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News.com.au
08-07-2025
- News.com.au
Details about Erin Patterson's life revealed after mum of two found guilty of death cap poisonings
Over the course of a weeks-long murder trial, Erin Patterson was described as many things; a multi-millionaire and generous in-law, a devoted mother-of-two and a cold-blooded killer. The unassuming Victorian woman drew the world's attention after three of her husband's family died from a poisoned meal and a fourth fought his way back from death's door. Details about Patterson's life were revealed by those who knew her best as the Supreme Court trial played out in the regional town of Morwell over the last four months. She had pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, with her defence arguing the poisoning was a tragic accident. At trial, prosecutors argued Patterson intentionally sourced death cap mushrooms, the most poisonous known fungi, and included them in the beef wellington lunch intending to kill or at least seriously injure her four guests. Don and Gail Patterson, her husband Simon Patterson's parents, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson died in the week after the lunch on July 29, 2023. Gail's husband Ian Wilkinson recovered after a lengthy stay in hospital. On Monday, jurors returned to the Latrobe Valley law court and returned unanimous guilty verdicts on all four charges following seven days of deliberations. During the trial, jurors heard Patterson first met her husband in the early 2000s when they were both working at the Monash city council. She was an administrative assistant engaged by animal welfare charity the RSPCA while Simon was a civil engineer at the council. Giving evidence, Simon said they got to know each other as part of a 'fairly eclectic' group of friends from the council before developing a romantic relationship. 'Erin is very intelligent. I guess some of the things that attracted me to her in the first place was definitely her intelligence. She is quite witty and can be quite funny,' he said. The jury heard Patterson had worked as an accountant and as an air traffic controller at Melbourne's Tullamarine airport prior to meeting Simon. Patterson told the court she met Simon in 2004 and they began dating in July the following year. She said she first met his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, in about March or April 2005 while on a camping trip with Simon and a few friends and they stopped in at his parents. Patterson described herself as a 'fundamentalist atheist' and initially sought to convert Simon, a devout Christian, but ' things happened in reverse and I became a Christian'. She pointed to a 'spiritual experience' while on that camping trip when they attended a service at Korumburra Baptist Church where Simon's uncle, Ian Wilkinson, was pastor. I'd been approaching religion as an intellectual exercise up until that point,' Patterson said. 'But I had what I would call a religious experience there and it quite overwhelmed me.' Simon told the court a month after their wedding on June 2, 2007, the pair set off on a cross-country trip. 'We planned, before we married, to pack up everything, get a four-wheel drive and drive across Australia and camp in tents, which we did,' he said. Their wedding was held under a marquee at Don and Gail's Korumburra home, with Simon's cousin, David Wilkinson, walking her down the aisle. Patterson told the jury her parents did not attend as they were on a holiday crossing Russia by train. By late 2007, Simon said, they settled down in Perth where he found work at a local council. The jury heard their first child, a son, was born in January 2009, with Patterson describing the birth as 'very traumatic'. On the stand, she said she developed a mistrust of doctors and questioned if they knew what they were doing. Patterson said Don and Gail came to stay with them after the birth, saying Gail was 'really supportive, and gentle and patient with me'. 'I remember being really relieved that Gail was there because I felt really out of my depth,' she said. A few months later the family packed up again heading north and covering the top end of Australia. After months of travel, Patterson said she'd had a 'gutful' and elected to fly back to Perth from Townsville leaving Simon and their son to drive back. 'It had been a good holiday but I'd had enough. I wanted to sleep in a real bed,' she said. The jury heard this led to the couple's first separation, in late 2009, for 'about six months' with Patterson and their son living in a rental while Simon lived nearby in a caravan. 