Mushroom cook facing further questions in murder trial
Prosecutors will continue questioning mushroom cook Erin Patterson as she returns for a fifth day in the witness box at her triple murder trial.
The 50-year-old mother admitted to a number of lies to police on Thursday, as she nears the end of week six on trial before a Supreme Court jury in regional Victoria.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, along with the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson.
She denies deliberately poisoning her four lunch guests on July 29, 2023 by serving them death cap mushroom-laced beef Wellingtons.
Patterson admitted to 14 jurors on Thursday that she lied in her police interview about not owning a dehydrator and having never foraged for wild mushrooms.
She said she had a "stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying" after being informed two lunch guests had died.
"I was just scared, but I shouldn't have done it," she told the jury.
The prosecution honed in on Patterson's lies during cross-examination, accusing her of lying about dehydrating mushrooms as she knew telling police the truth could implicate her in the toxic lunch.
"I agree that I lied because I was afraid I would be held responsible," Patterson said.
She also admitted she told Gail and Don Patterson she had a lump in her arm and was going to hospital to get it tested, which was untrue.
"They made me feel loved and cared for in the way that they were asking about my health and I didn't want that to stop, so I just kept going," she said.
Prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC accused her of using a "so-called cancer diagnosis" to get her guests to come over for lunch.
"I suggest that you never thought you would have to account for this lie about having cancer because you thought that the lunch guests would die?" the prosecutor asked.
"That's not true," Patterson replied.
Patterson will return for a second day of cross-examination on Friday as the trial continues.
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Perth Now
7 hours ago
- Perth Now
Key revelations from mushroom cook's testimony
The Victorian mother-of-two at the centre of a mushroom poisoning case had the opportunity to tell her own story this week as she took the stand at her triple-murder trial. Erin Patterson, 50, is facing trial after pleading not guilty to the murders of her husband's parents and aunt, and the attempted murder of his uncle. Simon Patterson's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, died in the week after the lunch after falling ill from mushroom poisoning. Prosecutors alleged she deliberately poisoned the beef Wellington lunch on July 29, 2023, with death cap mushrooms intending to kill or seriously injure her four guests. Erin Patterson and her estranged husband Simon Patterson. NewsWire Credit: NewsWire Her defence, on the other hand, has argued the case is a 'tragic accident' and Ms Patterson also consumed the death caps and fell sick, though not as sick as her guests. Over five days this week Ms Patterson sat in the witness box about 7 m from the 14 jurors selected to hear her case, answering questions, firstly from her barrister Colin Mandy SC and then from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. Her opportunity to tell her own story came after the jury spent five weeks hearing from more than 50 witnesses for the prosecution as Ms Patterson sat in silence at the back of the Morwell courtroom. Mushroom cook agrees death caps in lunch may have been foraged In her testimony to the jury, Ms Patterson conceded death cap mushrooms 'must' have ended up in the beef Wellington lunch she prepared and served for the four guests. The morning of the lunch, she told the court, she started to prepare the duxelles, or mushroom paste, by cooking down two punnets of fresh sliced mushrooms she had purchased from Woolworths. 'So, as I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland to me, so I decided to put in the dried mushrooms that I'd bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry,' she said. A court sketch of Ms Patterson in the witness box on Monday. NewsWire / Anita Lester Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Patterson told the jury she had purchased a packet of dried mushrooms in April the same year from an Asian supermarket in Melbourne, initially intending to use them for a pasta dish but deciding against that because they had a strong flavour. She said she now accepts it was possible she had stored wild mushrooms she foraged from her local area and dehydrated in the same Tupperware container. 'At that time, I believed it was just the mushrooms that I'd bought in Melbourne … Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury she first became interested in foraging for wild mushrooms during Covid and educated herself online. Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC is leading the case against Ms Patterson. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia Over a period of months, she said she grew confident to identify 'field mushrooms and horse mushrooms' growing on her property before deciding to eat some. 'When I got to a point I was confident what they were, I cut a bit off, fried it up with butter, ate it and saw what happened,' she said. 