Erin Patterson found guilty of murdering 3 with death cap mushrooms

Daily Mail​

12 hours ago

Erin Patterson has been found guilty of murdering her three in-laws with death cap mushrooms in a beef Wellington that she served them for lunch at her home.
The mother-of-two sat defiantly throughout her 10-week trial, glaring at the media, members of the public, and the family of the people she murdered.
Patterson, from Australia, had pleaded not guilty to the murders of Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson.
They died after consuming death caps in the beef Wellingtons during lunch at Patterson's Leongatha home in southeast Victoria on July 29, 2023.
Only Pastor Ian Wilkinson survived her plot - a blunder Patterson would live to regret. She will now serve time after also being found guilty of attempting to murder him.
Seated at the back of courtroom four of the Supreme Court of Victoria, sitting at the Latrobe Valley Magistrates' Court, Patterson, dressed in a paisley shirt, appeared stunned as her fate was sealed on Monday afternoon.
Asked to deliver a verdict, the jury foreperson - one of only five women to sit on the original 15-person panel - simply stated, 'guilty'.
The verdict produced an audible gasp from those within the packed courtroom, which included members of the Patterson clan.
Patterson will now be taken back down to the Morwell Police Station cells where she had been kept throughout the trial.
They are the cells she had grown to loathe throughout her trial, complaining about being denied a pillow, doona [duvet], and her computer.
She can expect to spend the next decades of her life caged within the walls of Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne's west alongside a rogue's gallery of female killers.
On her weekly trips back there, Patterson had come to loathe the Chicken Cacciatore meals provided to her en route because the dish 'had mushrooms in it'.
Once caged, she can expect to be kept in an isolation cell for her own protection for the foreseeable future due to her high profile and the frailty of her elderly victims.
It can now be revealed Patterson's two children had continued to see their mother behind bars while she awaited trial, unwilling to accept she could murder their grandparents and aunt.
Patterson could be heard asking about them during breaks in the trial, asking a woman to ensure her now 16-year-old son was given 'extra hugs'.
The arrogant killer had been so cocky she would walk free that she had workers erect black plastic around her Leongatha home to shield her from the media on her expected return.
Her estranged husband Simon Patterson is expected to address the media. The civil engineer had been warned mid-trial by Justice Christopher Beale to hold off engaging with reporters until the verdict had been delivered.
The prosecution had dumped three attempted murder charges against his wife related to him.
He too had been invited to the deadly lunch, but pulled out the night before.
While no motive was ever provided to the jury, it was presented with a clear picture of animosity between the estranged couple leading up to the lunch.
Simon claimed that while they remained friendly during separation, things changed when he made the decision to change his relationship status on his tax return.
He had been dropping the kids at Patterson's Leongatha home when she allegedly came out and asked to have a chat.
The jury heard Patterson jumped in the passenger side of Simon's car.
Confidence: Patterson was so confident she would be going home she had workers prepare black plastic around her home to shield her from waiting media
'She discovered that my tax return for the previous year for the first time noted we were separated,' Simon told the court.
Patterson told him the move would impact the family tax benefit the couple had previously enjoyed and she was obliged to now claim child support.
'She was upset about it,' Simon said.
Patterson also wanted child support and the school fees paid.
The court heard Patterson changed the children's school without consulting Simon.
His own son would later tell the jury his dad went out of his way to hurt his mother.
Patterson had banked on the jury believing it was possible she had picked the death cap mushrooms used to kill her in-laws by mistake.
Estranged ex: Simon Patterson would not concede he immediately suggested to Erin Patterson that she had used a dehydrator to poison his parents
Throughout the trial her barrister Colin Mandy, SC, had tried to sow the seeds of doubt in the jury's minds.
He did so with tactical questions aimed at trying to obtain admissions to his suggestions from key witnesses.
It was a tactic that failed time and time again, leaving the jury with no doubt Patterson had deliberately picked the death cap mushrooms she used to murder her lunch guests.
Lone survivor Mr Wilkinson was the second witness to front the jury after Simon Patterson.
Seated in the witness box, Mr Wilkinson provided powerful and compelling evidence about not only how Patterson lured his family to lunch, but also how she went about killing them.
Mr Wilkinson claimed Patterson told lunch guests she had undertaken a diagnostic test that showed a spot on the scan that was a tumor.
Patterson told the court she had never mentioned anything to her in-laws about a medical issue to entice them to accept her lunch invite.
Mr Wilkinson was challenged repeatedly on his evidence by Mr Mandy but never wavered from his original version of events.
