Erin Patterson trial: Mushroom cook gives evidence of moment she realised she may have used foraged mushrooms

The Victorian mother accused of murdering three of her in-laws has detailed the moment she began to fear she foraged the death cap mushrooms used in a beef wellington lunch.

Erin Patterson, 50, returned to court on Wednesday morning for her third day in the witness box, becoming tearful and wiping her eyes with a tissue at points.

She told the court that on August 1, she was in a Melbourne hospital explaining to her children they would need to be checked out by doctors after eating leftovers of the lunch.

Ms Patterson said the conversation prompted a discussion with her daughter about hiding dehydrated mushrooms in muffins.

When her children weren’t in the room, she said her husband Simon Patterson turned to her.

“He said to me ‘is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator’?” she recalled.

“I said ‘of course not’.”

Ms Patterson said the exchange caused her to begin to reflect on the mushrooms used, and that she may have stored dried, wild mushrooms with store-bought mushrooms.

“So it got me thinking about all the times I’d used it (the dehydrator) … and how I had dried both mushrooms in it weeks earlier and I was starting to think what if they had gone into the container with the Chinese mushrooms, maybe that had happened,” she said.

“I was scared of the conversation that might flow about the meal and the dehydrator and I was just scared that they would blame me for it.”

Ms Patterson said after she was released from hospital, on August 2, she took the dehydrator to the tip.

She admitted in the days following she did not tell anyone about her foraging suspicion and maintained she used mushrooms from Woolworths and an Asian grocer in Melbourne.

“I still thought it was a possibility, but I knew it wasn’t the only possibility,” she said. 

Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder relating to the lunch with her estranged husband’s family.

Simon’s parents, Don and Gail, and aunt Heather Wilkinson died in the week after the lunch due to death cap mushroom poisoning, while Ms Wilkinson’s husband Ian survived.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately spiked the meal while her defence argues the case is a tragic accident.

For the last two days, Ms Patterson has been giving her own version of events as to what happened on July 29, 2023.

This week, she told the court that she accepted there had to have been poisonous mushrooms in the beef wellington she served, and dried mushrooms used in its creation had sat in her pantry for months due to their “pungent” aroma.

Describing the process of making the dish on Wednesday, Ms Patterson said she primarily used mushrooms from Woolworths but the duxelles tasted a bit bland.

“I tasted it a few times and it seemed bland to me, so I decided to put the dried mushrooms in the pantry,” she said.

“At the time I believe it was just the mushrooms I got from the grocer in Melbourne … now I think there was the possibility there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Erin claims she was ‘scared’ of husband, changed phone numberGiving evidence, Ms Patterson was asked by Mr Mandy about a conversation she had with childcare worker Katrina Cripps on August 2 after she was discharged from hospital. She told the jury she talked to Ms Cripps about changing her phone number.

“I was becoming concerned about Simon’s behaviour and his allegations,” she said.

“I was concerned for my security, so I wanted him not to be able to contact me anymore.”

Ms Patterson was then taken to evidence the phone she handed to police on August 5 was factory reset four times.

Dubbed Phone B in the trial, it’s alleged this was not Ms Patterson’s primary phone in the lead up to the lunch.

She told the court the first reset, on February 12, was done by her son after she gave him the phone because his was damaged.

The second, on August 2, she explains, was to wipe her son’s data from the device so she could begin using it.

Ms Patterson agreed she reset the phone a third time on August 5 because she “panicked” and did not want police to find photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

The fourth factory reset, which occured on August 6 while the phone was in custody, Ms Patterson said was because she wondered if police were “silly enough” to leave the device connected to the internet.

“So I hit factory reset to see what happened, and it did,” she said.

Ms Pattersons said what is called Phone A in the trial was damaged so she decided to swap it out at the same time as she changed SIM.

She told the court it was sitting on a window sill and missed by police but she threw it in a skip bin in September.

Mushroom cook vomited after lunch: court

After the lunch, Ms Patterson told the court that she cleaned up and then ate some leftover orange cake her mother-in-law Gail Patterson had brought.

Her voice faltering, Ms Patterson said there was about two-thirds of the cake left after her guests left.

“And then I ate a piece of cake, then another piece of cake and then another,” she said.

Asked by her barrister Colin Mandy SC how much she ate, Ms Patterson said “all of it”.

“I felt sick, I felt overfull, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again,” she said.

Giving evidence on Tuesday, Ms Patterson told the jury that she had struggled with her diet all her life and had been binge eating and purging since her 20s.

“In some intense periods it could have been daily, then it could be weekly or monthly. It varied in intensity,” she said.

Ms Patterson claimed no one knew.

‘Not proud’: Erin lied to in-laws about cancer concern

Asked by Mr Mandy what the lunch guests discussed, Ms Patterson told the court that she’d “let them believe” that she was concerned about ovarian cancer.

‘Right at the end of the meal and I mentioned that I’d had, I had an issue a year or two earlier where I thought I had ovary cancer,” she said.

“I’m not proud about this, but I let them to believe I might be needing some treatment in regards to that in the next weeks and months.”

Earlier in the day, she told the court that she’d lied to Don and Gail in late June about receiving various testing for a lump on her elbow.

She claimed that she was planning to get a gastric bypass to deal with her weight concerns and saw the opportunity to receive support from her in-laws by pretending she was receiving medical care for the lump.

“Letting them believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment … I wouldn’t have to tell them the real reason,” she said.