'They tasted good and I didn't get sick.' Ms Patterson said she had purchased a dehydrator on April 28, 2023, to begin experimenting with preserving mushrooms because they had a short shelf life. Crown alleges photo shows Ms Patterson calculating 'fatal dose' Under questioning from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC, Ms Patterson was taken to a photograph of sliced mushrooms on a dehydrator tray being weighed. The weight recorded was 280.0g and metadata from the photo showed it was last modified on May 4. Ms Patterson agreed the photo was 'likely' taken by her and contains her kitchen bench. Ms Patterson told the jury she loved mushrooms and would buy them one or two times a week. Supplied. Credit: Supplied Previously, the jury heard from mycologist Dr Tom May that the mushrooms pictured were 'consistent with amanita phalloides (death caps) at a high level of confidence'. Questioned on if she accepted the mushrooms pictured were death caps, Ms Patterson said: 'I don't think they are'. She also denied she had foraged these mushrooms in the nearby town of Loch on April 28 after seeing a death cap mushroom sighting post on citizen science website iNaturalist on April 18. Dr Rogers suggested the image recorded Ms Patterson weighing the mushrooms to calculate the 'weight required for the administration of a fatal dose'. 'Disagree,' Ms Patterson responded. The trial is being heard in the country Victorian town of Morwell. NewsWire / Josie Hayden Credit: News Corp Australia Mushroom cook tells jury she lied to health authorities because she was scared Ms Patterson said she first learned her in-laws had fallen ill the day after the lunch on a phone call with her estranged husband on July 30. The following day, she told the court, she attended the local Leongatha Hospital too seek treatment for gastro when the resident doctor, Dr Chris Webster, said 'we've been expecting you'. 'I think I said to him, 'Why? Why are you asking?', and he said that there's a concern or we're concerned you've been exposed to death cap mushrooms,' she said. 'I was shocked but confused as well … I didn't see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal.' Crowds have lined up outside the court to sit in the public gallery. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Patterson told the court she first began to suspect foraged mushrooms may have ended up in the lunch at Monash Medical Centre when Simon accused her of poisoning his parents. In his own evidence, at the start of the trial, Simon Patterson told the jury he did not say this to his wife. Ms Patterson told the jury on August 2, the day after her release from hospital, she disposed of her dehydrator at the Koonwarra Transfer Station. 'I was scared that they would blame me for it,' she said of the decision. 'Surely if you loved them (her in-laws) you would have notified health authorities about the possibility of the foraged mushrooms in the container?' Dr Rogers asked. 'Well I didn't,' Ms Patterson replied. 'I had been told people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning so that was already happening.' Erin Patterson appeared emotional at times on the stand. Brooke Grebert-Craig. Credit: Supplied Ms Patterson confirmed she did not notify anyone of her suspicions and lied to both police and health authorities in the following days by claiming she did not forage for mushrooms. She was taken to a series of messages exchanged with public health officer Sally Anne Atkinson, where Ms Patterson insisted the only mushrooms in the meal were from Woolworths and an Asian grocer. Asked what her state of mind was in relation to the Asian grocer, she said she 'still thought it was a possibility, but I knew it wasn't the only possibility.' Ms Patterson told the court she first learned of Heather and Gail's deaths as police searched her home on August 5 and continued to lie. 'It was this stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying. I was just scared, but I shouldn't have done it,' she said. Simon's parents Don and Gail Patterson died a day apart in early August. Supplied Credit: Supplied Ms Patterson claims she vomited after deadly lunch Ms Patterson also told the jury she had long struggled with both her weight and relationships to food since childhood – describing it as a 'rollercoaster'. 'Mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren't putting on too much weight … I went to the extreme of barely eating then to, through my adulthood, going the other way and bingeing,' she said. She told the court she had engaged in binge eating until she was sick then 'bringing it back up' since her 20s and no one knew. Erin Patterson legal team including Colin Mandy SC, Sophie Stafford and Bill Doogue. NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui Credit: News Corp Australia In the lead up to the July 29, 2023, lunch, Ms Patterson said she had been engaging in this behaviour 'two or three times a week'. She told the court that at the lunch with Don, Gail, Heather and Ian, she only ate some of her serving, but consumed about two-thirds of an orange cake after her guests left. 'I had a piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another,' Ms Patterson said. 'I felt sick. I felt overfull, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.' Ms Patterson is expected to return to the witness box and continue giving evidence when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
West Australian
7 hours ago
- West Australian
Erin Patterson trial: Four takeaways from alleged beef Wellington poisoner's week in the witness box
