Patterson accepts there were death cap mushrooms in the food Patterson said Tuesday that she accepts there must have been death cap mushrooms in the meal she made, an admission she had long withheld.
The Victorian government issued a warning in early 2023 that death cap mushrooms were growing in the region.
She admitted to disposing of the device after the lunch, but said she didn’t know death cap mushrooms had been in it.
She said the possibility only occurred to her days later, as her relatives’ conditions deteriorated and toxicology tests confirmed death cap mushroom poisoning.
Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson died on Aug. 4, and Donald Patterson died the following day.
During several days of testimony in court, the Australian woman who is accused of using toxic mushrooms in a home-cooked meal to kill her estranged husband’s elderly relatives is sharing her story and dropping bombshells.
The 50-year-old Erin Patterson is charged with purposefully adding death cap mushrooms, which are among the most deadly in the world, to a beef Wellington dish she served during a luncheon in July 2023 at her home in the small town of Leongatha, 80 miles from Melbourne.
The next day, her husband’s parents, aunt, and uncle were all admitted to the hospital with gastrointestinal symptoms, and three of them passed away the week after from multiple organ failure and altered liver function brought on by Amanita mushroom poisoning.
Although she was admitted to the hospital for a short time, Patterson’s symptoms were different from those of her visitors. She testified that after eating two-thirds of a cake they brought, she puked later that day.
The two-time mother, Patterson, has entered a not guilty plea to three murder charges and one attempted murder charge, and she disputes that the poisoning was intentional. She could be imprisoned for life if found guilty.
Patterson has acknowledged lying about some aspects of her story as her triple murder trial in the Victoria State Supreme Court has progressed. These include the cancer diagnosis she invited her guests to hear about, her previously unreported mushroom foraging hobby, and the fact that she once owned a food dehydrator but promptly threw it away during the investigation.
On Friday, prosecutor Nanette Rogers questioned her, saying, “Even after you were released from the hospital, you did not tell a single person that there may have been foraged mushrooms used in the meal.”. Rather than getting up, you drove your kids to school on time. and took a car home. After that, the dehydrator was discarded. “.”.
“Correct,” said Patterson.
At first, it was anticipated that the trial, which started in April, would take about six weeks. On Thursday, Justice Christopher Beale stated that before the jury is sequestered for deliberations, there are still a number of steps left in the proceedings, possibly including hearing additional evidence.
“And then the boot is on the other foot, because none of you can tell me how long you will be in deliberations,” Beale stated. “You will take as much time as you require. How long is a piece of string? “.”.
From Patterson’s week on the stand, these are some of the most important lessons learned.
1. . Behind their backs, Patterson voiced her displeasure with her in-laws.
Erin and Simon Patterson were married in 2007 but separated and then reconciled several times before ending their marriage in 2015. They maintained their friendship and close communication, seeing each other at church, sharing custody of their two kids, and even taking trips together.
Despite being invited to the fateful lunch, Simon turned down the invitation the previous evening.
In court, Patterson stated that she was friendly with her 70-year-old in-laws, Gail and Donald Patterson, who “treated me like their own daughter.”. “..”.
However, both Patterson and the prosecutors agreed that things began to go south between her and Simon in 2022. Patterson claimed that she asked him to begin paying child support after seeing that he listed himself as single on his tax return, and he complied. But they kept arguing about related matters, such as which school their children should go to and who should cover the costs.
Regarding the contested school fees, Rogers asked Patterson to read from Signal messages she had sent to Donald and Gail on Thursday. Patterson refuted the claim that she was requesting payment from her in-laws to Simon.
Patterson stated, “I wanted Don and Gail to help Simon and I communicate better about it, whether I communicated it well or not.”. “I believed that Simon might behave differently if he knew that Don and Gail were aware of his actions. “..”.
But according to the prosecution, Patterson became enraged when Don and Gail sided with Simon.
Patterson was questioned by the prosecution on Friday regarding Facebook messages she sent to friends in late 2022 in which she bemoaned Simon’s parents. One such message read, “Don messaged to say he and Gail don’t want to get involved in the financial things but just hope we will pray for the kids,” and included an eye-rolling emoji, which Patterson denies. She wrote elsewhere, “I swear to f****** god, this family. “.”.
There was another message that read, “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*** em.”.
Patterson claimed she was just “venting” when questioned, denying that the messages accurately represented her feelings for Don and Gail. Rogers, however, charged that she had “two faces: a private face reflected in her Facebook messages and a public face of seeming to have a good relationship with Don and Gail.”.
I had a good relationship with Don and Gail,” Patterson said, before responding, “Are you asking me to agree if I had two faces?”. “.”.
2. Patterson disputes revealing her cancer to her guests.
Don and Gail Patterson, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, and her husband Ian Wilkinson, 68, were invited to lunch by Patterson, according to the prosecution, to talk about some health problems she was having and how to tell her children about them. Before her guests arrived, she dropped them off for lunch and a movie with a friend.