Asked why she lied, Ms Patterson said she was “really embarrassed”.

“I was ashamed of the fact I didn’t have control over my body and what I ate,” she said.

“I was ashamed about that, I was embarrassed, I didn’t want to tell anybody but I shouldn’t have lied to them.”

Erin describes shock at mushroom question

The alleged poisoner told the court she began feeling ill the afternoon following the meal on July 29.

The following day, Ms Patterson said, the illness continued but wasn’t as bad as the night.

“I still had nausea I still had diarrhoea, it wasn’t as bad as the early hours of the morning,” she said.

She said the afternoon of July 30, she and her two children jumped in the car for the hour and a half drive to Tyabb where her son was scheduled for a flying lesson.

About half an hour into the trip, Ms Patterson said she pulled over on the South Gippsland Hwy and ran into the bushland to relieve herself.

“I cleaned myself up with tissues, put them in a dog poo bag and put them into the handbag,” she said.

Earlier in the trial, the jury saw CCTV footage from a BP service station in Caldermeade, where Ms Patterson stopped and visited the bathroom for 9 seconds before buying items and leaving.

“I put the dog poo bag with the soiled tissues in the bin,” she said.

Ms Patterson said the lesson was cancelled, so she returned home where she served her children the leftovers from the meal, with the pastry and mushrooms scrapped off.

“I thought I’d chance some food so I made myself a bowel of cereal but it didn’t go down well,” she said.

The following day she told the court she dropped her children off at the bus stop before deciding to head to hospital.

In the waiting room, about 8am on July 31, she told the court Dr Chris Webster popped his head in and apologised for the delay.

“We’ve got two critically ill people in here,” she recalled him saying.

Ms Patterson said after she mentioned her name, Dr Webster said “we’ve been expecting you”.

She told the court he began questioning her about the ingredients in the meal and revealed it was suspected Don and Gail had death cap mushroom poisoning.

“I was shocked but confused as well, I was just expecting to come in for saline for gastro,” she said.

“I didn’t see how death cap mushroom could be in the meal.”

Why mushroom cook made beef dish: court

Ms Patterson told the court that she chose to make beef wellington because her mother did it for “important occasions”.

Quizzed on why she decided to make a beef wellington, Ms Patterson said she “went through a process” but decided to follow a Recipetin Eats recipe.

She said it was the first time she made the dish.

“I remember on really important occasions my mum would make a beef wellington, so I thought I’d give it a go too,” she said

Ms Patterson told the court that she followed the recipe roughly but made changes, such as making individual portions rather than a log because she couldn’t find a large enough cut of meat.

Erin describes serving meal to guests

After taking the jury through the process of how she prepared the beef wellington, Ms Patterson was taken to how the dish was served.

She told the court she used “just the dinner plates I had”, including two white plates, two black plates, a plate that’s red on top and black underneath, and a multi-coloured plate.

Asked if she owned any other plates, such as grey plates, Ms Patterson said “no I didn’t”.

Earlier in the trial, lunch survivor Mr Wilkinson described the four lunch guests eating off large grey plates, while Ms Patterson had her meal off an orange or tan smaller plate.

She told the court that she plated up five beef wellingtons with mashed potato and green beans on her kitchen bench.

She turned around and began heating up packet gravy, she said.

“I think I used one of those premade sachets, I didn’t want to risk a gravy problem,” she told the jury.

“I grabbed the last plate off the bench and sat at the table.

“Ian said Gail and Heather grabbed two plates each, I accept that happened.”

Mushroom photos in cook’s murder trial

Returning to the witness box on Wednesday, Ms Patterson was shown dozens of digital photos found in her home.

The images depict a variety of wild mushroom, some growing, others picked and sitting on newspaper or paper towel in a kitchen.

She was questioned by Mr Mandy if she remembered taking the images.

“Yes, I did, it was early in 2020,” she said.

“I couldn’t be specific about the date, but it was in the first Covid lockdown.”

Ms Patterson identified other photos of her children out walking and her driveway in Korumburra.

Alleged poisoner became interested in foraging during Covid

After prosecutors concluded their case earlier this week, Mr Mandy called his client as a witness and Ms Patterson began giving evidence.

Over two days she answered extensive questions about her relationships with Simon Patterson and his family, health concerns, financial situation and her love of mushrooms.

Shortly before the jury was sent home on Tuesday, Ms Patterson agreed that her lunch “must” have contained the poisonous mushrooms.

She told the court when preparing the dish, she used fresh mushrooms purchased from the local Leongatha Woolworths and dried mushrooms purchased months earlier in April from an Asian grocer in Melbourne.

Ms Patterson said the dried mushrooms had been initially bought for a pasta dish but she did not use them at the time because they has a “very pungent” aroma.

Instead, she told the jury, she brought them home and stored them in a Tupperware container in the pantry.

She also confirmed she’d begun foraging for wild mushrooms in 2020 and had purchased a dehydrator to preserve mushrooms in early 2023.

“I liked eating wild mushrooms, but it’s a very small season and you can’t keep them in the fridge,” she said.

Ms Patterson told the jury she would store dried mushrooms in her pantry.

“Generally, I would put them into a container that I already sort of had going with Woolies mushrooms and whatnot in there,” she said.

The final question Ms Patterson was asked of the day was if she had a memory of putting wild mushrooms in May or June 2023 into a container that already contained mushrooms

“Yes, I did do that,” she said.

The trial continues.