After weeks of silence, Erin Patterson begins to tell her side of the story to deadly mushroom lunch trial

The Guardian

2 days ago

Erin Patterson had been in the witness box for 142 minutes, a window to her right showing the rain falling outside in regional Victoria, when her barrister Colin Mandy SC said: 'I'm going to ask you some questions now about mushrooms'.
Patterson had already spoken to the court about her children and her family, her hefty inheritances, her relationship with her estranged husband, Simon, and their slow and gradual decoupling, in her evidence on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
But this was the closest the triple-murder accused had come to being asked directly about the fateful lunch of beef wellingtons in July 2023.
From the first days of her trial, it had become clear the key issue was whether Patterson meant to put death cap mushrooms in the lunch she served to her husband's relatives (including her parents-in-law), and whether she meant to kill or cause serious harm to them.
Now Patterson was being asked about whether she liked to eat mushrooms more generally, and whether she had ever picked, eaten and cooked wild varieties of the popular ingredient.
Yes, she told the court, to all of the above. Once, she revealed, she had found some growing outside at the property she lived at in Korumburra before moving to the house, in the nearby town Leongatha, where the fateful lunch took place.
She said she had fried up what she was confident were field and horse mushrooms with butter, ate them, and, when she discovered they were safe, used them in other meals.
That included in food fed to her two children, Patterson told the court.
Erin Patterson hosts lunch for estranged husband Simon's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt and uncle Heather and Ian Wilkinson. Patterson serves beef wellington.
All four lunch guests are admitted to hospital with gastro-like symptoms.
Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson die in hospital.
Don Patterson dies in hospital. Victoria police search Erin Patterson's home and interview her.
Ian Wilkinson is discharged from hospital after weeks in intensive care.
Police again search Erin Patterson's home, and she is arrested and interviewed. She is charged with three counts of murder relating to the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson.
Jury is sworn in.
Murder trial begins. Jury hears that charges of attempting to murder her estranged husband Simon are dropped.
Mandy's focus narrowed when he asked where the mushrooms in the beef wellington meal had come from.
'The vast majority came from the local Woolworths in Leongatha. There were some from the grocer in Melbourne,' she replied.
She accepted, however, that the meal had contained death cap mushrooms.
'Do you accept there must have been death cap mushrooms in there?' Mandy asked Patterson.
'Yes, I do,' she replied.
Throughout her answers, Patterson sat in an office chair faced towards Mandy, with Justice Christopher Beale to her left and the jury directly in front of her.
The court room was filled with almost a dozen members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families, homicide squad detectives including the officer in charge of the investigation, Stephen Eppingstall, and about 20 members of the public.
Behind those public seats was the now-empty dock where, until this week, Patterson had sat quietly observing former friends, family and experts testifying in her trial.
Earlier, Mandy had taken his client to expletive-laden messages she had sent in a Facebook group chat in December 2022 expressing frustrations about her in-laws – Don and Gail Patterson, who are now deceased – about a dispute with her estranged husband, Simon.
In the messages, previously shown to the jury, the Facebook user 'Erin ErinErin' wrote she was 'sick of this shit' and 'fuck em' about Don and Gail.
'Why did you write that?' Mandy asked.
Patterson released a slow exhale and sniffed before she answered.
'I needed to vent,' Patterson told the jury.
'The choice was either go into the paddock and tell the sheep or vent to these women.'
The group chat – which Patterson said had been running for four years by late 2022 – was a space to discuss food the women were cooking, as well as their children's lives and current affairs.
Asked if she meant the words, Patterson replied 'no' as she dabbed her eyes repeatedly with a tissue.
Of the message she sent which said 'this family I swear to fucking god', a visibly emotional Patterson said she wished she had never said it.
'I feel ashamed for saying it, and I wish the family didn't have to hear that I said that.
'They didn't deserve it.'
For five weeks, Patterson's voice in her triple murder trial has been confined to conversations recalled by other witnesses, pages of online messages and texts, and a 21-minute formal police interview played to the jury.
Dressed in a navy blue shirt with white polka dots, her reading glasses within easy reach to her right, Patterson started to tell her side of the story.
The jury who will decide her fate watched and listened.
Her evidence will continue on Wednesday.