. A photo of death cap mushrooms being weighed on a scale was discovered by investigators on Patterson's tablet device. The prosecution claimed Patterson was weighing the poisonous mushrooms to ensure she could deliver a fatal dose to her ex-husband's family. It's believed Patterson then put the mushrooms in her dehydrator, which was found by police at Koonwarra Transfer Station, so they'd be undetectable in the lunch. A 12-person jury found Patterson guilty of three murders and one attempted murder at Latrobe Valley Magistrates' Court on Monday afternoon following a week of deliberation. She now faces a maximum sentence of life behind bars.