The Victorian mother-of-two at the centre of a mushroom poisoning case had the opportunity to tell her own story this week as she took the stand at her triple-murder trial. Erin Patterson, 50, is facing trial after pleading not guilty to the murders of her husband's parents and aunt, and the attempted murder of his uncle. Simon Patterson's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, died in the week after the lunch after falling ill from mushroom poisoning. Prosecutors alleged she deliberately poisoned the beef Wellington lunch on July 29, 2023, with death cap mushrooms intending to kill or seriously injure her four guests. Her defence, on the other hand, has argued the case is a 'tragic accident' and Ms Patterson also consumed the death caps and fell sick, though not as sick as her guests. Over five days this week Ms Patterson sat in the witness box about 7 m from the 14 jurors selected to hear her case, answering questions, firstly from her barrister Colin Mandy SC and then from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. Her opportunity to tell her own story came after the jury spent five weeks hearing from more than 50 witnesses for the prosecution as Ms Patterson sat in silence at the back of the Morwell courtroom. Mushroom cook agrees death caps in lunch may have been foraged In her testimony to the jury, Ms Patterson conceded death cap mushrooms 'must' have ended up in the beef Wellington lunch she prepared and served for the four guests. The morning of the lunch, she told the court, she started to prepare the duxelles, or mushroom paste, by cooking down two punnets of fresh sliced mushrooms she had purchased from Woolworths. 'So, as I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland to me, so I decided to put in the dried mushrooms that I'd bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury she had purchased a packet of dried mushrooms in April the same year from an Asian supermarket in Melbourne, initially intending to use them for a pasta dish but deciding against that because they had a strong flavour. She said she now accepts it was possible she had stored wild mushrooms she foraged from her local area and dehydrated in the same Tupperware container. 'At that time, I believed it was just the mushrooms that I'd bought in Melbourne … Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury she first became interested in foraging for wild mushrooms during Covid and educated herself online. Over a period of months, she said she grew confident to identify 'field mushrooms and horse mushrooms' growing on her property before deciding to eat some. 'When I got to a point I was confident what they were, I cut a bit off, fried it up with butter, ate it and saw what happened,' she said. 'They tasted good and I didn't get sick.' Ms Patterson said she had purchased a dehydrator on April 28, 2023, to begin experimenting with preserving mushrooms because they had a short shelf life. Crown alleges photo shows Ms Patterson calculating 'fatal dose' Under questioning from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC, Ms Patterson was taken to a photograph of sliced mushrooms on a dehydrator tray being weighed. The weight recorded was 280.0g and metadata from the photo showed it was last modified on May 4. Ms Patterson agreed the photo was 'likely' taken by her and contains her kitchen bench. Previously, the jury heard from mycologist Dr Tom May that the mushrooms pictured were 'consistent with amanita phalloides (death caps) at a high level of confidence'. Questioned on if she accepted the mushrooms pictured were death caps, Ms Patterson said: 'I don't think they are'. She also denied she had foraged these mushrooms in the nearby town of Loch on April 28 after seeing a death cap mushroom sighting post on citizen science website iNaturalist on April 18. Dr Rogers suggested the image recorded Ms Patterson weighing the mushrooms to calculate the 'weight required for the administration of a fatal dose'. 'Disagree,' Ms Patterson responded. Mushroom cook tells jury she lied to health authorities because she was scared Ms Patterson said she first learned her in-laws had fallen ill the day after the lunch on a phone call with her estranged husband on July 30. The following day, she told the court, she attended the local Leongatha Hospital too seek treatment for gastro when the resident doctor, Dr Chris Webster, said 'we've been expecting you'. 'I think I said to him, 'Why? Why are you asking?', and he said that there's a concern or we're concerned you've been exposed to death cap mushrooms,' she said. 'I was shocked but confused as well … I didn't see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal.' Ms Patterson told the court she first began to suspect foraged mushrooms may have ended up in the lunch at Monash Medical Centre when Simon accused her of poisoning his parents. In his own evidence, at the start of the trial, Simon Patterson told the jury he did not say this to his wife. Ms Patterson told the jury on August 2, the day after her release from hospital, she disposed of her dehydrator at the Koonwarra Transfer Station. 'I was scared that they would blame me for it,' she said of the decision. 'Surely if you loved them (her in-laws) you would have notified health authorities about the possibility of the foraged mushrooms in the container?' Dr Rogers asked. 'Well I didn't,' Ms Patterson replied. 'I had been told people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning so that was already happening.' Ms Patterson confirmed she did not notify anyone of her suspicions and lied to both police and health authorities in the following days by claiming she did not forage for mushrooms. She was taken to a series of messages exchanged with public health officer Sally Anne Atkinson, where Ms Patterson insisted the only mushrooms in the meal were from Woolworths and an Asian grocer. Asked what her state of mind was in relation to the Asian grocer, she said she 'still thought it was a possibility, but I knew it wasn't the only possibility.' Ms Patterson told the court she first learned of Heather and Gail's deaths as police searched her home on August 5 and continued to lie. 