At lunch, Patterson informed the group that she had been diagnosed with cancer after noticing a bump on her elbow, and she sought advice on whether to tell her children, according to Ian Wilkinson, the only survivor.
Patterson admitted to lying to Gail in court on Thursday about the lump on her elbow in the weeks leading up to the lunch and that she had no health concerns to disclose to her guests or children.
“I didn’t have a legitimate medical reason, no, that’s true,” Patterson stated.
Patterson denied telling her lunch guests she had cancer on multiple occasions when questioned directly, which runs counter to Wilkinson’s account. She did, however, acknowledge that at the conclusion of the lunch, “I’m not proud of this, but I led them to believe that I might be needing some treatment,” in reference to a prior scar with ovarian cancer.
She admitted that she couldn’t recall exactly what she was saying, but she did know that she was trying to convey that she was being investigated for ovarian cancer and might require treatment in the future. “I can’t say that I used those exact words, but that’s what I recall wishing to say. “..”.
According to Patterson, she had an appointment scheduled for that September to investigate gastric bypass surgery because she had long battled low self-esteem due to her weight.
The woman explained, “I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought maybe letting them think 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.”.
In response to Rogers’ suggestion that Patterson never intended to explain her cancer lie “because you thought that the lunch guests would die,” Patterson said, “That’s not true.”. “,”.
3. . Patterson acknowledges that death cap mushrooms were present in the meal.
Patterson, who had long denied the existence of death cap mushrooms in the food she prepared, acknowledged on Tuesday that they must have been present.
Patterson admitted to using two different types of mushrooms for her dish in the immediate aftermath of the incident: fresh from the grocery store and dried from a local Chinese grocer, though she was unable to recall which one she used. She denied using a dehydrator and mushroom foraging in police interviews.
Although her attorney, Colin Mandy, acknowledged those had been falsehoods on the first day of the trial, Patterson “denies that she ever deliberately sought out death cap mushrooms.”. “..”.
On the stand, Patterson stated that she began gathering mushrooms at local botanical gardens and trails in early 2020 and joined Facebook groups to identify and learn about the various types.
In early 2023, the Victorian government warned that death cap mushrooms were proliferating in the area. Patterson stated time and again that she had no memory of using the naturalist website that indicated the location of the toxic mushrooms.
Patterson denied prosecutors’ claim that she went to a nearby town in April 2023 to gather death cap mushrooms, although she admitted purchasing a food dehydrator in that same month. She acknowledged that she threw away the gadget after lunch, but she denied knowing it contained death cap mushrooms.
“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 as she was making the beef Wellington, which is usually covered in pastry and finished with mushroom paste. “..”.
Although Patterson admitted that she didn’t intentionally include death cap mushrooms in the meal, she now believes there’s a possibility that some of her foraged mushrooms were in that Tupperware as well.
She claimed that the possibility didn’t occur to her until days later, when toxicology tests verified death cap mushroom poisoning and her relatives’ health worsened. When she brought up her dehydrator with Simon in the hospital, she claimed that he asked, “Is that how you poisoned my parents?”.
His remark, she claimed, made her remember the dried foraged mushrooms she had placed in it weeks before.
Since Child Protection was involved and Simon appeared to believe that this might have been done on purpose, Patterson said, “I was beginning to think, ‘What if they’d gone in the container with the Chinese mushrooms? Maybe that had happened.'”. I suddenly became quite afraid. “..”.
4. . Patterson claims she was afraid and told lies to the police.
According to prosecutors, despite medical professionals’ confirmation that the patients had “serious toxin syndrome caused by ingestion of amanita phalloides mushrooms,” they were not given the antidote right away because there was insufficient proof that they had consumed the mushrooms.
Patterson acknowledged on Friday that she had not discussed the potential for the tainted mushrooms with anyone. Rogers questioned why, in August, she hadn’t notified medical authorities right away. 1. .
“I was informed that individuals were receiving treatment for potential death cap mushroom toxicity,” Patterson responded. Thus, that was already taking place. “..”.
Rather, she revealed that after dropping her children off at school the following day, she went home and disposed of the dehydrator by taking it to a tip, which is a second-hand store at a waste facility.
August saw the deaths of Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson. 4, and the next day Donald Patterson passed away. August saw Ian Wilkison extubated. 14 and sent to treatment in September. 11.
The dehydrator was disposed of “in the context of thinking that maybe mushrooms that I’d foraged, or the meal I prepared was responsible for making people sick,” she said, adding that when she found out about the deaths, “it was this stupid, knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying.”. “..”.
She continued, “I should not have done it, but I was just afraid.”.
During the police investigation, Patterson also claimed to have factory reset her phone because “I panicked and didn’t want [detectives] to see the photos of the dehydrator and mushrooms that were in there.”. “.”.
Prosecutors nevertheless used images of wild mushrooms being weighed on a scale that were taken on her phone in April 2023. Patterson refuted their suggestion that she had done so in order to determine a lethal dosage.
