Erin Patterson on her in-laws, her estranged husband, low self-esteem and a spiritual encounter
She said at the time, she was also preparing to return to study in 2024 after being accepted into a bachelor of nursing and midwifery at Federation University, which she had previously deferred to care for her children.
The accused was also asked about her Leongatha home, telling the jury she'd helped design it using Microsoft Paint and wanted it to be her forever home.
'Where once they moved away for uni or work, they could come back and stay wherever they liked, bring their children and I'd grow old there. That's what I'd hoped,' she told the jury.
'I really liked living there. I was comfortable financially, such that I could afford to go to university and I didn't need to work a full-time job at the same time.'
A softly spoken Patterson, seated in the witness box, explained that in the early days of her relationship with Simon Patterson they had lived together in Perth.
There, she said, Don and Gail Patterson visited several times a year, even helping plan part of her wedding to their son by arranging a large marquee and food.
But in early 2023, she said she felt things began to change.
'Partly as a consequence that I no longer lived in the same town as Don and Gail,' she said.
Patterson said her relationship with Simon Patterson – after separating in 2015 – had grown to be only functional and they no longer related to 'friend things' like they used to.
The accused said by 2023, she was also not feeling good about herself physically and had been fighting a never-ending battle with low self-esteem, putting on weight, and was unable to exercise as much as previously.
'I was planning to have weight-loss surgery, you know, is it gastric bypass? I was planning to do that,' she said.
Mandy took Erin Patterson back to the beginning of her romantic relationship with Simon Patterson which she said began in mid-2005 before they married in June 2007.
She said it was while they were dating in early 2005 she first met Don and Gail Patterson while staying at their house during a weekend away.
The accused said at the time she knew her partner was Christian, but she described herself as a 'fundamentalist atheist'. That all changed though, she said, during her first-ever visit to church where Ian Wilkinson was giving a sermon at Korumburra Baptist Church.
'So through the course of those months, December '04, January, February '05 we had a lot of conversations about life, religion, politics and a lot about religion, and I was trying to convert him to being an atheist, but things happened in reverse and I became a Christian,' she said.
'I remember being really excited about [going to her first church service] because I'd never been to a church service before, I'd been to my sister's wedding in a church but that was it.
'I remember that there was a banner up on the wall, behind where Ian was preaching … it said ... faith, hope and love.
'There's a passage in the Bible that talks about faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.
'I had, what at best can be described as, like a spiritual experience.'
Patterson said she went on to attend Bible study sessions with Simon Patterson and some of his family and friends before the couple got married in June 2007.
'We got married in the Korumburra Anglican Church. A beautiful church. We wanted Ian and Heather to be able to come and relax as guests rather than have jobs for the day like they would have if we'd got married at Korumburra Baptist,' she said.
The accused said her husband's cousin walked her down the aisle as her parents were 'in Russia on a train' at the time.
'Don and Gail hired a huge marquee and put on a buffet for everybody,' she told the jury.
Trying to hold back tears, Erin Patterson detailed the help Gail Patterson had been to her after the 'traumatic' birth of her first baby.
'Don and Gail came very quickly. It would have been only a couple weeks after,' she said.
'I remember being really relieved that Gail was there because I felt really out of my depth.'
Erin said Gail was really supportive, gentle and patient with her, giving advice about helping settle the baby and trying to interpret his cries.
'She gave me good advice about just relax and enjoy it, you don't have to stick to this timetable, this schedule, just relax and enjoy your baby.'
In late 2009, Erin and Simon Patterson took their three-month-old son on a trip across the top of Australia, but she said travelling with a baby was difficult and she eventually returned to Perth where the couple separated for the first time.
The jury was told after reuniting two or three months later, the pair endured further separations during their relationship until 2015 when they split permanently.
She said there didn't appear to be any conflict in their parenting of the children.
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News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
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. 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.
West Australian
a day ago
- West Australian
Erin Patterson live trial updates: Alleged mushroom killer denies picking death cap mushrooms for fatal lunch
Scroll down for the latest updates from Erin Patterson's triple murder trial. Simon Patterson previously gave evidence claiming that the accused invited Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson to lunch to discuss 'important medical news' and that she wanted advice on how to break it to the children. He has also given evidence claiming the accused wanted the children not to attend the lunch. Ms Patterson disputed that evidence, claiming she just invited everyone to lunch and has not asked guests to come to discuss 'medical news'. She accepted that she had invited Don, Gail, Heather and Ian before Simon. Ms Patterson 'disagreed' that she told the wider family before her ex-partner so that he would feel more inclined to come. Erin Patterson took to Facebook to 'vent' to her friends about her 'frustration' over Don and Gail Patterson. Her messages were read to the court, where she said she wanted 'nothing to do with' the Patterson family due to their lack of involvement in mediation. 'Nobody listens to me. At least I know they're a lost cause,' Ms Patterson wrote. 'So, f..k em',' the message continued. 'I wrote that. I was venting. I was frustrated,' Ms Patterson said, explaining her comments. Ms Patterson denied that she was telling her friends about her true feelings, claiming she was not angry, just 'frustrated'. Ms Patterson accepted that she also wrote a message ahead of lunch, where she called Simon Patterson a 'deadbeat'. 'Her (Gail) son is such a deadbeat.' Ms Patterson admitted to sending a message to her Facebook friends, where she vented about a 'dispute' over child support and school fees. 'Simon wants to walk away from his responsibilities,' she said. She went on to say that it might be a good thing as Ms Patterson could now put her children in whatever school she wanted. She added that if her ex-partner wanted the kids to attend a Christian school, he could pay half. 'A blessing in disguise,' she told her friends. Ms Patterson says she told her partner about changing which school her child attended, something the Crown disputes. Erin Patterson was asked to read a message she sent in a group chat that Don and Gail Patterson were in. In her message, she said: 'Simon needs accountability for the difficulty he is causing me.' The message continued, with Ms Patterson mentioning school fees and how much her ex-partner was paying. Ms Patterson denied she was trying to get Don and Gail to influence Simon's contribution to school fees but accepted that Don made clear he wasn't going to get involved. 'I wasn't angry,' Ms Patterson said. Erin Patterson, 50, stands accused of murdering her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, as well as the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson by serving them beef Wellington containing poisonous mushrooms at a lunch at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023. Alleged mushroom killer Erin Patterson is under intense cross examination at her triple murder trial, spilling confessions on the lies she told police and health authorities about mushrooms. She is returning to the witness box now.