'What I understood from Erin was that she was struggling inside herself,' Simon said. The couple underwent marriage counselling and the family reunited after Simon moved to the wheatbelt town of York for work as a council civil engineer. For a time, the couple also lived in Quinninup, in Western Australia's southwest, and Patterson started a second hand book shop in Pemberton which she operated in 2011 and 2012. Giving evidence, Simon said there were a few other periods of short separation while the pair lived in Western Australia before they returned to Victoria in 2013. Patterson's second child, a girl, was born in 2014, and the couple purchased a home in Korumburra to be close to Simon's family the same year. Simon's sister, Anna Terrington, said she developed a strong bond with Patterson because they were both pregnant at the same time. She gave evidence their children, born three days apart, were known in the family as 'the twins'. Many of Simon's family members called in the trial described Patterson as a devoted mother to her two children. The couple separated for a final time in late 2015, the jury heard. Asked about the separation, Patterson said she believed the key issue in their relationship was communication but that Simon and her remained close and co-operative in the following years. 'Primarily what we struggled with over the entire course of our relationship … we just couldn't communicate well when we disagreed about something,' she said. 'We could never communicate in a way that made each of us feel heard or understood, so we would just feel hurt and not know how to resolve it.' Patterson told the court after their separation, she remained close to Simon's parents and continued to attend family events. 'It never changed. I was just their daughter-in-law and they just continued to love me,' she said. The jury heard Patterson received a large inheritance after her grandmother's death in 2006, with disbursements paid out twice annually until 2015. Simon agreed Patterson was 'very generous' with the money, with the couple lending hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of his three siblings and their partners interest free. 'We wouldn't have been able to do it without those inheritances,' he said. 'Money has not been the most important motivation to either Erin or me in our decisions.' He said he believed it totalled roughly $2 million. Patterson also received another large inheritance in 2019 after her mother's death split her estate between her two daughters. The jury heard Patterson used part of this money to buy a block of land at Gibson St, Leongatha, where she built her family home and the location of the deadly lunch. Living on the 3 acre block in the small dairy town, Patterson said she kept animals including sheep and goats. Despite their separation four years earlier, Patterson titled both the Gibson St property and a home in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley as shared ownership with her husband. Simon told the court he viewed this at the time as a sign Patterson remained committed to the family unit and was hopeful they would reconcile. He said he believed Patterson had struggled with her self-image for many years although she never explicitly said this to him. On the stand, Patterson said she had body-image issues since childhood and struggled with her weight. 'I tried every diet under the sun,' she said. 'When I was a kid, mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren't putting on too much weight.' Patterson told the court she had engaged in binge eating and purging since her 20s but no one knew. The jury heard from three witnesses who came to know Patterson in 2020 through an online true crime Facebook group that splintered off into a social chat during the Covid pandemic and continued into 2023. Non-profit manager Christine Hunt said Patterson had made a name for herself in the group as a 'super-sleuth', able to dig up details about true crime cases they discussed. Stay at home mum Daniela Barkley said she believed Patterson to be a wonderful mother, but recalled she vented about problems with Simon and his family. A series of messages Patterson sent to the group between December 6 and 9 in 2022, captured her complaining about her husband and his family. 'I'm sick of this s--t 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--k em,' one message read. Patterson told the jury she regrets the messages, but her defence noted they needed to be viewed in the proper context of a woman venting to her support network. Giving evidence, Simon told the jury they remained friendly and committed to co-parenting their two children but he first noticed a change in their relationship in late 2022. He said he believed this was after Patterson noticed he'd been listed as separated for the first time in his tax return and he understood the change to have financial implications. Patterson disagreed, saying while there was a change in the relationship, it occurred weeks later after Simon began to refuse to contribute to their children's schooling and medical costs. 'I wasn't upset, because him listing himself as single on his tax return meant I now have the opportunity to claim family tax benefit that I had been denied before,' she said. Simon said after the tax return, Patterson had filed a child support claim and he'd been instructed by authorities not to pay for things until a financial agreement was reached. Both agreed tensions had cooled down by the end of 2022 but their relationship became 'functional' after this point. She will return to court at a later date.
