Latest news with #triplemurder
ABC News
4 hours ago
- Health
- ABC News
Five things we learned yesterday in Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial
It was a significant day of evidence on Wednesday, as accused triple-murderer Erin Patterson again took to the stand in the regional Victorian town of Morwell. The 50-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder after three relatives died from death cap mushroom poisoning following a meal prepared and served by Ms Patterson. Another relative, Ian Wilkinson, fell seriously ill but survived. Here are five key things we learned yesterday. Ms Patterson told the court she began cooking preparations the night before the lunch by salting the meat, before preparing the mushroom duxelles, or paste, the morning of the lunch — July 29, 2023. She was using mushrooms purchased from Woolworths, she told the court yesterday. "As I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland," she said. "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 at the time she believed they were dried mushrooms purchased from Melbourne but then conceded they may have been foraged. "Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well." This week, Ms Patterson has told the court she developed an interest in foraging and eating mushrooms during Victoria's COVID lockdowns in 2020, eventually building up the confidence to cook and eat the mushrooms she gathered from areas around her Gippsland home. Ms Patterson said she organised the lunch as part of an ongoing bid to proactively bolster her relationship with the wider Patterson family, who she feared was becoming more distant during her separation from husband Simon. Ms Patterson told the court she realised around May or June that she probably needed to be more "proactive" in maintaining her relationships. "I had become a little worried that perhaps … that there might be some distance growing between me and the Patterson family," she said. "I wasn't sure if there was a gathering or two that I hadn't been invited to." In June, she had invited Simon Patterson and his parents over for lunch, which her children also attended. She said that was a "great" lunch and the kids "really enjoyed it".Ms Patterson said she invited Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson to the July 29 lunch after a church service. "'Would you like to come to lunch at my house?'" she recalled asking them. "They said 'we'd love to'." Ms Patterson said during the lunch, she recalled her father-in-law Don Patterson talking about his brother, who was battling cancer. She said the cancer topic lingered, and at the end of the meal she mentioned she had had an "issue" a year or two earlier when she feared she may have ovarian cancer. "Then, 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," she said. Ms Patterson said the reality was she was about to get gastric bypass surgery to deal with long-running concerns over her weight and was too embarrassed to tell them. She did not want their caring attention to stop and was mindful that she may need assistance in the lead-up to and after her planned operation. "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, and I wouldn't have to tell them the real reason," she said. During her third day in the witness box, Ms Patterson told the court she disposed of a food dehydrator at the Koonwarra tip after the fatal lunch because she knew that child protection workers were on their way to her house. She feared being blamed for making her guests sick. A conversation alleged to have taken place on July 31 in hospital was again raised in court by the defence. Ms Patterson told the court that while alone, her estranged husband put forward a shocking allegation. "He said to me, 'Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?'" she told the court. Earlier in the trial, Ms Patterson's defence lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, asked Mr Patterson if he had said, "Is that what you used to poison them?" "I did not say that to Erin," Mr Patterson replied. Ms Patterson told the court about several factory resets carried out on a phone referred to in the trial as Phone B, and which she handed to police on August 5 after they searched her Leongatha home. One of the resets was because she "panicked" about the fact her phone had all her apps on it, including a Google account storing her photos, Ms Patterson told the court on Wednesday. "I knew that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator and I just panicked and didn't want them [the detectives searching the house] to see them." Ms Patterson said she carried out another factory reset of her phone while it was in a police locker. "At some point, after the search of my house and the interview and the detectives had brought me home, I remember thinking 'I wonder if I can log into my Google account and see where all my devices are?'" she told the court. "So, I did that, and I could see my phone, and [my children's devices], and it was really stupid, but I thought, 'I wonder if they've been silly enough to leave it connected to the internet?' "So, I hit factory reset to see what happened and it did."
ABC News
14 hours ago
- General
- ABC News
The lies of Erin Patterson explained – in her own words
Erin Patterson explained why she cooked individual beef Wellington's, lied about having cancer and dumped her dehydrator, as she was taken through the July 2023 lunch in detail today. At the end of Erin's third day in the witness box, investigative reporter Rachael Brown and Stephen Stockwell talk through what the accused triple murderer told the court. If you've got questions about the case that you'd like Rachael and Stocky to answer in future episodes, send them through to mushroomcasedaily@ - It's the case that's captured the attention of the world. Three people died and a fourth survived an induced coma after eating beef wellington at a family lunch, hosted by Erin Patterson. Police allege the beef wellington contained poisonous mushrooms, but Erin Patterson says she's innocent. Now, the accused triple murderer is fighting the charges in a regional Victorian courthouse. Investigative reporter Rachael Brown and producer Stephen Stockwell are on the ground, bringing you all the key moments from the trial as they unravel in court. From court recaps to behind-the-scenes murder trial explainers, the Mushroom Case Daily podcast is your eyes and ears inside the courtroom. Keep up to date with new episodes of Mushroom Case Daily, now releasing every day on the ABC listen app.
