Erin Patterson disputes testimony of witnesses and family in mushroom murder trial
By
Joseph Dunstan
and
Judd Boaz
, ABC
Erin Patterson.
Photo:
AFP / PAUL TYQUIN
Accused death cap mushroom killer Erin Patterson has
disputed the testimony
of several witnesses in her murder trial, including that of lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson and her own son.
The accused triple murderer has given evidence for a sixth day in the Supreme Court trial in the Victorian town of Morwell.
She has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder after three relatives - her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson - died from death cap mushroom poisoning following a lunch at her house on July 29, 2023.
Another relative, Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, fell seriously ill but survived.
Tensions appeared to flare at times between the accused and crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC during cross examination on Tuesday morning.
During one line of cross-examination about her online activity, Patterson attempted to direct the questioning, which was firmly shut down by the crown.
"I'm the person who asks the questions. If there's something that needs to be clarified in re-examination then your barrister will do so," Dr Rogers responded.
"No problem," Patterson said.
At several times over the course of Tuesday morning, Patterson disputed evidence given by other witnesses during the trial, including her estranged husband Simon Patterson and the medical professionals who treated her after the lunch.
In his testimony, lunch guest Ian Wilkinson told the court that Patterson had served herself on a different-coloured plate to the other guests.
The prosecution put to Patterson that she had done this as an "extra precaution" against accidentally consuming one of the deliberately poisoned beef Wellingtons she had fed her guests - an accusation Patterson denied.
Previously, Wilkinson told the jury the four guests had eaten from grey plates, while their host ate from an orange-coloured one.
"Do you say that Ian Wilkinson has given incorrect evidence around the issue of the plates?" Dr Rogers asked.
"Yes, I do," Patterson replied.
A police interview with Patterson's son, where he told authorities about his mother's behaviour the day after the lunch, was also raised by the prosecution.
Patterson told the jury she had a different recollection of the events, denying that she was drinking coffee the morning after the lunch.
The accused killer also disputed some of the testimony of medical staff including doctor Chris Webster and nurse Kylie Ashton, who treated her at Leongatha Hospital after the lunch.
Conversations alleged to have happened in the hospital between herself and medical staff regarding her children and the origin of the mushrooms were dismissed by Patterson, who said they did not occur in the way described by other witnesses.
Ian Wilkinson (left) was the only guest to survive the lunch. His wife Heather Wilkinson, and Don and Gail Patterson all died from suspected mushroom poisoning.
Photo:
ABC / Supplied
On Friday, Patterson told the court she had booked an appointment at ENRICH cosmetic clinic in Melbourne in early September 2023.
The jury heard Patterson say she had planned to undergo gastric-bypass surgery, and that she had used a fabricated cancer diagnosis as a cover for the treatment.
This claim was questioned by the prosecution on Tuesday morning, with Dr Rogers saying the surgery was not offered by the clinic at all.
"The ENRICH clinic does not offer gastric-bypass surgery or gastric-sleeve surgery. Agree or disagree?" Dr Rogers asked.
"I don't know," Patterson said, saying she was "puzzled" as she recalled having an appointment.
"It would have been related to weight-loss surgery, perhaps it was a different procedure I was doing with them... I was looking into liposuction as well."
Dr Rogers put it to Patterson that she had lied to the court when she had said she had an appointment at the clinic for gastric-band surgery.
"No, it wasn't a lie, that's what my memory was," Patterson said.
The prosecution also questioned Patterson about possible visits made to the iNaturalist website, where observations of
death cap mushrooms
had been posted by other users.
The court was previously shown evidence from police digital forensic experts that a computer in Erin Patterson's home had accessed the website on May 28, 2022.
But Patterson told the jury that she had no memory of ever visiting the site.
"I suggest you were familiar with the iNaturalist website before this date, because you entered iNaturalist as the specific search term. Agree or disagree?" Dr Rogers asked.
"I would have to disagree," Patterson said.
"Did you have an interest in death cap mushrooms on 28 May, 2022?" Dr Rogers asked.
"I have no idea. My only interest ever was to find out if they [were] in South Gippsland or not," Patterson said.
When asked if it was her who navigated the page that day, Patterson replied: "Well somebody did. And that somebody could've been me."
Minutes after the May 28, 2022 visit to the iNaturalist website, computer records also showed a visit to the Korumburra Middle Pub's website to buy a meal online.
When asked if it was instead one of her children using the computer, Patterson did not provide an answer.
"I'm not suggesting anything … I don't remember if it's me," she told the court.
The trial continues.
- ABC
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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. 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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. 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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. 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By Joseph Dunstan and Judd Boaz, ABC Erin Patterson has completed giving testimony in her murder trial in Morwell. Photo: ABC News Accused triple-murderer Erin Patterson has rejected a prosecution claim she carried out factory resets in a bid to deceive police about her mobile phones, as she came to the end of eight days in the witness box in her Supreme Court trial. Patterson has been charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder after three relatives - her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson - died from death cap mushroom poisoning following a lunch at her house on 29 July, 2023. A fourth lunch guest, Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, became gravely ill after the meal but survived. At the close of the prosecution's cross-examination, Patterson reiterated her innocence of all four charges. 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The records indicated the phone was in regular use up until sometime between 12:01pm and 1:45pm, when the SIM card in Phone A lost connection with the network. At that time, police were conducting a search of Patterson's Leongatha home. Rogers put to Patterson that she removed the SIM card from Phone A when she was "afforded privacy to speak with a lawyer while police were at your home". Patterson disagreed and said her calls to a lawyer occurred at 2pm, after the alleged loss of connection. Patterson also rejected a claim from prosecutors that the reason she had conducted three factory resets on Phone B was so she could deceive police and "pass [it] off" as her regular phone. When police executed a search warrant on Patterson's home on 5 August, a week after the deadly lunch, it was Phone B that she gave to police. The prosecution suggested she did so as she knew there was no data on the phone to potentially incriminate her, which Patterson denied. 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Throughout several days of cross-examination, Patterson's voice largely remained level as she answered prosecutors' questions. But during re-examination by her barrister, Colin Mandy SC, her voice became choked when asked about the need for her to pack her daughter's bag for a ballet rehearsal on the Monday after the lunch. The prosecution asserted this was in fact never required, but Patterson reaffirmed under re-examination that it was. Patterson's voice again cracked when discussing her son's flying lesson, explaining she did not cancel it following the lunch as he was "really passionate" about flying and "I just didn't want to disappoint him". The defence also asked about contradictions that arose during Patterson's cross-examination, such as her claim she had had an appointment in September 2023 to explore gastric-bypass surgery at a Melbourne clinic that did not in fact offer it. Patterson told the court that in 2023, she had believed the clinic offered gastric-band surgery, but on Thursday said she was "obviously mistaken". She told the court she had also intended to explore liposuction options. Mandy then asked Patterson about the sixth beef Wellington she cooked, which the prosecution has alleged was prepared in case her estranged husband attended the lunch and she could poison him as well. Patterson told the court she simply had an extra steak because of the way the eye fillets she bought were packaged. "I had five twin packs, I put two of the twin packs in the freezer and just decided to use the other six, I had enough ingredients ... so I did that," she said. The trial continues. - ABC