Daily Mail
07-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Erin Patterson accused of tampering with prison food that made an inmate sick while waiting for the trial to begin
Mushroom cook Erin Patterson was accused of tampering with prison food while waiting for the trial to begin. An inmate housed in the same unit as Patterson at Melbourne 's Dame Phyllis Frost Centre made the allegation. Patterson reportedly had disputes with other inmates last year, and not long after, a fellow prisoner became sick from a meal served in the unit. It's understood that while in the prison, Patterson had come to loathe the Chicken Cacciatore meals provided to her en route because the dish 'had mushrooms in it'. However, she will now have to spend life behind bars after she was found guilty of three murders for deliberately poisoning her estranged husband's family. 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. The 50-year-old mother blinked but appeared emotionless as four guilty verdicts were read out by the jury's foreperson to a full court-room of onlookers on Monday afternoon. Patterson, who took the stand for eight days during her trial, claimed she had not intentionally poisoned her lunch guests with beef Wellington parcels. She claimed deaths of three members of her estranged husband Simon's family were a terrible accident, and she may have accidentally included foraged mushrooms in the meal. Don and Gail Patterson, 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, all died in hospital days after eating the meal, while Ian Wilkinson became sick but survived. Heather Wilkinson and Don and Gail Patterson died in hospital after eating Erin Patterson's meal. Prosecutors laid out an extensive circumstantial case during the trial in Morwell, regional Victoria, to prove the poisoning event was deliberate. This included evidence from sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson, who said Patterson had served individual beef Wellingtons to her guests on different plates to her own. The prosecution accused Patterson of telling a series of lies to police, including that she did not forage for mushrooms in the meal and did not own a dehydrator. She lied about it to public health investigators, who were searching to find the source of poisonous mushrooms after Patterson claimed they may be from an Asian store. Patterson lied to doctors, nurses and toxicologists while they were trying to identify why her lunch guests were sick and save their lives at hospital. She revealed for the first time that she enjoyed foraging for wild mushrooms when she was in the witness box, admitting she started mushrooming in 2020 during the pandemic. 'They tasted good and I didn't get sick,' she told the jury about preparing and eating wild fungi for the first time. After hearing more than two months of evidence, a jury of 14 was whittled down to 12 jurors who retired to deliberate on their verdicts one week ago, on June 30. They returned after deliberating for seven days with a four guilty verdicts, convicting the 50-year-old woman of three murders and one attempted murder. Patterson now faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
The Sun
07-07-2025
- The Sun
Infamous ‘mushroom cook' Erin Patterson found GUILTY of murdering in-laws with poison deathcaps at deadly lunch
THE infamous "mushroom cook" has been found guilty of murdering her in-laws at a deadly lunch. Erin Patterson was accused of hiding deadly mushrooms in a meal to murder her estranged husband's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66. 14 14 14 She was also accused of attempting to murder Wilkinson's husband Ian by serving a beef wellington laced with poisonous death cap mushrooms. Patterson pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder for the July 29, 2023, incident. The 12 jurors were sequestered during their deliberations and weren't allowed to return to their homes, staying overnight instead in special accommodation new the Latrobe Valley law courts. A sentencing date is yet to be scheduled. Patterson claimed to have purchased dehydrated mushrooms at an Asian supermarket in Melbourne, Australia. But she couldn't remember exactly where she had bought them from. Despite Patterson pleading not guilty, she did accept that death cap mushrooms were in the meal she served. But she argued she didn't intend to harm anyone and that the mushrooms were just a tragic accident. All of Patterson's alleged victims were related to her estranged husband Simon and died from liver failure within a week of the fatal lunch. Toxicologists discovered they had all been poisoned by death cap mushrooms, which grow under oak trees throughout the region of south Melbourne. Patterson denied at first that she had foraged for wild mushrooms or that she had her own food dehydrator cops allege was used to dry them out. Eden Blackman dead: Celebs Go Dating star's heartbroken family announce death after 'long illness' But she later admitted both to foraging for mushrooms and to owning the dehydrator. The jury was sent to reach a verdict after listening to 35 days of evidence and cross-examination. The judge had instructed the jury: "You will deliberate Mondays to Saturdays here at the court in the privacy of the jury room. "You will not deliberate on Sundays, but you will still