Mushroom murder trial LIVE: Erin, Simon Patterson in court
Don't miss out on the headlines from The Mushroom Cook. Followed categories will be added to My News.
We're back for the fourth day of the trial of Erin Patterson at the Supreme Court in Morwell.
Ms Patterson is charged with murdering her former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, as well as Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson following a mushroom lunch at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.
She is also accused of attempting to kill Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, who survived the meal.
Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and says what happened was a 'tragedy and a terrible accident'.
Missed something? Catch up on mushroom trial coverage from previous days here.
Originally published as Inside the courtroom: Mushroom cook Erin Patterson faces court for day 4 of murder trial The Mushroom Cook
The estranged husband of Erin Patterson was almost inconsolable as he shared heartbreaking details of his loved ones' dying hours, and how he was also invited to the lethal lunch. The Mushroom Cook
Simon, the estranged husband of mushroom cook Erin Patterson, has told the jury about the moment he turned down an invite to the lunch which ended up killing three members of his family. Here's your recap of the day's evidence.
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The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Lies, damn lies: The admissions and denials of an accused killer cook
The cancer Whether Patterson had cancer and had shared this with others was discussed repeatedly. Sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson recalled in his evidence that it was at the lethal lunch that Patterson broke the news of her cancer, telling her guests she was anxious about telling her children. Patterson's estranged husband, Simon Patterson, told the jury that while his family was sick in hospital after the lunch, his father relayed to him that Patterson had said she was going to have chemotherapy and surgery. Don told him Patterson said she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and needed help breaking the news to her two children. But Patterson told the jury on Thursday she had never been diagnosed with any type of cancer and went on to quibble with the suggestion she'd told her guests she had been. During cross-examination, this was referred to as the accused woman's 'so-called cancer diagnosis'. Instead, Patterson suggested she had researched the symptoms online for things, including stage-four cancer, because she was worried she may be very unwell. The 50-year-old denied doing so as part of any type of ploy to convince her family she was seriously ill. 'I suggest you never thought you'd have to account for this lie about having cancer because you thought the lunch guests would die,' Rogers said. 'This would allow you to tell a more convincing lie about having cancer?' Patterson replied: 'I mean, theoretically that's true, but that's not what I did. I was concerned that I had ovarian cancer, I was concerned that I had something wrong with my brain.' Patterson agreed she didn't have any medical appointments relating to cancer in the lead-up to the lunch, despite telling Gail she was undergoing medical investigations. She did, however, claim to have had a pre-surgery appointment booked for a gastric bypass to lose weight. Rogers asked Patterson if she purposely carried on the fiction that she had a serious illness. Patterson agreed. The foraging In her recorded interview with police on the afternoon of August 5, 2023, Patterson said she'd never foraged for mushrooms in the wild. 'Is that something you've done in the past?' Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall asked Patterson at the Wonthaggi police station. 'Foraged for mushrooms?' 