Bombshell testimony about mushroom lunch leftovers at Erin Patterson trial
Waste workers found a food dehydrator had been dumped at a tip by a woman in the days after a poisonous mushroom lunch was served, a triple-murder trial has been told.
Video of a woman getting out of a red car and pulling a black dehydrator from the boot before she placed it in an e-waste bin inside a green shed was shown to the jury in Erin Patterson's trial on Wednesday.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Bombshell testimony at Erin Patterson murder trial.
Prosecutors claim Patterson disposed of the food dehydrator, which they allege contained death cap mushroom traces, after she served a poisoned beef Wellington to four former in-laws on July 29, 2023.
The 50-year-old mother of two has pleaded not guilty to three murder charges over the lunch, which led to the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson, 70, and Heather Wilkinson, 66.
Patterson claims the poisoning was unintentional and a terrible accident.
Koonwarra Transfer Station operations manager Darren Canty told the jury police contacted him on August 4 about a person who had attended the waste facility two days earlier.
'As a result of that inquiry, I looked at the video footage that we had from that day and made a copy of that footage and passed it on,' he said.
After the footage was played to the court in Morwell, regional Victoria, the jury was shown a photo of the black Sunbeam food dehydrator.
Mr Canty said the woman paid by EFTPOS for the e-waste disposal before she left.
Intensive care specialist Andrew Bersten was the next witness called on Wednesday, with the jury told he had been sent Patterson's medical records from her presentation at hospital after the lunch.
This included ambulance records that showed Patterson had experienced 'five loose bowel actions' between 10am and 11.50am on July 31.
'She was somewhat dehydrated and therefore I thought it was consistent with a diarrhoeal illness,' he said.
Earlier, the first scientist to test the beef Wellington remains said she did not find evidence of death cap mushrooms after examining the food with a microscope.
Mycologist Camille Truong was working on-call for the Victorian Poisons Information Centre on July 31 when she received a call from Monash Hospital toxicology registrar Laura Muldoon.
Four patients had been hospitalised after consuming a meal that contained mushrooms and Dr Muldoon asked for her help to identify the mushrooms, Dr Truong told the jury.
Dr Muldoon arranged to deliver the sample to the Royal Botanic Gardens national herbarium for the scientist to analyse. It arrived about 5pm but Dr Truong said she left work early that day.
A colleague brought the beef Wellington sample to Dr Truong's home, where she analysed it on her bench under a microscope.
She did not find any death cap mushroom pieces and put the remains into her fridge overnight, Dr Truong told the jury.
The next day she took the sample to the Royal Botanic Gardens where she re-examined it and again found the remnants did not contain death cap mushrooms.
'The mushroom I identified is called a field mushroom ... this is the typical mushrooms that you find in a supermarket,' Dr Truong said.
'That is the only mushroom that I found in this food item.'
Defence barrister Sophie Stafford earlier discussed a coronial report about a woman who died in May 2024 after making herself a meal out of mushrooms picked from her garden.
The elderly woman died from death cap mushroom poisoning, the jury was told.
Mushroom expert Thomas May said Victoria's Department of Health had contacted him about the recommendations, which included that more public health messaging was needed on the dangers of consuming wild mushrooms.
The trial before Justice Christopher Beale continues on Thursday.
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Perth Now
6 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.
West Australian
6 hours ago
- West Australian
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. 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. 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.
Herald Sun
18 hours ago
- Herald Sun
Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial: Erin Patterson two faces claim
Mushroom cook Erin Patterson had 'two faces' and was pretending to love her in-laws before she allegedly murdered them with a deadly beef wellington meal, a prosecutor has claimed. The mother of two has spent every day this week testifying in her own triple-murder trial and on Friday faced another grilling by Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. Ms Patterson is standing trial in Morwell, accused of murdering her estranged husband's parents Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66. The prosecution alleges she served them individual beef wellingtons she had deliberately laced with lethal death cap mushrooms at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023. Heather's husband, pastor Ian Wilkinson, 71, was the only guest to survive. Ms Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, claiming she may have accidentally added foraged mushrooms into the meal along with dried mushrooms she purchased from an Asian grocer. Under cross-examination, Dr Rogers suggested Ms Patterson did not love Don and Gail, pointing to expletive-laden messages to her Facebook friends where she described them as a 'lost cause' and 'wanted nothing to do with them'. Dr Rogers asked: 'In fact, you had two faces: a public face of appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail … agree or disagree?' Ms Patterson replied: 'Are you asking me to agree if I had two faces?' When pressed again, she said: 'I had a good relationship with Don and Gail.' Dr Rogers asked: 'I suggest that your private face was the one you showed in your Facebook Messenger use, correct or incorrect?' She replied: 'Incorrect.' Ms Patterson also disagreed that she was angry they took their son Simon's side amid a child support dispute in December 2022. 'They did love me and I did love them. I do love them,' she told the Supreme Court. Dr Rogers put to Ms Patterson that if she 'had loved them' she would have immediately notified the authorities when she realised on August 1 there was 'possibility' foraged mushrooms were in a container with the dried mushrooms from the Asian grocer. 'Well I didn't … I had been told that people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning, so that was already happening,' she said. She confirmed she 'did not tell anybody' about that possibility. The court heard Ms Patterson invited the guests and Simon to lunch after a church service on July 16, with Simon testifying that she said to him she had some 'important medical news' to share and had invited everyone 'to discuss that topic'. 'No, that's not what I said to him,' Ms Patterson replied. 'That wasn't the purpose of the lunch or the purpose of the invitations.' Dr Rogers took her to the text she sent Simon after he pulled out of the lunch on July 28. 'That's really disappointing. I've spent many hours this week preparing lunch for tomorrow which has been exhausting in light of the issues I'm facing … I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time,' she wrote. After a series of rapid-fire questions, Ms Patterson said she did tell Simon she wanted to discuss some 'medical stuff', but she denied that she wanted advice and that it was the purpose of the lunch. The jury has previously heard she misled her guests when she told them she may need treatment for cancer, but she testified on Friday she was 'confronting' medical issues, since she was planning to have gastric bypass surgery. Ms Patterson denied she prepared a poisoned beef wellington for Simon 'just in case' he turned up at the lunch. 'And when he didn't show up for lunch … you threw it in your rubbish bin,' Dr Rogers said. 'I did put the pastry and mushrooms in the rubbish bin,' she replied. Dr Rogers also asked Ms Patterson why she invited the Wilkinsons to lunch. 'I really liked them and I wanted to have a stronger relationship with them,' she said. Dr Rogers suggested she invited them because she thought it would make it more likely that Don, Gail and Simon would come, but she denied that was the reason. Later, Ms Patterson was asked about records that showed a map about death caps – on citizen science website iNaturalist – was accessed on May 28, 2022, on a computer in her house. 'I don't have a specific memory of this day or this internet search, but my evidence is it's possible, because I remember at some point wanting to find out if death cap mushrooms grow in South Gippsland and finding out that they do not,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury on Wednesday she found out mushrooms growing on her property were 'probably toxic to dogs' and she wanted to see if death caps grew in the area. The trial, before Justice Christopher Beale, continues.