be sequestered. You do not get to go home on Sundays. I'm sorry." The judge also gave directions to the jury about Patterson's alleged lies, like her wanting gastric bypass surgery, having an ovarian cancer diagnosis and the reason she invited the guests for lunch. The prosecution had alleged that Patterson lied to her relatives about a cancer diagnosis in order to persuade them to attend the deadly lunch, before poisoning them and faked an illness to cover her tracks. The judge added: "If you find the accused lied about something you can use that fact to decide whether or not you believe the other things she's said. "It's one factor to take into account. It's for you to decide what significance to give these alleged lies, if you find them to be lies." 14 14 14 The fatal lunch On July 29, 2023 Patterson gathered her estranged husband's relatives together for a Saturday lunch at her home. She served up a beef wellington - allegedly containing death cap mushrooms and her guests soon became violently ill. Her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, all died within a week. Pastor Ian Wilkinson was the only one who survived the deadly lunch. But he was left in critical condition and spent almost two months being treated in the Austin Hospital - including time spent in a coma. Doctors have confirmed all four of their symptoms were consistent with poisoning by death cap mushrooms, which grow wild in the area. Patterson had also invited her husband to the lunch but he declined, reportedly texting her the night before that he felt "uncomfortable". In a return text minutes later, Patterson reportedly said she was "disappointed", as she wanted to prepare a "special meal and that she may not be able to have a lunch like this for some time". Patterson has long denied any wrongdoing and and has always insisted she never meant to serve "my loved ones" the deadly mushrooms. She pleaded not guilty to the murder charges in the Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court in May 2024. 14 14 14 14 But this is not the first time Patterson has faced accusations of attempted murder. On "three separate incidents" spanning across 2021 to 2022, police say that Erin attempted to kill a 48-year-old Korumburra man. It's understood this man is Erin's ex-husband, Simon Patterson. Two of the dates are unknown, however in May 2022, Simon claimed to have suffered from a mystery illness that fighting for life in hospital. In a social media post, he wrote: "I collapsed at home, then was in an induced coma for 16 days through which I had three emergency operations mainly on my small intestine, plus an additional planned operation. "My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live. "I was in intensive care for 21 days..." And the case has not been short of its twists and turns. In August 2023 a tradesman came forward to reveal that he had seen and photographed what he called a "death wall" inside Erin's former home. The tradesman said he was hired to paint the inside last year so it could be flogged. But he got more than he bargained for and discovered eerie drawings scrawled in blue and red markers. Messages were also found over the wall - with one chilling note reading: "You don't [have] long to live". That same day, a neighbour of Patterson's claimed she was an experienced forager, who regularly picked her own mushrooms in the local area. In March 2024 cops delved into Patterson's Facebook accounts in the hope of bolstering charges against her. Patterson had a number of profiles online and constantly used different names to post and interact with others, according to the Herald Sun. She also allegedly took to Facebook to declare she was "very good at details" before the fateful lunch. 14
RNZ News
30-06-2025
- RNZ News
The evidence laid before the jury in Erin Patterson's murder trial
By Joseph Dunstan , Madi Chwasta and Gabrielle Flood Erin Patterson is alleged to have laced a meal with death cap mushrooms resulting in the deaths of three people. Photo: Screenshot / ABC As they retire to consider their verdicts, the jurors in Erin Patterson's triple-murder trial have no shortage of evidence to reflect upon. More than 50 witnesses have given testimony and the hearings have stretched for nine weeks. Here are the people and places at the heart of the trial. The trial centres on a lunch hosted by Erin at her Leongatha home in Victoria's South Gippsland region on 29 July, 2023. Erin hosted four people that day: her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian. Erin's estranged husband Simon Patterson was also invited, but turned down the offer. Don, Gail and Heather all died from death cap mushroom poisoning after the beef Wellington lunch, while Ian survived after weeks in hospital. How Erin Patterson is related to her lunch guests. Photo: ABC News Prosecutors have alleged that Erin deliberately laced the meal with death caps. But the 50-year-old has maintained her innocence, telling the court that foraged mushrooms made their way into the meal by mistake. Prosecutors did not allege a specific motive for Erin Patterson to murder three relatives and attempt to murder a fourth. But they did take the jury through what they alleged was growing anger and resentment the accused felt towards the Pattersons. The court heard that by