'Never,' Patterson replied. While on the stand this week, Patterson's story changed. She told the jury she developed a love for mushrooms and an interest in foraging for them from early 2020 during the COVID lockdowns. She told the jury she started off by picking field mushrooms. Then she began picking others, such as horse mushrooms and slippery jacks, as she grew more confident in identifying the species she picked in her yard, the nearby botanical gardens and a rail trail between Korumburra, Loch and Leongatha. She said that she initially believed the mushrooms she'd used in the fatal beef Wellington were prepackaged button mushrooms from Woolworths and dried mushrooms she'd bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne. As the investigation went on, though, she said she began to think that maybe dried foraged mushrooms had also made their way into the meal. She told the jury she now accepted that death cap mushrooms had been inside the pastry-encased parcels. While under cross-examination, Patterson agreed it was on August 1, 2023, that Simon first asked if she'd used the dehydrator to kill his parents. She said it was then that she began to wonder whether other mushrooms may have made their way into the meal. 'You agree you told police in your record of interview that you loved Don and Gail?' Rogers asked. 'Yes,' Patterson replied. Rogers: 'Surely, if you had loved them, you would've immediately notified medical authorities about there being a possibility that the foraged mushrooms had gone into the container with the Chinese mushrooms?' 'Well I didn't. I did not tell anybody,' Patterson responded. 'They did love me and I did love them. I do love them.' The dehydrator Loading A tax invoice displayed on screens across the courtroom showed the purchase of a black Sunbeam dehydrator, costing more than $200, and paid for under Erin Patterson's name, address and phone number. Patterson agreed she bought it and used it to dehydrate mushrooms before dumping it at the local tip the day after she was released from hospital because, she claimed, she panicked and feared her children could be taken away from her. In her police interview, the court heard, she denied ever owning such an appliance, or ever having one in her house. Loading 'Those are lies?' her defence lawyer asked. 'Yes,' Patterson replied. 'I had disposed of it a few days earlier in the context of thinking that maybe mushrooms I foraged or the meal I prepared was responsible for making people sick, and then on the Saturday, Detective Eppingstall told me that Gail and Heather had passed away.' She denied knowingly picking or dehydrating death cap mushrooms to cook and serve to her lunch guests. The prosecution case When asked by Mandy about the prosecution case against her, Patterson denied lying about using Asian grocer mushrooms or pretending to be sick after the lunch. 'I am going to ask you a series of questions now, formal questions, about what the prosecution says is the case against you,' Mandy said. 'Did you lie to people when you said that you'd only cooked one batch of mushrooms for the beef Wellingtons?' Patterson: 'No, I didn't lie.' Mandy: 'Were each of the beef Wellingtons on each of the five plates that you served up the same?' Patterson: 'Yes.' Mandy: 'Did you lie about purchasing dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in the Oakleigh area in April of 2023?' Patterson: 'No.' Mandy: 'Did you lie about using those mushrooms from the Asian grocer in the beef Wellingtons?' Patterson: 'No, I didn't.' Mandy: 'Did you pretend to be sick following the lunch?' Patterson: 'No, I didn't.' Mandy: 'Did you intentionally include death cap mushrooms in the beef Wellingtons you prepared on 29 July?' Patterson: 'No.' 'Eye-roll emojis' Patterson was questioned about some messages to her online friends in which she appeared to mock her in-laws' faith with 'eye-roll emojis'. Patterson denied that the messages were mocking – she was frustrated that the family's only solution to her and Simon's issues were to pray, she said. Rogers read out a message Patterson sent to friends on December 6, 2022, about being told by Don that he could not adjudicate in a matter between Erin and Simon because Simon would not share his side of the story. The message, shown to the jury, concluded with two eye-rolling emojis and the sentence: 'This family, I swear to f---ing God.' Patterson told the court: 'The eye-roll emojis was in regard to that being the only solution.' Rogers showed Patterson another message, in which she wrote that Don had called her the previous night to say there could be a solution to her problem if she and Simon got together and prayed, followed by two emojis. Rogers suggested the emojis were also eye-rolling emojis. 'There's a better eye-rolling emoji than this,' Patterson said. Rogers said Patterson was mocking her in-laws' advice, and part of the mockery related to the religious component. 'I wasn't mocking, I was frustrated,' Patterson said.
