What Erin Patterson told mushroom murder trial during week in witness box

RNZ News

a day ago

By
Joseph Dunstan
for ABC
Erin Patterson is accused of killing three relatives by serving them beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms.
Photo:
ABC News: Anita Lester
For eight days, Erin Patterson took a seat in the witness box of a Morwell courtroom in Victoria, Australia.
For hours, she told a Supreme Court murder trial jury she had never planned for the three lunch guests who dined at her table two years ago to suffer an agonising death, due to death cap mushroom poisoning.
Her evidence was, at times, emotional and deeply personal, and all occurred under the gaze of a public gallery, as well as surviving lunch guest Ian Wilkinson and his family.
These are just some of the issues canvassed during Patterson's evidence and cross-examination.
A week after the deadly lunch, Patterson told police she had "never" foraged mushrooms, before serving up beef Wellingtons containing the deadly death cap mushroom to her relatives, but in her evidence to the jury, the 50-year-old said she had lied to police.
Patterson told the court, back during Victoria's Covid-19 lockdowns, she began to experiment with foraging around the Leongatha-Korumburra area, during walks with her children.
She said she had always enjoyed eating mushrooms, because "they taste good and they're very healthy", and later told the court she had eaten a kilo of sliced mushrooms in the days before she hosted her in-laws for lunch.
While her children told police they did not recall their mother ever foraging for mushrooms, Patterson maintained she had done so and her children "definitely saw what I was doing".
She said she bought a food dehydrator in April 2023, because she enjoyed eating wild mushrooms, but they had a "very small season" of availability.
Erin Patterson's relationship to her lunch guests.
Photo:
ABC News
"You can't keep them too long in the fridge, so it was one way of sort of preserving them and having them available later on throughout the year," Patterson told the court.
In cross-examination, lead prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC described Ms Patterson's interest in foraging non-toxic mushrooms as "a story you have made up for this jury".
"It is a lie you have come up with to try and explain why you put foraged death cap mushrooms in the meal you served on 29 July," Dr Rogers suggested.
"No," Patterson responded.
Patterson told the jury she had foraged in several areas between 2020-23, including around her home, the Korumburra Botanic Gardens and a rail trail in the Leongatha area.
She said she had never foraged at Loch or Outtrim, where death cap mushrooms were flagged on the iNaturalist website in the months before the lunch.
These two locations were places where prosecutors alleged she did in fact forage - with murderous intent.
"You drove to Loch from your house at Leongatha to specifically find death cap mushrooms on 28 April," Dr Rogers suggested to the accused.
"Disagree," Patterson responded.
The prosecutor claimed it was on the way back from picking death cap mushrooms at Loch that Patterson bought her dehydrator, with the intention of preparing the death caps for her lethal meal.
While Patterson agreed that she bought the dehydrator on 28 April, she rejected the prosecutor's claim about her purpose, telling the court she used it to dry non-toxic mushrooms and a variety of fruits.
Patterson told the jury the main purpose of the lunch was to help strengthen her relationship with parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, as well as aunty-in-law Heather Wilkinson and her husband, Ian.
Amid some tension in her relationship with estranged husband Simon, Patterson said she wanted to ensure her children could still enjoy a good relationship with their grandparents, but the children were not present at the lunch.
Patterson told the court, when she mentioned the lunch to them, her daughter expressed more interest in seeing a movie with her brother and his friend.
In separate police interviews held weeks after the lunch, Patterson's two children recalled their mother telling them the lunch was for adults only.
Patterson told the court her children were mistaken.
"I mean, I'm sure at one point I probably said to [my daughter], 'We'll talk about boring adult stuff', but I didn't tell her 'You can't be at the lunch, I don't want you to be at the lunch'," Patterson said.
Dr Rogers shared an alternative explanation with Patterson.
The prosecution alleges Erin Patterson foraged for death cap mushrooms intentionally.
Photo:
Supplied/iNaturalist
"The truth is, I suggest, you wanted them out of the way, because you did not want them anywhere near what you were going to serve to your guests, I assume you'll disagree with that?"
"Correct," Patterson said.
Patterson was also questioned at length about the messages sent to lunch invitees in the lead-up to the Saturday meal.
In them, she lied repeatedly to her mother-in-law about medical investigations into a health issue that did not exist. The court heard from the prosecution that Gail Patterson had noted down the date of one of her daughter-in-law's supposed appointments and had texted her to check how it was all going.
Patterson told the court that, during the meal, she led her guests to believe she might need treatment for ovarian cancer, when that was not the case.
She said she was to embarrassed to tell them the truth - that she was planning to have gastric-bypass surgery later that year and wanted to know they would be there to support her.
Under cross-examination, Patterson later conceded that a clinic where she had told the court she was booked in for a gastric-bypass pre-surgery appointment months after the lunch did not in fact offer gastric-bypass surgery at all, telling the court that she did not know this when she made the appointment in 2023.
Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC later highlighted to the jury that the clinic appeared to offer liposuction in 2023 and Patterson told the court that this was also a procedure she had investigated.
Dr Rogers put to Patterson that she used a series of lies to lure her guests to a deadly meal, which she had also hoped estranged husband Simon would attend.