late 2022, there was a disagreement between Erin Patterson and her estranged husband over finances, including school and doctor's fees for their children. At one point, the court heard Erin had tried to bring in her in-laws - Don and Gail Patterson - to help mediate the situation. The prosecution highlighted to the jury Facebook messages in which Erin Patterson used strong language to express frustration with her parents-in-law about their reluctance to get involved in their financial dispute. Patterson told the court while she was feeling hurt, frustrated and "a little bit desperate", her relationship with her in-laws had remained positive and she was ashamed of the disrespectful language she had used while venting to her Facebook friends. Her defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC accused the prosecution of highlighting a handful of messages from a brief episode of tension, producing a distorted impression. "It was such a polite, kind and good relationship that these messages stand out, but they're not consistent with the whole of the relationship," Mandy said. Patterson said a desire to build a stronger relationship had motivated her to invite her in-laws to lunch. In the years leading up to the lunch, Erin's life was largely based in the towns of Leongatha and Korumburra. The two South Gippsland communities sit pretty close to one another, each with populations of a few thousand people. It was in this region that Erin Patterson told the court she began foraging mushrooms during Victoria's Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Eventually, she said she felt she had gathered enough knowledge to taste some of the mushrooms she had foraged during walks near the two towns. "They tasted good and I didn't get sick," she said. Her defence lawyer said this "burgeoning" interest in foraging had led Erin to investigate whether the notorious death cap mushroom species grew in her area in May 2022. The court heard she turned to a website called iNaturalist, where users share observations from nature to a community map. When Erin visited the site in 2022, no death caps were flagged in the South Gippsland area. But in the months before her lunch, two sightings were posted to iNaturalist at Loch and Outtrim. The prosecution alleged mobile phone data supported the claim that Erin travelled to Loch and Outtrim shortly after death caps were identified there to deliberately forage the deadly species. But her defence team raised questions over the accuracy of the mobile phone tower data being used by the prosecution to reach those conclusions. They told the jury Erin had been foraging at places like the Korumburra Botanic Gardens in the lead-up to the lunch, but not at Loch and Outtrim. As well as foraging mushrooms before the lunch, Erin said she had bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east. Erin told the court the grocer-bought mushrooms were ultimately mixed up with foraged mushrooms in a plastic container in her Leongatha pantry. She said it was this container of mixed mushrooms she later drew upon to remedy a "bland" mushroom paste for the beef Wellington lunch - with disastrous consequences. The court heard that after the lunch guests fell fatally ill, Erin was unable to identify the store to health officials, who were urgently chasing up information about potential death caps in circulation. Instead she offered a number of suburbs to those questioning her, variously identifying Oakleigh, Clayton, Mount Waverley or Glen Waverley. A council worker began visiting Asian-style grocery stores in the area. However, their efforts failed to find any product matching Erin's description and the health department concluded its investigation. Erin rejected the prosecution claim that the story about an Asian grocer was a lie created by her as part of her cover-up after the lunch. The day of the lunch, Erin finalised the special meal of individually parcelled beef Wellingtons for her guests. She rejected a prosecution claim that deviations to the recipe were made to ensure only her guests were served meals laced with deadly mushrooms. Erin told the court she and her guests ate from plates that may have been black, white, and red on top and black underneath and nobody was given any one particular plate. That account given to the court differs from that of surviving lunch guest Ian Wilkinson, who told the trial the guests had eaten from grey plates, while Erin had eaten from a smaller, orange-coloured plate. Ian also told the court that Erin had informed her guests she had been diagnosed with cancer and was worried about how to tell her children. Erin disputed that she had told her relatives a cancer diagnosis had been made, but agreed she had lied about possibly needing cancer treatment in the future. She told the court she did not have cancer and had told the lie to conceal private plans to have gastric-bypass surgery. "I was really embarrassed, 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. In the days after the lunch, the guests began falling ill. Erin told the court this included her, but also that she had binge eaten some cake and vomited shortly after her guests had left. Erin Patterson's Leongatha home, where she hosted the lunch. Photo: ABC News Ultimately, Erin and the four guests were transferred