The key moments from the mushroom cook murder trial
1. Erin Patterson gives evidence and admits foraging
After weeks of prosecution evidence, she was announced as the defence's only witness in her murder trial.
She took to the witness box for eight days, including several under gruelling cross-examination by crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. She admitted beginning mushroom foraging during Victoria's first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
"They tasted good and I didn't get sick," she told the jury, about preparing and eating wild fungi for the first time. Patterson said she loved her former in-laws and they were her only living family.
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She also claimed she'd thrown up remnants on the meal after eating it as she suffered from bulimia, and admitted to lying about owning a dehydrator and foraging to police.
1News Australia correspondent Aziz Al Sa'afin speaks to Breakfast in the wake of yesterday's verdict. (Source: Breakfast)
2. Sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson enters witness box
The only lunch guest to survive eating Patterson's poisoned beef Wellington, Ian was one of the first witnesses called during week two of the trial.
Ian, Simon Patterson's uncle and pastor at Korumburra Baptist Church, locked eyes with the woman who tried to kill him as he sat in the witness box and gave emotional evidence about losing his wife Heather.
He said Patterson had served himself, his wife Heather, and Don and Gail Patterson on grey dinner plates which were different to her own plate.
Ian laughed as he recalled banter at the dinner table over how Don had eaten his portion and half of his wife Gail's.
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3. Estranged husband Simon Patterson called as witness
Simon was the first witness called by prosecutors and he discussed their up and down relationship in the years leading up to their permanent separation in 2015.
He gave evidence for three days and explained that he did not attend the fatal lunch, although he was invited, because he felt "too uncomfortable".
Simon also became emotional as he recalled seeing his father and mother dying in their hospital beds.
"Dad was substantially worse than mum, he was really struggling ... He wasn't right inside. He was feeling pain," he said, between tears.
The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, including what the jury saw at the mushroom murder trial, where house prices are climbing, and why YouTube's biggest star has business plans in NZ. (Source: 1News)
4. Medical experts explain how her lunch guests became ill, but Patterson did not
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Several doctors, nurses and toxicologists detailed how the four lunch guests' conditions deteriorated over several days after going to hospital with diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pain and they tried to save their lives.
Initially, doctors and victims had assumed they all had gastro, but soon it became clear they had consumed death cap mushrooms.
Patterson, on the other hand, took herself to hospital two days after the meal and quickly discharged herself.
She returned and then was taken to a Melbourne hospital but was found to not have been poisoned.
5. Computer devices reveal death cap mushroom searches
Searches of computers, tablets and mobile phones seized from Patterson's home revealed she had navigated to science website iNaturalist in May 2022 and looked at death cap mushroom sighting post for Moorabbin, in Melbourne.
6. Patterson's angry messages over child support
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A child support issue between Simon and Erin started to involve his parents, Don and Gail, towards the end of 2022 - about six months before the toxic meal.
Messages sent by Patterson to her Facebook friends revealed she called Simon a "deadbeat" and said she wanted nothing to do with her parents-in-law. "This family, I swear to f*****g god," another message said.
Prosecutors said this showed how her relationship with the Patterson family had begun deteriorating.
7. Cell phone tower pings after online death cap sightings
Patterson's phone had pinged at cell towers in the Gippsland towns of Outtrim and Loch after posts on iNaturalist about death cap mushroom sightings in those areas.
Her defence argued this evidence was unreliable, but prosecutors said it showed she had gone to these areas to pick the deadly fungi.
8. Patterson's missing mobile phone
Several mobile phones were seized from Patterson's home except one, Phone A, and prosecutors told the jury they had never recovered this phone. Its sim card was swapped during a police search of her Leongatha home on August 5, 2023.
Another phone, known during the trial as Phone B, had been factory reset on the day police were at her home and again while sitting in a locker at Victoria police's homicide HQ.
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