"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… and your lie would never be found out. Correct or incorrect?" Dr Rogers asked Patterson.
"That's not true," Patterson said.
The court heard an array of evidence about what precisely went into the individual beef Wellingtons served up to guests at Patterson's Leongatha home that Saturday.
Patterson's evidence was that she followed the method outlined in a
RecipeTin Eats
cookbook, but had to make a major variation, because she could only find individual eye fillets, rather than the larger cut of meat called for to prepare the traditional beef Wellington log.
She rejected the prosecution's claim that the real reason was so she could include death cap mushrooms in the Wellingtons of her guests, but not her own.
While preparing the mushroom duxelles or paste that coats the meat in the dish, Patterson said a cook-up of store-bought button mushrooms tasted "bland", so she added dried mushrooms from a container.
An emotional Patterson told the court that, at the time, she believed the container only held dried mushrooms bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east, but she now believed foraged mushrooms may have been in there as well.
Patterson told the court, when she opened the grocer-purchased dried mushrooms, they had a "pungent" smell, so she set them aside, but she believed the beef Wellington dish would be the "perfect" use for them.
Erin Patterson has completed giving testimony in her murder trial in Morwell.
Photo:
ABC News
The very existence of this packet of dried mushrooms has also been disputed by the prosecution, who argued it was a "deliberate lie" cooked up on the Monday after the lunch.
On that Monday, Patterson had attended Leongatha Hospital shortly after 8am and was questioned by doctors on the origins of ingredients in the meal.
The doctor who asked her those questions, Chris Webster, previously told the court that, when he asked where the mushrooms in the meal had come from, Patterson simply told him they were from Woolworths.
When she spoke to another doctor after a roughly 90-minute absence from the hospital, Dr Rogers put to her that she "added a detail" to her story, telling that doctor some of the mushrooms had come from an Asian grocer.
"That's what you spent the one hour and 40 minutes doing while you were away from the hospital - thinking about ways to cover your tracks?" Dr Rogers asked.
"You're saying I spent an hour and a half thinking? Is that what you're suggesting?" Patterson said. "I'm sure I did some thinking in that time, but it was not about covering my tracks,"
The prosecution also challenged Patterson on her claim she fed her children leftover meat from the beef Wellington meal for dinner on the Sunday night.
Dr Rogers said, given Patterson had told the court she was a loving mother, the explanation for her initial reluctance to bring her children into hospital was that she knew for sure they had never eaten a bite of the death-cap-contaminated meal.
"You told the lie about feeding leftovers from the beef Wellington to your children, I suggest, because it gave you some distance from a deliberate poisoning?" Dr Rogers asked Patterson.
"I don't see how it could, but I disagree anyway," Patterson replied.
The murder trial heard from several medical witnesses that Patterson did not display the same severity of symptoms of death cap mushroom poisoning as her four lunch guests.
Patterson, who told the court she suffered from binge eating and body-image issues from a young age, recounted that, after her guests had left, she ate two-thirds of an orange cake left behind, and then went to the toilet and made herself vomit.
She also told the court she had eaten somewhere between a quarter and half of her beef Wellington meal.
When asked if she was telling the jury she had vomited up her portion of beef Wellington, Patterson said she could not be sure.
"I have no idea what was in the vomit," she said.
She said, late on Saturday night and into Sunday, she began to experience regular diarrhoea and even had to stop by the roadside to relieve herself during a car trip with her children.
Patterson told the court her son was mistaken when he told police he had seen her drinking coffee in the kitchen on Sunday morning. Instead, she said, it was something like a lemon and ginger tea.
In a conversation with her husband on Monday, Patterson - who was in Leongatha Hospital, being treated for suspected death cap mushroom poisoning - suggested she could make the trip to pick up her children and bring them to hospital.
The court heard Mr Patterson, whose parents were by this stage seriously unwell, responded: "I'm glad that you feel healthy enough to make that drive to pick up the kids."
Dr Rogers suggested to Patterson that she paused before agreeing that Mr Patterson could pick up the children, because she realised that insisting on picking them up would "undermine" her alleged pretence of being unwell.
Patterson said she could not recall whether she paused or not, but recalled her husband's "really sarcastic tone" had put her off a bit. It led to one of several testy exchanges between the lead prosecutor and the accused, as Dr Rogers asked Patterson if she was "making this up as you go along".
"No," Patterson replied.
She later told the prosecutor that it was "incorrect" that she had deliberately tried to make it seem like she was suffering from death cap mushroom poisoning, because she knew it would look suspicious if she was not unwell.
When Dr Rogers suggested she had not, in fact, suffered from death cap mushroom poisoning, Patterson said: "I have no idea."
After Patterson stepped down from the witness box, Justice Christopher Beale told the jurors in her trial that the end of her testimony marked the "completion of the evidence in this case".
In coming days, the jurors will hear from the prosecution and defence, as the two legal teams summarise why the river of evidence that has flowed through Courtroom 4 in the Latrobe Valley law courts should lead them to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty respectively.
After final instructions from the judge, the jurors will then be asked to deliberate on their verdict.
- ABC