to hospitals in Melbourne, where Gail, Don and Heather later died. Ian survived after a weeks-long stay in intensive care. Doctors have told the court the medical tests which revealed signs of death cap poisoning in the four lunch guests did not show the same markers for Erin. The prosecution alleged Erin had faked her illness as part of her cover-up - a claim rejected by her lawyer, who said there were many valid reasons why she may not have fallen as ill as her guests. On Wednesday, having already been discharged from hospital in Melbourne, Erin made a trip to the local tip. This is where she dumped a food dehydrator. Erin told the court she'd taken the dehydrator to the tip because she was aware by that point that death cap mushrooms were the suspected source of poisoning in the meal, and she had been using the appliance to dehydrate foraged mushrooms. But she refuted the prosecution's suggestion that she had knowingly dehydrated toxic mushrooms. A week after the lunch, homicide detectives visited Erin at her Leongatha home and told her they were investigating the deadly lunch. In the 5 August search, they seized a number of devices, including a mobile phone which the court heard Erin had performed three factory resets on. One of these was carried out on the day of the search, which came days after Erin said Simon had accused her of poisoning his parents with mushrooms prepared in her dehydrator. "I knew that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator and I just panicked and didn't want them [police] to see them," Erin told the court. Hours after the police search, Erin ran the third factory reset remotely, as the phone sat in a police station in Melbourne. "It was really stupid, but I thought I wonder if they've been silly enough to leave it connected to the internet and so I hit factory reset to see what happened, and it did," she said. Detectives returned months later, when they ran a second search of her home, and ultimately laid murder and attempted murder charges against Erin Patterson in November. More than 18 months later, after jurors had heard weeks of evidence in a Gippsland court, Justice Christopher Beale gave his final directions before they retired to consider the verdicts. "You are the only ones in this court who can make a decision about these facts," he told the jury. The jury continues to deliberate. - ABC
Daily Mail
06-06-2025
- Daily Mail
I could hear gasps in the courtroom as the ‘mushroom poisoner' finally took the stand and revealed why she survived – when three others died: GUY ADAMS lays bare a lie by Erin Patterson even the prosecution hasn't mentioned
For five weeks, the fate of Erin Patterson has hinged on a single, contested question: how did she survive the toxic meal that left three of her guests dead and the fourth in a near-fatal coma? On Wednesday, we finally got the answer. Or rather, we got Erin's version of the answer, via a blow-by-blow account of the fateful day that she made beef wellington, using poisonous death cap mushrooms, then served it to members of her estranged husband Simon's family for lunch. It was the 50-year-old housewife's third day in the witness box of a tiny court in Morwell, a mining town roughly two hours' drive south-east of Australia's second city, Melbourne, and half an hour from her home in Leongatha, where these tragic events played out. Erin is standing trial for the murder of three of her guests: Simon's elderly parents Don and Gail, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, in a case that has drawn global attention to this corner of rural Victoria. She is also charged with the attempted murder of the fourth: Gail's husband Ian, a local Baptist pastor. The Crown's case is simple. It says she used the internet to locate and pick death cap mushrooms during the growing season, in April 2023, before preserving them in a food dehydrator. Three months later, she allegedly added them to a 'duxelles', or mushroom paté, used to make the four individual beef wellingtons she served to the alleged victims. Erin's own dish was, prosecutors claim, free from any poisonous fungi. She, however, insists otherwise, and has pleaded 'not guilty' to all charges. But prior to Monday's shock announcement that, in the words of her barrister Colin Mandy, 'the defence will call Erin Patterson', her case had been light on details of that deadly lunch. That has now changed. Erin Trudi Patterson, who had thus far spent this marathon trial sitting silently in the dock, occasionally dabbing her eyes with a tissue, has since spent five days, and more than 20 hours, giving evidence under oath. At times, she's seemed intelligent, composed and commanding. On others, frantic, evasive and downright dishonest. I've been there for almost every second, sometimes watching in person, from a few yards away, and sometimes from an overflow room across the first-floor landing of Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court where the small army of reporters and TV crews who are unable to fit into the half dozen Press seats are permitted to scrutinise the soap-opera proceedings via video link. It was here that, to gasps audible both inside and outside the courtroom, Erin sought on Wednesday afternoon to explain how, exactly, she managed to avoid falling ill. Twisting in her