Lies, damned lies: The admissions and denials of an accused killer cook

Sydney Morning Herald

15 hours ago

Whether Patterson had cancer and had shared this with others was discussed repeatedly.
Sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson recalled in his evidence that it was at the lethal lunch that Patterson broke the news of her cancer, telling her guests she was anxious about telling her children.
Patterson's estranged husband, Simon Patterson, told the jury that while his family was sick in hospital after the lunch, his father relayed to him that Patterson had said she was going to have chemotherapy and surgery. Don told him Patterson said she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and needed help breaking the news to her two children.
But Patterson told the jury on Thursday she had never been diagnosed with any type of cancer and went on to quibble with the suggestion she'd told her guests she had been. During cross-examination, this was referred to as the accused woman's 'so-called cancer diagnosis'.
Instead, Patterson suggested she had researched the symptoms online for things, including stage-four cancer, because she was worried she may be very unwell.
The 50-year-old denied doing so as part of any type of ploy to convince her family she was seriously ill.
'I suggest you never thought you'd have to account for this lie about having cancer because you thought the lunch guests would die,' Rogers said.
'This would allow you to tell a more convincing lie about having cancer?'
Patterson replied: 'I mean, theoretically that's true, but that's not what I did. I was concerned that I had ovarian cancer, I was concerned that I had something wrong with my brain.'
Patterson agreed she didn't have any medical appointments relating to cancer in the lead-up to the lunch, despite telling Gail she was undergoing medical investigations.
She did, however, claim to have had a pre-surgery appointment booked for a gastric bypass to lose weight.
Rogers asked Patterson if she purposely carried on the fiction that she had a serious illness. Patterson agreed.
The foraging
In her recorded interview with police on the afternoon of August 5, 2023, Patterson said she'd never foraged for mushrooms in the wild.
'Is that something you've done in the past?' Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall asked Patterson at the Wonthaggi Police Station. 'Foraged for mushrooms?'
'Never,' Patterson replied.
While on the stand this week, Patterson's story changed. She told the jury she developed a love for mushrooms and an interest in foraging for them from early 2020 during the COVID lockdowns.
She told the jury she started off by picking field mushrooms. Then she began picking others, such as horse mushrooms and slippery jacks, as she grew more confident in identifying the species she picked in her yard, the nearby botanical gardens and a rail trail between Korumburra, Loch and Leongatha.
She said that she initially believed the mushrooms she'd used in the fatal beef Wellington were prepackaged button mushrooms from Woolworths and dried mushrooms she'd bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne.
As the investigation went on, though, she said she began to think that maybe dried foraged mushrooms had also made their way into the meal. She told the jury she now accepted that death cap mushrooms had been inside the pastry-encased parcels.
While under cross-examination, Patterson agreed it was on August 1, 2023, that Simon first asked if she'd used the dehydrator to kill his parents. She said it was then that she began to wonder whether other mushrooms may have made their way into the meal.
'You agree you told police in your record of interview that you loved Don and Gail?' Rogers asked.
'Yes,' Patterson replied.
Rogers: 'Surely, if you had loved them, you would've immediately notified medical authorities about there being a possibility that the foraged mushrooms had gone into the container with the Chinese mushrooms?'
'Well I didn't. I did not tell anybody,' Patterson responded.
'They did love me and I did love them. I do love them.'
The dehydrator
A tax invoice displayed on screens across the courtroom showed the purchase of a black Sunbeam dehydrator, costing more than $200, and paid for under Erin Patterson's name, address and phone number.
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Patterson agreed she bought it and used it to dehydrate mushrooms before dumping it at the local tip the day after she was released from hospital because, she claimed, she panicked and feared her children could be taken away from her.
In her police interview, the court heard, she denied ever owning such an appliance, or ever having one in her house.
'Those are lies?' her defence lawyer asked.
'Yes,' Patterson replied.
'I had disposed of it a few days earlier in the context of thinking that maybe mushrooms I foraged or the meal I prepared was responsible for making people sick, and then on the Saturday, Detective Eppingstall told me that Gail and Heather had passed away.'
She denied knowingly picking or dehydrating death cap mushrooms to cook and serve to her lunch guests.
The prosecution case
When asked by Mandy about the prosecution case against her, Patterson denied lying about using Asian grocer mushrooms or pretending to be sick after the lunch.
'I am going to ask you a series of questions now, formal questions, about what the prosecution says is the case against you,' Mandy said. 'Did you lie to people when you said that you'd only cooked one batch of mushrooms for the beef Wellingtons?'
Patterson: 'No, I didn't lie.'
Mandy: 'Were each of the beef Wellingtons on each of the five plates that you served up the same?'
Patterson: 'Yes.'
Mandy: 'Did you lie about purchasing dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in the Oakleigh area in April of 2023?'
Patterson: 'No.'
Mandy: 'Did you lie about using those mushrooms from the Asian grocer in the beef Wellingtons?'
Patterson: 'No, I didn't.'
Mandy: 'Did you pretend to be sick following the lunch?'
Patterson: 'No, I didn't.'
Mandy: 'Did you intentionally include death cap mushrooms in the beef Wellingtons you prepared on 29 July?'
Patterson: 'No.'
'Eye-roll emojis'
Patterson was questioned about some messages to her online friends in which she appeared to mock her in-laws' faith with 'eye-roll emojis'. Patterson denied that the messages were mocking – she was frustrated that the family's only solution to her and Simon's issues were to pray, she said.
Rogers read out a message Patterson sent to friends on December 6, 2022, about being told by Don that he could not adjudicate in a matter between Erin and Simon because Simon would not share his side of the story.
The message, shown to the jury, concluded with two eye-rolling emojis and the sentence: 'This family, I swear to f-----g God.'
Patterson told the court: 'The eye-roll emojis was in regard to that being the only solution.'
Rogers showed Patterson another message, in which she wrote that Don had called her the previous night to say there could be a solution to her problem if she and Simon got together and prayed, followed by two emojis.
Rogers suggested the emojis were also eye-rolling emojis.
'There's a better eye-rolling emoji than this,' Patterson said.