The Advertiser
2 days ago
- The Advertiser
'She's great': more charges mulled against taboo author
A Christian charity marketing executive accused of producing child abuse material could be hit with more criminal charges as her erotic novel is scanned line by line. Lauren Tesolin-Mastrosa, 33, came to the attention of police and the courts after writing the book Daddy's Little Toy under her pen name Tori Woods. The Sydney woman issued a pre-release of the novel to about 20 advanced readers in March. The following month, Tesolin-Mastrosa pleaded not guilty to possessing, disseminating, and producing child abuse material. Her lawyer Mickaela Mate argued at the time that the book was "a fantasy within a fiction" and that there were no victims. Ms Mate returned to Blacktown Local Court on Thursday, when prosecutors said further charges over the novel were being considered. NSW Police had prepared a 10-page synopsis summarising the novel, the court was told. The DPP was endeavouring to get hold of the actual book in order to assess its contents, solicitor Milijana Masanovic said. 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A Christian charity marketing executive accused of producing child abuse material could be hit with more criminal charges as her erotic novel is scanned line by line. Lauren Tesolin-Mastrosa, 33, came to the attention of police and the courts after writing the book Daddy's Little Toy under her pen name Tori Woods. The Sydney woman issued a pre-release of the novel to about 20 advanced readers in March. The following month, Tesolin-Mastrosa pleaded not guilty to possessing, disseminating, and producing child abuse material. Her lawyer Mickaela Mate argued at the time that the book was "a fantasy within a fiction" and that there were no victims. Ms Mate returned to Blacktown Local Court on Thursday, when prosecutors said further charges over the novel were being considered. NSW Police had prepared a 10-page synopsis summarising the novel, the court was told. The DPP was endeavouring to get hold of the actual book in order to assess its contents, solicitor Milijana Masanovic said. Prosecutors were looking into the appropriateness of the charges already laid and whether any more should be brought, she said. Tesolin-Mastrosa's police interview, police statements and digital records of her two mobile phones still had yet to be compiled in the full brief of evidence, the court was told. She will next appear in court on July 31. Ms Mate successfully applied to vary her client's bail conditions on Thursday. The Quakers Hill woman will now only have to report to police once weekly instead of three times. Magistrate Bree Chisholm found Tesolin-Mastrosa had no risk of flight or not appearing in court as she had no criminal record and had strong community ties. Outside court, Ms Mate said her client was doing well. "She's great," she said before getting into her waiting car. In April, Ms Mate said the allegedly offensive content was between fictional characters who were two consenting adults. "(It) is a fantasy within a fiction and hence there are no victims." 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Prosecutors were looking into the appropriateness of the charges already laid and whether any more should be brought, she said. Tesolin-Mastrosa's police interview, police statements and digital records of her two mobile phones still had yet to be compiled in the full brief of evidence, the court was told. She will next appear in court on July 31. Ms Mate successfully applied to vary her client's bail conditions on Thursday. The Quakers Hill woman will now only have to report to police once weekly instead of three times. Magistrate Bree Chisholm found Tesolin-Mastrosa had no risk of flight or not appearing in court as she had no criminal record and had strong community ties. Outside court, Ms Mate said her client was doing well. "She's great," she said before getting into her waiting car. In April, Ms Mate said the allegedly offensive content was between fictional characters who were two consenting adults. "(It) is a fantasy within a fiction and hence there are no victims." A Christian charity marketing executive accused of producing child abuse material could be hit with more criminal charges as her erotic novel is scanned line by line. Lauren Tesolin-Mastrosa, 33, came to the attention of police and the courts after writing the book Daddy's Little Toy under her pen name Tori Woods. The Sydney woman issued a pre-release of the novel to about 20 advanced readers in March. The following month, Tesolin-Mastrosa pleaded not guilty to possessing, disseminating, and producing child abuse material. Her lawyer Mickaela Mate argued at the time that the book was "a fantasy within a fiction" and that there were no victims. Ms Mate returned to Blacktown Local Court on Thursday, when prosecutors said further charges over the novel were being considered. NSW Police had prepared a 10-page synopsis summarising the novel, the court was told. The DPP was endeavouring to get hold of the actual book in order to assess its contents, solicitor Milijana Masanovic said. 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