State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan was in Byron Bay Courthouse on Friday afternoon to deliver her findings in the inquest into the death of Natasha Lechner, who died after taking kambo in Mullumbimby in 2019.
Derived from an Amazonian frog, kambo was criminalised in Australia not long after this, which didn’t stop it contributing to another death currently being investigated by the coroner, that of Jarrad Antonovich.
The three day inquest into Ms Lechner’s death took place in Lismore in May 2023. Her father Frank Lechner remembered her then as ‘an old soul in a young body’, close to her twin brother, and having travelled widely from her origins in Wollongong before she settled in Mullumbimby.
There was evidence that she’d been suffering from a range of chronic health problems for years, and had been declared medically unfit to practice her previous profession of hairdressing in 2019.
Kambo
Ms Lechner had been interested in kambo since 2015, reportedly finding it beneficial for her back pain and other issues.
61 lesions from previous kambo sessions were found on her body in the autopsy (the skin is burned before the kambo is applied). At the time of her death, she’d recently completed her own training as a kambo practitioner.
The other woman at the centre of this inquest, Victoria Sinclair, known as ‘Maestra Victoria’, had been training as a kambo practitioner since 2014, with experience in Central and South America as well as Europe. In March 2019 she was visiting Australia from Ireland when the women decided to administer kambo to one other in a private ceremony at Ms Lechner’s share house in Mullumbimby.
On 8 March, the session began with both women taking the traditional South American plant medicine ‘sananga’ via eye drops, before Ms Lechner gave Ms Sinclair the kambo, and she vomited, as is common, and then recovered.
Ms Sinclair testified that Ms Lechner then requested kambo to be applied over her heart, but Ms Sinclair said she applied the substance to her arm and below the clavicle area of her chest instead. Five ‘points’ were applied altogether, not an unusual number.
Bad reaction
Ms Lechner felt faint and lay down, but did not purge. After two minutes she sat up, grabbed Ms Sinclair’s arm and said ‘something’s not right’ or ‘this isn’t good’, before losing consciousness.
From here things went from bad to worse, with Ms Sinclair making various attempts to revive the other woman, all of which were unsuccessful. She said she tried to use Ms Lechner’s phone to ring an ambulance, but didn’t know how to use the phone, or which number to ring (she was not a resident of Australia).
The coroner noted that ‘she did not run outside the house to get help’.
When housemate Kelly Green returned to the house at 11.10am she commenced CPR on Ms Lechner and called 000, with paramedics arriving soon after. The coroner said that, ‘Sadly, it was clear that she had already passed away’ before they arrived.
Coroner O’Sullivan was unequivocal about kambo’s role in Natasha Lechner’s death, with the evidence of toxicologists and other medical experts leading her to conclude that she died ‘as a result of an adverse cardiac event, triggered by the administration of kambo, which involves scraping poisonous secretions on to burns in the body.’
She took pains to describe the victim as a clever, independent, educated woman who was searching for a way to cure herself from her chronic health issues.
Although she lacked the power to recommend any legal actions against Victoria Sinclair for her role in the death (Ms Sinclair is not an Australian citizen and kambo was not illegal at the time), the coroner suggested that at the very least those involved should have had a proper plan if something went wrong, with Ms Lechner appearing to have a better chance of survival if an ambulance had been called much earlier.
She said she supported the TGA’s decision to ban kambo in Australia.
The coroner further said, ‘While regulators must balance risk of harm with personal liberties, it appears to me that a number of vulnerable people are drawn to using kambo in circumstances where those who administer it may hold themselves out as part of a healing profession, and yet lack basic training in first aid.
‘Like Ms Sinclair, those persons may not prepare themselves for what to do in an emergency,’ she said.
There were only media representatives in court to hear the results of the inquest. Ms Lechner’s father was present via video link, but didn’t make a statement. The related inquest into Jarrad Antonovich’s death will return to Byron Bay in May.
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