Mr Mandy suggested Mr Wilkinson's claim that the four plates used to serve beef Wellington to Patterson's lunch guests were all gray, and all the same, was not correct.
He further suggested there was 'no smaller plate', but Mr Wilkinson disagreed.
'It (the beef Wellington) was very much like a pastie, it was a pastry case and inside was steak and mushrooms, there was gravy available on the table,' Mr Wilkinson said.
'I could see them (the plates) between Heather and Gail, there were four large grey plates, one smaller plate - a different colour, an orangy-tan colour.
'Gail picked up two of the grey plates and took them to the table, Heather picked up two of the grey plates and took them to the table, Erin picked up the odd plate and put it at her place at the table.'
Mr Mandy's attempts to trip Patterson's husband up during his evidence also fell flat.
Patterson had blamed Simon for the atrocious lies she told her loved ones, police, health authorities and the media after her lunch guests became seriously ill.
In the last days of the trial, the jury watched Patterson tell some of those lies to Homicide Squad Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall during her record of interview.
It had been Senior Constable Eppinstall who spearheaded the investigation into Patterson, leaving no stone unturned in his quest to provide justice to the families of those who lost their loved ones.
During that interview, Patterson repeatedly denied owning the dehydrator she used to milk the maximum potential out of the death cap mushrooms she would later serve for lunch.
'I've got manuals of lots of stuff I've collected over the years,' Patterson told the detective on August 5, 2023, following a search of her home which located the dehydrator manual.
'I just keep them all.' Patterson also denied ever foraging for mushrooms. 'Never,' she insisted.
Patterson had claimed she had bought the dried mushrooms used in her beef Wellington from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east.
In a heavily edited recording, Patterson was seen highlighting the level of assistance she had provided to health authorities to find that non-existent grocer.
'I'm sure you understand too that I've never been in a situation like this before, and I've been very, very helpful with the health department through the week, because I wanted to help that side of things as much as possible, because I do want to know what happened,' she said.
'I've given them as much information as they've asked for, and offered up all the food and all the information about where the food came from the house.'
In a statement conveniently leaked to select media organisations after the lunch, Patterson admitted she lied to investigators when she told them she had dumped the dehydrator used to dry the death caps at the tip 'a long time ago'.
Patterson claimed then she had been at the hospital with her children 'discussing the food dehydrator' when her husband asked: 'Is that what you used to poison them?'
Worried that she might lose custody of the couple's children, Patterson said she then panicked and dumped the dehydrator at the tip.
Six days after the meal, the dehydrator was found by police at a local tip.
Patterson had decided not to dispose of the dehydrator in the bush, but at the tip using EFTPOS in her own name to pay for it.
Simon's supposed quip about the dehydrator was put to him by Mr Mandy at trial.
It had been an integral element of Patterson's defence when he opened the trial more than a month ago.
But Simon denied making the comment that Patterson claimed sparked her web of lies.
'I did not say that to Erin,' Simon said.
The jury then heard from a swag of medical experts, who Patterson hoped would help convince the jury that she too had become sick from eating the lunch.
Mr Mandy told the jury Patterson had not pretended to be sick after the lunch.
'The defence case is that she was not feigning illness, she wasn't pretending to be sick. The defence case is that she was sick too, just not as sick,' Mr Mandy said.
'And the defence case is that she was unwell because she'd eaten some of the meal.'
While intensive care specialist Professor Andrew Bersten said he was convinced Patterson had indeed suffered a 'diarrhoea illness', the jury felt her overall claims didn't stack up.
The jury heard Prof Bersten had come to his conclusions based on medical records alone and had never actually treated Patterson after the lunch.
Nurse Cindy Munro, who was working at Leongatha hospital when Patterson turned up the Monday after the lunch, said Patterson 'didn't look unwell' compared with two of her seriously ill lunch guests.
'She didn't look unwell like Heather and Ian,' Ms Munro said.
'Ian looked so unwell he could barely lift his head. She didn't look unwell to me.'
Doctor Laura Muldoon, part of the toxicology department at Monash Medical Centre, also told the jury Patterson's claims didn't stack up.
'I noted she looked clinically well, she had some chapped lips but otherwise very well. She had normal vital signs,' Dr Muldoon said.
She told the jury there was no evidence Patterson had encountered death cap mushroom poisoning or consumed any other toxins.
Another doctor, Varuna Ruggoo, said Patterson's liver function tests returned normal results.
Even Patterson's own children could not persuade the jury she had been sick following the lunch.