SBS Australia
10 hours ago
- SBS Australia
'I shouldn't have lied to them': Accused mushroom cook's week on the witness stand
Mushroom cook Erin Patterson has admitted to lies, spoken of past shames and apologised while testifying at her triple murder trial. The 50-year-old has pleaded not guilty over the deaths of her former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, following a July 2023 lunch. Patterson also denies the attempted murder of the only survivor of the meal, Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson. The church pastor has attended most days of the trial after giving evidence himself and this week sat quietly at the back of court watching Patterson in the witness box. She maintains the poisonings were not deliberate. The Supreme Court trial in Victoria's regional town of Morwell has run into its sixth week, with curious spectators queuing before dawn to grab a coveted seat from where they could witness the accused give evidence. Sitting behind a varnished timber stand, Patterson told the jury about having low self-esteem as an adult and wanting to do something about her weight and poor eating habits. She also admitted lying to her lunch guests about it. "I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery, and so I remember thinking, 'I didn't want to tell anybody what I was going to have done'," she told the court. "I thought perhaps letting them believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment might mean they'd be able to help me with the logistics around the kids." She told the jury she had also invited her estranged husband Simon Patterson for lunch that day to talk about "some health stuff" but he did not attend. Patterson said she mentioned at the table an issue she had "a year or two earlier where I thought I had ovarian cancer and had various scans about and related to that". "I'm not proud of this but I led them to believe that I might be needing some treatment in regards to that in the next few weeks or months." "Did you lie to them?" Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC asked. "I did lie to them," she replied. Asked why, Patterson said: "I was really embarrassed. I was ashamed of the fact that I didn't have control over my body or what I ate ... I didn't want to tell anybody but I shouldn't have lied to them." Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC asked about that conversation but Patterson denied she told her lunch guests she had been diagnosed with cancer and needed advice on how to break this news to her children. "I suggest you never thought you'd have to account for this lie about having cancer because you thought the lunch guests would die," Rogers said. "That's not true," Patterson replied. "What I was trying to communicate was … that I was undergoing investigations around ovarian cancer and might need treatment in that regard in the future." Mandy cited the accused's police interview on 5 August 2023, where she told them she had never dehydrated food and denied owning a dehydrator. "Were those lies?" Mandy asked. "Yes," Patterson replied. Asked why she lied to detectives about the dehydrator, Patterson said: "I had disposed of it a few days earlier in the context of thinking that maybe mushrooms that I'd foraged for the meal I prepared was responsible for making people sick." After police told her Gail and Heather had died during a search of her home before the interview, Patterson said she had a "stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying". "I was just scared but I shouldn't have done it," Patterson said. He asked Patterson if her answer to police that she had "never" foraged for mushrooms was also a lie. "Yes, they were both lies," she replied. Months before the fatal lunch, Patterson revealed she had apologised for sending Facebook messages to her online friends about her relatives after a dispute between her and Simon about child support and schooling. She said she did not mean the messages, "this family, I swear to f***ing god" and "I'm sick of this shit, I want nothing to do with them", insisting it was her "venting" frustration. "It wasn't Don and Gail's fault. It wasn't the family's fault. It wasn't even entirely Simon's fault. I played a part in the issue too," she told the court. After returning from a family holiday to New Zealand, Patterson said she apologised to her in-laws. "What were you apologising for?" Mandy asked. "For trying to involve them in something that they didn't need to be worried about," she said. "I wasn't asking them to take sides but, in effect, I was. "I wanted them to agree with me that I was right and Simon was wrong, and that wasn't fair." She denied Rogers assertion she was angry with them for taking Simon's side in the dispute or that those comments were her true feelings towards her in-laws.
Perth Now
14 hours ago
- Perth Now
Key revelations from mushroom cook's testimony
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. Erin Patterson and her estranged husband Simon Patterson. NewsWire Credit: NewsWire 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. Mushroom cook agrees death caps in lunch may have been foraged 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. A court sketch of Ms Patterson in the witness box on Monday. NewsWire / Anita Lester Credit: News Corp Australia 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. Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC is leading the case against Ms Patterson. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia 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. Ms Patterson told the jury she loved mushrooms and would buy them one or two times a week. Supplied. Credit: Supplied 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. The trial is being heard in the country Victorian town of Morwell. NewsWire / Josie Hayden Credit: News Corp Australia 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.' Crowds have lined up outside the court to sit in the public gallery. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia 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.' Erin Patterson appeared emotional at times on the stand. Brooke Grebert-Craig. Credit: Supplied 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. Simon's parents Don and Gail Patterson died a day apart in early August. Supplied Credit: Supplied 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. Erin Patterson legal team including Colin Mandy SC, Sophie Stafford and Bill Doogue. NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui Credit: News Corp Australia 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.