chair, and at times blinking as quickly as she spoke, the mother-of-two alleged that she'd been 'fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my adult life', which revolved largely around 'issues with body image' and weight gain. What's more, she claimed that since her 20s she had been secretly suffering from bulimia, an eating disorder characterised by binge eating and subsequent vomiting. A compulsion to gorge herself on food had, she added, struck shortly after her guests had departed from the fatal meal, on Saturday July 29, 2023. Describing how she had cleared away leftovers, including roughly two-thirds of an orange cake that Gail, 70, had brought for dessert, Erin told the jury: 'I kept cleaning up the kitchen and putting everything away and, um, I had a piece of cake.' There followed a short pause. 'And then,' she added, 'I had another piece of cake. And then another.' 'How many pieces of cake did you have?' asked Mandy. 'All of it,' came her reply. 'And what happened after you ate the cake?' 'I felt sick. I felt over-full. So I went to the toilets and brought it up again.' A few hours later, Patterson claims to have fallen ill with explosive diarrhoea. However, the fact she'd vomited up much of the beef wellington meant her symptoms were far less severe than the other guests. The four ended up in hospital the following day and swiftly fell into comas. Three would be dead by the end of the week from organ failure. Erin escaped unscathed, aside from an incident in which she was caught short the day after the meal, while driving along a local freeway with her son. 'I went off into the bush and went to the toilet,' she recounted. 'Then I cleaned myself up a little bit with tissues and put them in a dog poo bag.' The court heard they stopped at a service station where she dropped the bag into a bin. Erin's condition subsequently improved, and she appears to have been more or less back to normal by Tuesday. That's what she told her counsel Colin Mandy, at least. His defence will now be built around the ingenious proposition that the 'Mushroom Cook' was, effectively, saved by bulimia. Importantly, Erin will also contest claims that she used a different coloured plate to her four lunch guests, in what the prosecution suggested was an attempt to ensure she didn't accidentally eat a poisonous beef wellington. Ian Wilkinson, the sole surviving guest, has told the court that they ate off grey plates while Erin used an orange one. Police photographs of her home taken a few days later appear to show two grey plates adjacent to the dishwasher. Erin insists, however, that she doesn't own any grey plates and instead used 'a couple of black, a couple of white, and one that's red on top and black underneath'. Whether the jury agrees is, of course, another matter. And that brings us to the two-and-a-half days Erin has since spent being subjected to hostile cross-examination by prosecutor Nanette Rogers, an austere character who approaches her task with the severity of a schoolmistress on the wrong end of a vulgar classroom prank. Yet this has been an altogether more gruelling – and more combative – experience. Erin is occasionally prone to tearfulness, and both sides accept that she has, at times, been a prodigious liar. With this perhaps in mind, Rogers has yet to address her alleged bulimia, but has instead focused on a number of intriguing sub-plots that form part of the prosecution case. One involves the provenance of the death cap mushrooms, which are relatively rare in this region of Australia, but sometimes grow under oak trees in the rainy months of April and May. According to mobile phone data analysed by police experts, Patterson visited two nearby small towns, Outtrim on April 22, and Loch on 28. At both locations, sightings of death caps had been logged a few days earlier on an internet site named iNaturalist. Analysis of a computer seized from Patterson's home suggests she had used iNaturalist and had used it to search for local locations of death caps a year before. In a gripping exchange yesterday, Rogers directly asked a strikingly evasive Patterson if she'd been responsible for those web searches. 'It's possible. I don't know,' came her response. Did she have an interest in death cap mushrooms? 'Depends what you mean by interest,' came her reply. As to whether she'd been to Loch on April 28, Patterson stated: 'I don't know.' Asked if she'd gone there to look for death cap mushrooms, she replied simply: 'Disagree.' Another sub-plot involves a food dehydrator, which Patterson had purchased on April 28, the day she allegedly visited Loch. The machine was used to preserve field mushrooms, including specimens Patterson bought at supermarkets and then ground into powder to add to muffins and other food she prepared for her children. But laboratory tests of the machine found traces of death caps on it too. The prosecution argues that the dehydrator was deliberately used to preserve the deadly fungi, so Patterson could use them to poison her relatives months later. But Erin insists that the death caps were foraged by mistake and, after being dried, transferred into a Tupperware container filled with dehydrated mushrooms from a Chinese supermarket. She claims to have then used products from that container when preparing her 'duxelles', after taste tests of the initial mixture revealed it to be 'a little bland'. In other words, it was all a terrible accident. Of particular interest, given this debate, are photographs found on a Samsung tablet seized from Erin's home. Taken in early May, they show trays of mushrooms being weighed on scales adjacent to the device. An expert witness, Dr Tom May, has testified with 'a high degree of confidence' that they were death caps. During cross-examination, Rogers suggested to Erin that these images depicted her 'weighing these mushrooms, these death cap mushrooms, so that you could calculate the weight required for the administration of a fatal dose for one person'. She added: 'Agree or disagree?' Erin, seemingly distressed at the question, responded: 'Disagree.' 