Patterson's then nine-year-old daughter told police her mother had a sore tummy and diarrhoea the day after the lunch.
She also claimed that she had seen her go to the toilet about 10 times.
Her older brother, then aged 14, also told police his mother claimed to be sick.
He told police Patterson had complained of feeling 'a bit sick and had diarrhoea'.
'She was playing it down,' he said.
Despite feeling unwell, the teenager said Patterson insisted on driving him about 90km to attend a flying school lesson in Tyabb.
When the lesson was cancelled due to poor weather, she was forced to turn straight back around and drive all the way home.
As the trial entered its final stages, Patterson's legal team worked hard to convince the jury Patterson could have accidentally picked the death cap mushrooms.
Dr Tom May, a fungi specialist, gave jurors an extensive lesson on death cap mushrooms.
Patterson's hopes lifted when Dr May gave evidence that although death caps were 'typically greenish or yellowish', they 'may be whitish or brownish with or without white patches'.
The expert was taken by Patterson's defence through a series of photos of dodgy- looking mushrooms and asked to identify them.
He hit the bullseye every time: they were all death caps, with none of the images looking remotely palatable to humans.
Dr May had posted images on a citizen science website called iNaturalist of death caps he had found in Outtrim - a short drive from Patterson's home - in April that year.
It was a location that just happened to be visited by Patterson leading up to the deadly lunch.
Phone data later obtained by police alleged Patterson's phone was 'pinged' in areas identified on that website as having death cap mushrooms there.
The jury further heard Patterson took steps to hide evidence, swapping out the SIM card on her usual phone while detectives were carrying out a search of her home.
That phone has never been recovered.
While left alone, she also managed to factory reset her new phone, handing the wiped device over to a detective and factory resetting it again remotely while it was in police possession.
But Patterson was unable to erase the contents of her home computer, which contained what the jury concluded was damning evidence that what she did was premeditated.
During the trial, Victoria Police forensic data analyst Shamen Fox-Henry revealed Patterson made a visit to the iNaturalist website on May 28, 2022.
The title of one of the visited pages included the words, 'Deathcap from Melbourne VIC, Australia on May 18, 2022'.
Mr Fox-Henry had also found a series of messages sent by Patterson that suggested she had very personal issues with Simon's parents.
In the messages, Patterson described her in-laws as a 'lost cause' and exclaimed 'f*** them'.
'I mean clearly the fact that Simon refuses to talk about personal issues in part stems from the behavior of his parents and how they operate,' she wrote around December 6, 2022.
'According to them, they've never asked him what's going on with us, why I keep kicking him out, why his son hates him, etc. It's too awkward or uncomfortable or something. So that's his learned behavior. Just don't talk about this s***.'
Patterson claimed her father-in-law's solution to her relationship problems with his son was to 'pray'.
'Don rang me last night to say that he thought there was a solution to all this. If Simon and I get together and try to talk and pray together,' she wrote.
'And then he also said, Simon had indicated there was a solution to the financial issues if I withdraw this child support claim?!'
Patterson claimed she told her in-laws she wanted them to be accountable for the decisions their son made concerning their grandchildren.
'I would hope they care about their grandchildren enough to care about what Simon is doing,' she wrote.
'Don said they tried to talk to him, but he refused to talk about it, so they're staying out of it, but want us to pray together.
'I'm sick of this s***. I want nothing to do with them. I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing, but it seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable, and not wanting to get involved in their son's personal matters, are overriding that. So f*** them.'
When reporters finally caught up with Patterson in the days after the lunch, she broke down in tears and proclaimed she had done nothing wrong.
'I didn't do anything,' she said, wiping away tears. 'I loved them and I'm devastated that they're gone.'
Patterson said all four guests were wonderful people and had always treated her with kindness.
'Gail was like the mom I didn't have because my mom passed away four years ago and Gail had never been anything but good and kind to me,' she continued.
'Ian and Heather were some of the best people I'd ever met. They never did anything wrong to me.
'I'm so devastated about what's happened and the loss to the community and to the families and to my own children. They've lost their grandmother,' she told reporters on August 8 that year.
'What happened is devastating and I'm grieving too and you guys don't have any respect for that.'
As the trial came to its conclusion, Mr Mandy was faced with the decision to risk putting his client in the witness box in a last-ditch attempt to save her skin.
His decision to put her up would come back to haunt him.
Finally out of the prison dock, Patterson faced off with the jury to try and explain away her lies.
She sobbed and cried in scenes similar to those seen outside her house years earlier.
She will be sentenced at a date to be fixed.