Details in accused killer Erin Patterson's account of deadly lunch to authorities changed, court hears
Erin Patterson kept giving "different" information to the health official leading an urgent investigation into the death cap mushroom poisoning that killed three of her in-laws, a murder trial jury has heard.
Ms Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder over a beef Wellington meal containing death cap mushrooms she served to four relatives in 2023.
On Monday afternoon, the Department of Health's Sally Ann Atkinson told the Supreme Court trial how her public health team urgently investigated the death cap poisonings in the wake of the Leongatha lunch.
Ms Atkinson, who headed up a team that specifically investigated gastro-related outbreaks, told the court she "immediately" escalated the response when a doctor notified her unit of suspected amatoxin poisoning in at least five people on July 31.
The trial of Erin Patterson, who stands accused of using a poisoned meal to murder three relatives, continues.
Follow the latest developments in our live blog.
"Because this was something that was quite unusual ... [it] sounded very serious," she said.
Ms Atkinson said the health department quickly established a team of people to respond to the issue, including food safety officers tasked with pulling any mushrooms from supermarket shelves that posed a risk to the community.
The health official said on August 1 she called Erin Patterson on her mobile and asked her about her symptoms.
She said Ms Patterson told her that she had experienced "explosive diarrhoea" the night after the Saturday lunch and into the Sunday of the next day.
Ms Atkinson said Ms Patterson told her everyone at the lunch had eaten the same food, which was separately plated up and included a packet gravy in addition to the beef Wellingtons, mashed potatoes and beans.
She said Ms Patterson told her it was "a meal she'd never made before and she wanted to do something fancy".
She said Ms Patterson had told her the mushrooms in the dish were a mixture of Woolworths button mushrooms and dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in the Oakleigh, Clayton, or Mount Waverley areas.
But she said Ms Patterson later told her that store could have been the Glen Waverley area, not Mount Waverley, and rather than buying most of the fresh ingredients on the Friday before the lunch, she had in fact bought the fresh ingredients over Wednesday to Friday.
Ms Atkinson said Ms Patterson's account of what she did after buying the dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer months before the lunch also became "different" over time.
Initially, Ms Atkinson told the court Ms Patterson informed her that she had bought the dried mushrooms "for a specific meal she was making, which I think was a pasta dish or something".
She said Ms Patterson told her she had opened the clear bag the mushrooms were in and "thought they smelt funny".
Ms Atkinson said she understood from her first conversation with Ms Patterson that some of the dried mushrooms were used in a pasta dish, and the rest set aside in a Tupperware container.
But she said later, Ms Patterson told her she had never cooked a meal with the dried mushrooms before the beef Wellington lunch.
"The initial conversation seemed to indicate she'd used some of them in the first dish and … now she was saying that she had not. But she wasn't very clear," Ms Atkinson said.
Earlier in the day, the hearing was briefly interrupted by a protester, who began shouting and questioning the authority of Justice Christopher Beale before he was swiftly removed from the courtroom.
Ms Patterson's lawyers cross-examined Victoria Police digital forensics witness Shamen Fox-Henry, who was asked about his role in analysing data from devices seized as part of the investigation.
The court heard Mr Fox-Henry used a digital tool to preserve hard-drive data from a computer, before analysis of its contents.
The court previously heard the computer involved was found in Ms Patterson's house and had been used to visit the iNaturalist and Korumburra Middle Pub websites in 2022.
The trial has previously heard sightings of death cap mushrooms were uploaded to the iNaturalist website in areas a short drive from Erin Patterson's home in Leongatha, in the months before she hosted the deadly lunch the next year.
The trial last week also heard that phone data suggested Ms Patterson had visited Loch and Outtrim shortly after death cap mushroom sightings were made to iNaturalist, although her defence lawyer told the court any conclusion about her movements based on phone data was just "speculation".
Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC questioned Mr Fox-Henry on the rigour he had applied to the process and what double-checks had been done to ensure details of the digital data police had analysed was accurate.
Mr Fox-Henry told the court the software used, Magnet Axiom, would have identified if there was an error or issue in the data.
"The forensic imaging software that we use dictates whether or not there has been a failure," he said.
On Monday the trial also heard from forensic pathologist Brian Beer, who said autopsies of Gail Patterson, Don Patterson and Heather Wilkinson in the days after their deaths revealed extensive liver damage and organ failure consistent with death cap poisoning.
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