'It was this stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying. I was just scared, but I shouldn't have done it,' she said. Ms Patterson claims she vomited after deadly lunch Ms Patterson also told the jury she had long struggled with both her weight and relationships to food since childhood – describing it as a 'rollercoaster'. 'Mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren't putting on too much weight … I went to the extreme of barely eating then to, through my adulthood, going the other way and bingeing,' she said. She told the court she had engaged in binge eating until she was sick then 'bringing it back up' since her 20s and no one knew. In the lead up to the July 29, 2023, lunch, Ms Patterson said she had been engaging in this behaviour 'two or three times a week'. She told the court that at the lunch with Don, Gail, Heather and Ian, she only ate some of her serving, but consumed about two-thirds of an orange cake after her guests left. 'I had a piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another,' Ms Patterson said. 'I felt sick. I felt overfull, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.' Ms Patterson is expected to return to the witness box and continue giving evidence when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
ABC News
9 hours ago
- ABC News
Erin Patterson's week on the stand in her mushroom murder trial
For weeks, the trial of Erin Patterson has moved carefully through vast expanses of at-times highly technical evidence. It's included contested data from mobile phone towers, reports of digital analysis carried out on seized electronic devices and tables tracking the movement of SIM cards between phones. It's even included a run-through from a fungi expert on how to distinguish the deadly Amanita phalloides (or death cap) mushroom variety from its more benign relatives. But it was in the sixth week of the Supreme Court trial that a packed courtroom in Morwell heard hours of evidence directly from the person who organised the 2023 beef Wellington meal that led to three deaths. The trial of Erin Patterson, who stands accused of using a poisoned meal to murder three relatives, continues. Look back at how Friday's hearing unfolded in our live blog. To stay up to date with this story, subscribe to ABC News. In her evidence, Erin Patterson told the jury she never intended to harm the four relatives she invited to Saturday lunch at her Leongatha home. She said she now believed foraged mushrooms had accidentally made their way into the meal in a mix-up that had seen them blended with other dried mushrooms purchased from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east. The 50-year-old, who has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder, admitted several times she had used lies and exaggeration in the past. But she maintained she was telling the truth when she rejected one of the prosecution's central claims: that her lie to her lunch guests about possibly requiring cancer treatment in the future was part of a carefully laid plot to murder them. "I suggest that you never thought you would have to account for this lie of having cancer, because you thought that the lunch guests would die and your lie would never be found out," Dr Rogers said to Ms Patterson. "That's not true," she replied. She also said while she may have indicated cancer treatment lay ahead, she never told them a diagnosis had been made. This week, Ms Patterson gave deeply personal evidence as she discussed the context in which the lunch had taken place. The evidence went as far back as her childhood, when Ms Patterson told the court her mother would weigh her "weekly". She said she had grown up with significant body image issues, engaged in binge eating and by the time of the lunch, she was planning to undergo gastric-band surgery as a way to control her weight. Ms Patterson said she was too embarrassed to tell her relatives about this, so instead she fed her parents-in-law Gail and Don Patterson a lie. The court heard Ms Patterson told them in several messages sent before the lunch that she was undergoing a biopsy and MRI for a lump on her elbow. "I remember thinking I didn't want to tell anybody what I was going to have done, I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought perhaps letting them believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment might mean they would be able to help me with the logistics around the kids and I wouldn't have to tell them the real reason," Ms Patterson said. It was a lie she expanded on at the lunch, although Ms Patterson told the court while she had indicated she may need ovarian cancer treatment, she did not believe she had told them a diagnosis was made. Her history with illnesses and the medical system was also explored in evidence. The court heard several traumatic experiences with her children's health and hospital staff had built a sense of distrust. "I just lost so much faith in the medical system that I decided that, anything to do with my health and the children's health, I'm going to have to solve that problem myself," she said. Earlier in the trial, the court heard from medical staff who said Ms Patterson needed to be persuaded to bring her children (who had eaten leftover meat from the meal) in to be tested for death cap mushroom poisoning. Ms Patterson said any perceived reluctance wasn't because she did not want her children to be treated, but because she was wary of the "drastic step" of hospital admission. "I wanted to understand that that was really necessary, because of their anxieties about being in hospital," Ms Patterson said. But she said ultimately, she understood "the logic" of that course of action. Ms Patterson also gave detailed evidence on the family dynamics at the time of the