ABC News
19 hours ago
- Health
- ABC News
Erin Patterson tells murder trial how foraged mushrooms may have ended up in deadly lunch
Accused triple-murderer Erin Patterson has given her account of how she made a beef Wellington dish that resulted in the deaths of three relatives and made another seriously ill. Ms Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson. Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, was the sole surviving guest of the lunch. The trial of Erin Patterson, who stands accused of using a poisoned meal to murder three relatives, continues. Look back at how Tuesday's hearing unfolded in our live blog. To stay up to date with this story, subscribe to ABC News. On Wednesday, Ms Patterson's defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC continued to question her as her evidence entered a third day. Ms Patterson told the court that at the time of the lunch, she had been concerned that her relationship with the wider Patterson family, including her in-laws, was becoming more distant after her separation from her husband Simon. She said for her, the meal on July 29, 2023, represented an opportunity to be more "proactive" about maintaining that relationship. Ms Patterson said she chose to prepare beef Wellingtons for the lunch because she wanted to make something special and her mother had made it for "really important occasions" in the past. She told the court she found the recipe in her RecipeTin Eats cookbook, but she said she made some "deviations" to the recipe. "The primary one was, I couldn't find, you know, the big log that the recipe called for ... so I had to use individual steaks so I had to adapt to that," she said. She said by making individual servings she used a larger quantity of mushrooms and pastry to cover the cuts of meat. Ms Patterson also chose not to put prosciutto in the dish because she said Don Patterson did not eat pork and she removed a crepe layer the recipe called for because it "looked a little bit complicated". While outlining the ingredients she used to the jury, Ms Patterson said she had started preparing six individual beef Wellingtons early in the morning on the day of the lunch, using mushrooms purchased from Woolworths. "As I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland, to me," she said. "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 at the time she believed they were dried mushrooms purchased from Melbourne but then conceded they may have been foraged. "Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well," she said. She told the jury she was aware of poisonous mushrooms growing in the Gippsland area but denied ever foraging for mushrooms in Loch and Outtrim, where the court previously heard death cap mushrooms were flagged on a website. The court has previously heard that Ms Patterson organised the lunch to discuss a cancer diagnosis but it has been revealed in court that she has never had cancer and she agreed she misled them. Ms Patterson became emotional on Wednesday when she told the jury she had lied to her mother-in-law about a number of medical issues. The court was shown messages previously seen by the jury where Gail asked Ms Patterson about a medical appointment she had told her about regarding a lump on her arm. In the message exchange, Ms Patterson told Gail she had a needle biopsy and an MRI but she admitted to the court both were lies. "Some weeks prior, I had been having an issue with my elbow with pain and I thought there was a lump there and I had told Don and Gail about that," she said. "They had shown quite a lot of care about that, which felt really nice." She said she maintained the lies even though the issue had started to resolve because she felt embarrassed. "I shouldn't have done it." Ms Patterson said at the lunch, she led her guests to believe she required treatment for ovarian cancer and they prayed for her health. "I led them to believe that I might be needing some treatment ... in the next few weeks, or months," she said. Erin agreed she misled her lunch guests, who had all showed "a lot of compassion" for the health issue she had told them about. She told the court that in reality, she was making plans to have gastric bypass surgery in a bid to take control over concerns she had about her weight. "I was ashamed of the fact that I didn't have control over my body or what I ate, I was ashamed of that … I didn't want to tell anybody, but I shouldn't have lied to them," she said, sniffing. "Primarily in my mind [I] was thinking I might need help getting the kids to and from the bus and other activities, might need to explain why I'm going up to hospital for a day or two … so that was really the focus of what I was talking about." After her guests left the lunch, Ms Patterson said she ate several pieces of a cake Gail Patterson had brought to the lunch. After eating the cake, Ms Patterson said: "I felt sick, I felt overfull, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again." On Tuesday, the court heard she had struggled with binge eating and bulimia throughout her life. She said later that night she remembered feeling "really nauseous" and had diarrhoea. "It felt pretty frequent to me, every 20 minutes at some times, maybe further apart at other times," she said. The following day Ms Patterson said she drove her son to Tyabb for a flying lesson and had to pull over near some bushland to go to the toilet. "I went off into the bush and went to the toilet ... I had diarrhoea," she said. "I cleaned myself up a bit with tissues and put them in a dog poo bag ... and we hit the road again." In a police interview previously shown to the jury, Ms Patterson's son said she did not stop to use the toilet during that trip. She then detailed a visit to the hospital the following day because she believed she might need some fluids to assist with the diarrhoea she was experiencing. "Every time I drank water it went straight through me, couldn't seem to retain it, so I thought … I should go in, for a little bit," she said.
ABC News
21 hours ago
- General
- ABC News
Erin Patterson returns to stand in mushroom murder trial
Erin Patterson returns to the witness box for the third day of her triple murder trial in regional Victoria. The 50-year-old is accused of intentionally killing three of her in-laws when she served then a beef Wellington lunch containing death cap mushrooms at her home in Leongatha in 2023.
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
After weeks of silence, Erin Patterson begins to tell her side of the story to deadly mushroom lunch trial
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.
