Erin Patterson trial: What alleged mushroom poisoner told jury over eight days in witness box

News.com.au

16 hours ago

Almost two years after four of her husband's family members fell deathly ill following a lunch she hosted, alleged poisoner Erin Patterson has broken her silence.
For eight days, the 50-year-old sat in the witness box of a regional Victorian courtroom as she answered thousands of questions about her life, her relationships and the events surrounding July 29, 2023.
Her evidence was, at times, intensely personal as the alleged triple-murderer spoke about issues in her marriage, feeling ostracised from her husband's family, lies she told and an eating disorder no one knew about.
And it all played out in front of a jury of her peers, her in-laws and a packed public gallery – some lining up for hours in near-zero temperatures to ensure a seat in the second floor courtroom.
This Thursday, on day 31 of the trial, senior Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC closed off five days of cross-examination with three questions that lie at the heart of the Crown's case.
'I suggest that you deliberately sourced death cap mushrooms in 2023; agree or disagree?' Dr Rogers asked.
'Disagree.'
'I suggest you deliberately included them in the beef Wellingtons you served to Don Patterson, Gail Patterson, Ian Wilkinson and Heather Wilkinson; agree or disagree?'
'Disagree.'
'And you did so intending to kill them; agree or disagree?'
'Disagree.'
Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder with her defence arguing she did not intentionally poison anyone and the case is a tragic accident.
Her estranged husband Simon Patterson's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt, Heather Wilkinson died from death cap mushroom poisoning in the week after eating a beef wellington lunch she hosted.
The fourth guest, Heather's husband Korumburra Baptist Church pastor Ian Wilkinson, recovered and has been a regular face in the Morwell courtroom alongside other members of the Wilkinson and Patterson families.
On the stand, Ms Patterson denied wanting to harm any of her four guests and said the July 29 lunch was spurred by a desire to close some distance she had felt in recent months.
She told the jury after her separation from Simon in 2015, Don and Gail had remained central figures in her life, particularly after the deaths of her own parents.
But she felt Simon had a hand in ostracising her from his family and had decided to be more proactive 'so I didn't lose that connection'.
She said Simon and her had struggled to communicate over the entirety of their relationship but remained close after their split until a child support dispute in late 2022 created tension.
'We didn't relate on friend things, banter, like we used to. That changed at the start of the year,' she said.
Ms Patterson told the jury she chose to make beef wellington for the lunch because it was a dish her mother would make for special occasions, modifying Nagi Maehashi's recipe from a log to individual portions because she could only find eye-fillet steaks.
She said she primarily used button mushrooms from Woolworths to make the duxelles, or mushroom paste, but added dried mushrooms from her pantry because the dish 'seemed a little bland'.
She gave evidence the dried mushrooms were purchased from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's east in about April the same year and had a 'pungent smell'.
'I thought it was the perfect dish for them,' the accused woman said.
Ms Patterson said she made six beef wellingtons, serving five to herself and her guests, and serving the last one to her children for dinner the following night with the pastry and mushrooms scrapped off.
She said in the aftermath of the lunch she believed she only used mushrooms from the two sources but now accepts she 'may' have added dehydrated wild mushrooms to the Tupperware container in her pantry.
The jury heard Ms Patterson bought a dehydrator on April 28, 2023.
She told the court she bought the Sunbeam device so she could preserve foods including wild mushrooms and denied a suggestion by prosecutors that the purchase was made two hours after picking death cap mushrooms in the nearby town of Loch.
She further disputed Dr Roger's suggestion that a photo located in the Google Photos cache data on a Samsung tablet depicts death caps on a dehydrator tray with the last modified date of May 4.
In her recorded interview with police a week after the lunch, Ms Patterson said she'd never foraged for mushrooms.
On the stand however, she admitted this was a lie, telling the jury she developed an interest in wild mushrooms during the early 2020 Covid lockdowns.
Over a period of months she said she grew confident in identifying field and horse mushrooms in the paddocks on her property, before 'eventually' eating them.
'I cut a bit off one of the mushrooms, fried it up with some butter, ate it, and then saw what happened,' she said.
'They tasted good and I didn't get sick.'
Ms Patterson said over the following years she would go foraging in nearby areas and cook the wild mushrooms into meals for her and her children.
But she said she'd never foraged at two locations, Loch and Outtrim, where prosecutors allege phone records indicate a possible visit after death cap sightings were posted on iNaturalist.
In cross-examination, she refuted a suggestion by Dr Rogers that her interest in mushrooms was invented 'to try and explain why you put foraged death cap mushrooms in the meal'.
In her evidence, the accused woman disputed several aspects of lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson's account to the jury of the event.
He described the four lunch guests eating off large grey plates while Ms Patterson ate off a smaller 'orangey-tan' plate and her sharing an ovarian cancer diagnosis and asking for advice on how to tell the children.
Ms Patterson said she did not own grey plates, nor an orangey-tan one or even four plates of a set.
The jury was shown images taken from the police walk-through on August 5 which show two white plates, two black plates, a black and red plate and a multi-coloured plate.
Ms Patterson confirmed these were the only plates she owned.
She also disputed that she told the guests she had cancer, claiming she said she might have some 'upcoming treatment' after telling Don and Gail she was receiving testing on a lump on her elbow earlier that year.
Ms Patterson admitted she lied to Don and Gail about undergoing a needle biopsy and MRI but said she was planning on using the lump, which has resolved itself, as cover for weight-loss surgery.
'I'd been fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my adult life, and the further inroads I made into being middle aged, the less I felt good about myself, I suppose,' she said.
'I was ashamed of the fact that I didn't have control over my body or what I ate … I shouldn't have lied to them.'
Ms Patterson told the court she'd never had a 'healthy relationship' with food and had been bingeing and purging since her 20s – something she hid from everyone around her.
'In some intense periods it could have been daily, then it could be weekly or monthly,' she said.
She said at the lunch she only ate a portion of her beef wellington but after her guests left, she cleaned up and binged on an orange cake Gail had brought.
'I had a piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another,' she said, her voice faltering.
The alleged poisoner said she felt sick and 'brought it back up' some time that afternoon, but would not be drawn on if she vomited the beef wellington.
'I couldn't be sure what was in my vomit,' she said.
Ms Patterson disputed a suggestion by Dr Rogers that her account of vomiting was a lie to account for why she didn't fall seriously ill like her guests.
'I wish that was true, but it's not,' she said.
Ms Patterson said she had a pre-assessment scheduled for gastric bypass surgery at the ENRICH Clinic in Melbourne two months after the lunch but cancelled it in the fallout.
In a last-minute statement produced by prosecutors on June 11, ENRICH Clinic testified they'd never offered gastric bypass surgery.
Ms Patterson refused to concede she lied, saying that was her memory but perhaps it was another weight loss procedure, such as liposuction.
Her barrister Colin Mandy SC later produced a screenshot of the ENRICH Clinic's website, which contained a post saying they stopped offering liposuction in June 2024.
After Ms Patterson's evidence concluded on Thursday, jurors were told by Justice Christopher Beale that marked the 'completion of the evidence in this case'.
The trial is expected to resume on Monday as prosecutors deliver their closing address before the defence follows suit.
The trial continues.