lunch. Tensions over financial matters had flared between her and her estranged husband in late 2022 and she had feared it was damaging her relationship with the Patterson family. In a bid to bring them closer, Ms Patterson had organised a lunch in June, 2023, with Gail and Don Patterson and the children, where she served up shepherd's pie. "The kids and I had such a good time seeing nanna and papa," she said. Ms Patterson said the positive engagement with her in-laws had inspired her to organise another lunch, this time with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian. "Her and Ian have been really good to me over the years, I wanted to have some more connection with them," she said. It was against this backdrop that Ms Patterson said she approached Gail and Heather after a church service in Korumburra one Sunday. "Would you like to come to lunch at my house?" Erin said she asked them. "They said 'we'd love to'." Ms Patterson told the court she decided a "special" dish was required for the event, and so decided to attempt beef Wellington for the first time. A few "deviations" were made to the RecipeTin Eats cookbook method, she said. Due to meat availability, Ms Patterson said she made individual pastry parcels rather than the one log called for in the recipe. A prosciutto layer was dropped because Don Patterson didn't eat pork, the mustard was left out and a crepe layer was swapped for the simpler option of filo pastry. Crucially, Ms Patterson told the court she believed the deadly addition to the meal likely came during the preparation of the mushroom paste, or duxelle, that coats the meat. She said on the morning of the lunch, she had cooked down Woolworths-bought mushrooms when she tasted the duxelle. "It seemed a little bland, to me," she said. "So I decided to put in the dried mushrooms that I'd bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry. "So I put them in, like a little … strainer with a handle … and just roughly poured water over them to get the crispness out of them. "I chopped them up and I, like, sprinkled them over the duxelle and pushed them in with an egg flip." She said at the time, she had believed the dried mushrooms were the ones she'd bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east. "Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well," she said, closing her eyes and blinking as her voice cracked. After guests arrived, Ms Patterson said the individual Wellingtons were plated up and put on the table with no great thought as to who ended up with which portion. "I said, you know, 'grab a plate guys, I'm just going to finish off the gravy.' I turned around," she said. Ms Patterson told the court she only had part of her meal and shortly after the guests had left, she binged on two-thirds of an orange cake her mother-in-law had brought, before vomiting it all up. The events after the guests left the dining table have been raked over in hours of court evidence and detailed in briefs running into tens of thousands of pages. On Friday, lead prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC questioned the "love" Ms Patterson has maintained she held for her in-laws: Rogers: You agree that you told police in your record of interview that you loved Don and Gail? Patterson: Correct. Rogers: Surely if you had loved them .. You would have immediately notified the medical authorities that there was a possibility that the foraged mushrooms had ended up in the meal. Patterson: Well I didn't. I had been told that … people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning. So that was already happening. The prosecution noted that these questions related to Ms Patterson's mindset on the Tuesday after the lunch, days before anyone had died. But, Dr Rogers told the court, Erin didn't tell "a single person" that foraged mushrooms may have been in the meal. "Correct," Ms Patterson replied. Further, Dr Rogers put to Ms Patterson that she had "two faces" when it came to her relationship with her in-laws. A public face of loving them, and a private face shared with her Facebook friends, where she shared anger and mocked her relatives' religious views. Ms Patterson denied it, telling the court she had "a good relationship with Don and Gail" and sobbed as she recounted how she had invited Heather Wilkinson to the lunch to thank her for the kindness she had shown her over the years. This week in court the prosecution also alleged that in the lead-up to the lunch, Ms Patterson had seen iNaturalist listings of death cap mushrooms at nearby Loch and Outtrim, and knowingly foraged the poisonous fungi. They alleged that photos taken from devices seized at her home showed she had been weighing dehydrated death cap mushrooms in the lead-up to the lunch, to determine what the lethal dosage would be for her guests. The prosecution said that her elaborate cancer lie was carefully constructed to create a pretence for a lunch without her children, and that had her estranged husband Simon attended the lunch, she would have knowingly fed him a sixth beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms. And they alleged her decision to dump the dehydrator and lie to police about it was done because she knew admitting to the dehydrator would have revealed her murderous plot. Ms Patterson denies it all. And the trial's not over yet. This week, Justice Christopher Beale told jurors the hearings could stretch towards the end of June, before they would be asked to deliberate and return a verdict. How long the jury will need to weigh the mountain of evidence and arrive at a verdict is impossible to know. "None of you can tell me how long you will be in deliberations … how long is a piece of string?" Justice Beale said.
