Erin Patterson murder trial hears 'sinister deception' turned lunch into murder

Australia Broadcast Center

7 hours ago

Prosecutors have told Erin Patterson's triple-murder trial jury the mother of two carried out a "sinister deception" on her in-laws by using a "nourishing meal" as the vehicle for lethal doses of death cap mushrooms.
Ms Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder over a beef Wellington lunch served to four relatives at her regional Victorian home in 2023.
As the trial entered its eighth week on Monday, lead prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC began delivering her closing address to the jury.
The trial of Erin Patterson, who stands accused of using a poisoned meal to murder three relatives, continues.
Look back at how Monday's hearing unfolded in our live blog.
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Dr Rogers told the jury the prosecution alleged Ms Patterson had engaged in four substantial acts of deception while carrying out her crimes.
The prosecutor said the first of these was her fabricated cancer claim to the lunch guests, who the court heard were told she had been diagnosed with cancer — although Ms Patterson told the court she had believed she had only implied she may need ovarian cancer treatment in the future.
"The accused planted the seed of this lie far in advance," Dr Rogers said, referring to evidence that Ms Patterson had told her parents-in-law about tests on her elbow in the lead-up to the lunch.
The prosecutor told the jury Ms Patterson was "setting up a fiction" that she was facing a cancer diagnosis, which was made more convincing by her having "put in research" on the conditions about which she told her guests she was concerned.
"Why on earth would she tell such a lie?" Dr Rogers rhetorically asked the jury.
She told the jury that they could discount Ms Patterson's evidence that she had organised the lunch to thank her relatives and show them her garden.
She also told the jury that the absence of Ms Patterson's children from the lunch was "entirely the accused's plan" to ensure "the children would not be harmed by the poison she was about to serve".
Dr Rogers said the second and most "critical" deception alleged by the prosecution was that Ms Patterson "secreted" the death cap mushrooms into the individual beef Wellingtons.
"The sinister deception was to use a nourishing meal as the vehicle to deliver the deadly poison," Dr Rogers said.
Dr Rogers said the very design of the meal, in which a large beef Wellington log outlined in a cookbook recipe was substituted for individually parcelled beef Wellingtons, was a "deliberate choice" by Ms Patterson.
"It allowed her to give the appearance of sharing in the same meal while ensuring she did not consume … [a beef Wellington] laced with death cap mushrooms," the prosecutor told the jury.
Dr Rogers said while there was "no direct evidence as to where the accused sourced the death cap mushrooms", Ms Patterson was "familiar" with the iNaturalist website and had made previous visits to the site which showed where the toxic fungi were growing.
"The accused did not navigate to other types of mushrooms, she did not meander about the website. She went directly to death cap mushrooms," Dr Rogers said.
Phone data was used to identify to the jury two "potential" visits by Ms Patterson to areas where death cap mushrooms had been identified in Outtrim and Loch.
The prosecutor alleged that after the accused went to Loch to source death cap mushrooms, a photo taken on one of Ms Patterson's devices showed "the very death cap mushrooms she collected ... in the process of being dehydrated".
The jury previously heard evidence of how Ms Patterson would dehydrate mushrooms and blitz them into a powder to "hide" in food for the children, a technique which the prosecutor alleged was used for the fatal lunch.
Dr Rogers also highlighted evidence given by sole surviving lunch guest Ian Wilkinson, who said the guests had eaten off different-coloured plates to their host.
"The accused deliberately served herself on a different plate to the others in order to identify which of the meals was not poisoned and which she would then serve to herself," Dr Rogers alleged.
"The only reason she would do that is because she knew that there were poisonous mushrooms in the other meals, because she put them there, and to ensure that she could identify the sole non-poisonous meal."
Dr Rogers told the jury it was not credible that Ms Patterson had found herself unable to recall the location of the Asian grocer where she had claimed to buy dried mushrooms used in the meal.
The prosecutor said Ms Patterson had displayed a "remarkable memory" during her time in the witness box, where she had recalled dates, evidence and details with ease.
Dr Rogers noted that Ms Patterson had even corrected her during cross-examination about the day of the week that a particular date in 2023 fell on.
The prosecutor said given the evidence of Ms Patterson's strong recall, "it simply beggars belief" that she had been unable to remember the store's location.
Dr Rogers told the jury they should reject the evidence that mushrooms for the meal were bought at an Asian grocer as "a fiction" that Ms Patterson had repeated "over and over again".
The prosecution claimed that Ms Patterson feigned post-lunch illness to medical staff and family in a third major act of deception.
"The only reason she would do something like that — pretend to be suffering from the same illness as the others — is of course, because she knew she had not been poisoned, knew she was not going to exhibit symptoms of poisoning [and how suspicious that would look]," Dr Rogers said.
Dr Rogers detailed evidence given by Ms Patterson of her symptoms following the lunch, which she said was "not consistent" with evidence given by a number of other witnesses throughout the trial.
One of those witnesses was her estranged husband Simon Patterson who said Ms Patterson had told him she was experiencing diarrhoea and had started feeling unwell an hour or so after her lunch guests had left.
The four lunch guests had started showing symptoms around midnight. Dr Rogers said the delayed onset of symptoms was what first alerted medical experts to death cap mushroom poisoning and "therefore [Ms Patterson's] symptoms were inconsistent with her lunch guests' poisoning".
The frequency of Ms Patterson's alleged bowel movements following the lunch was also brought into question and the prosecution said Ms Patterson's evidence that she took imodium to treat diarrhoea was also fabricated.
The prosecutor also told the jury it was "highly unlikely" someone suffering nausea, cramping and recurrent diarrhoea would embark on a two-hour car journey from Leongatha to Tyabb on the day after the lunch.
Dr Rogers told the jury Ms Patterson's actions to discharge herself from hospital without receiving life-saving treatment after her initial presentation was "incriminating conduct" and she did so because "she knew" she had not eaten death cap mushrooms.
"She realised that what she had done was going to be uncovered," Dr Rogers said.
"She fled back to her house to try and work out how she was going to manage the situation and how she might explain why she wasn't as sick like the lunch guests.
"Her reluctance to receive medical treatment is inexplicable unless she knew she had not eaten what her lunch guests had eaten."
On Monday afternoon, Dr Rogers began to outline what prosecutors alleged was the fourth deception in Ms Patterson's crimes: the "cover-up".
The prosecutor alleged as part of this, Ms Patterson had lied about feeding leftovers from the lunch to her children and lied about the origins of the mushrooms in the meal.
Dr Rogers said the accused had also dumped the dehydrator used to dry death cap mushrooms and concealed her usual mobile phone from police as part of the alleged deception.
The trial continues.