'And the weight required for five fatal doses, for five people, agree or disagree?' Again, she responded: 'Disagree.' Whatever those images actually show, both sides accept that Erin then ended up disposing of the dehydrator at a local tip on the Wednesday after the fatal lunch. The prosecution says this was part of an effort to hide evidence. But Erin claims instead that she dumped the device following a conversation with her estranged husband Simon 48 hours earlier in which he accused her of having poisoned his parents. 'Simon seemed to be of the mind that maybe this was intentional and I just got really scared,' she told the court. 'Child Protection were coming to my house that afternoon and... I was scared they'd remove the children.' Despite her four lunch guests by this stage being seriously ill, Erin admitted that she repeatedly lied to doctors and public health investigators over the ensuing days by telling them that her beef wellingtons had not contained foraged mushrooms. 'I lied because I was afraid I would be held responsible,' was how she put it, wiping away a tear. She further claimed to have decided to conduct a series of 'factory resets' to wipe information from her various mobile telephones and other devices because: 'I knew there were photos on there of mushrooms in the dehydrator so I just panicked and didn't want them to see them.' Erin's relationship with Simon, a civil engineer she married in 2007, increasingly appears to be of central importance to the case. The couple, who had separated in 2015, appear to have enjoyed a largely cordial relationship until late 2022, when they began to argue over money and the question of who ought to pay their two children's school fees. That December, Erin had asked Don and Gail, her parents-in-law, to intervene in the dispute. However they had declined to get involved, a decision that left her deeply upset, judging by messages she posted in Facebook chat groups in which she'd portrayed her husband as sinister and manipulative. 'This family I swear to f****** God' read one such post.' 'I'm sick of this sh**, I want nothing to do with them... So f*** 'em,' went another. These and other hostile messages were presented to Erin in court this week as evidence that she'd fallen out with her in-laws prior to the fatal lunch, to which Simon was also invited but pulled out at the last moment. Perhaps the oddest of all this week's courtroom arguments involved the circumstances in which Erin invited her guests to the lunch in the first place. Ian Wilkinson, the survivor who gave evidence for the prosecution, says that Erin had told her guests she wanted to discuss a 'medical issue'. And over pudding, he recalled her telling them she'd been diagnosed with a 'very serious' and 'life-threatening' cancer. 'I didn't quite catch what she said but I thought it was... ovarian or cervical cancer,' he said. 'She was anxious about telling the kids. She was asking our advice about that.' In fact, Erin was not suffering from cancer. The prosecution claims that she faked the diagnosis in order to 'ensure and explain why her children would not be present at the lunch' and to lure the remaining guests to the event. During a deeply awkward period of cross-examination, Erin variously denied and then admitted that she'd lied to her lunch guests about the condition. She then sought to explain the behaviour by claiming she had been planning to have gastric bypass surgery, but was 'ashamed' about her weight, so did not tell anyone. 'I was really embarrassed about it, so 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. Pressed for details, she claimed to have 'an appointment [booked] in early September at the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne' for a 'pre-surgery' assessment, though couldn't remember 'the exact date' it was due to happen. That is, perhaps, not surprising, since this reporter has established that the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne turns out to be a cosmetic dermatology facility which doesn't offer gastric bypass or any other major medical procedures. Ms Rogers may or may not be aware of this pressing fact, but she has yet to raise it with the jury. So they for now remain blissfully unaware that the defendant has told yet another porkie. Perhaps the whole thing will be chewed over next week, when the cross-examination is set to continue. Perhaps the Mushroom Murder trial's focus will pivot on to other matters. Either way, we are surely due more fireworks as this case simmers to a climax.
