The alleged murder scandal that gripped the world is finally getting its day in court: the trial of accused triple killer Erin ‘Mushroom Lady’ Patterson has begun. Already, the court has heard that Patterson admitted foraging for mushrooms and ‘hiding powdered mushrooms in everything’, lying about having cancer, dumping a food dehydrator in a panic after the deaths and lying to police after her lunch guests fell critically ill. And that was just day one.
A Supreme Court jury heard claims that Patterson served beef Wellington on different coloured plates to her own, deliberately poisoning her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, local pastor Ian Wilkinson and his wife, Heather.
Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, told the jury Patterson had lured the couples to her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023, on the “pretence” she had been diagnosed with cancer and needed advice about how to tell her children.
However, defence lawyer Colin Mandy, SC, said the death cap mushroom poisoning – which killed the Pattersons and Heather Wilkinson and left Ian Wilkinson in intensive care – was nothing more than “a tragedy and a terrible accident”.
For those who may not be familiar with the case, here’s the breakdown. In July, 2023, Erin Patterson, in the Victorian rural town of Leongatha, hosted a lunch for her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, his parents and his mother’s sister and her husband. Simon cancelled and did not attend the lunch.
Patterson’s children were also not present. The reason given was that she needed advice on how to tell the children she had cancer. Yet, the court heard, Erin Patterson never had cancer.
Patterson served her guests a beef Wellington, made with mushrooms she allegedly foraged from nearby forests (Patterson disputes this, claiming they were bought at an unnamed Asian grocer in Melbourne). Guests recalled later that she served her own portion on a tan or orange plate, while the three guests were served on grey plates. “I noticed Erin had put her food on a different plate to us. Her plate had colour on it. I wondered why that was,” victim Heather Wilkinson told family before her death.
Within hours of the lunch, all of her guests fell seriously ill. Erin Patterson also attended hospital, claiming to feel unwell. But she left, telling staff she was not prepared to stay. She was later found to not have any significant illness.
Three of her guests died, while one survived after a lengthy stay in hospital. The cause of death was discovered to be highly toxic death cap mushrooms used in the meal.
The court also heard that in the months leading up to the fatal lunch, in March, April and May 2023, Patterson had begun posting messages in a Facebook chat group about dehydrating mushrooms including sharing in the chat that she had bought a food dehydrator. She posted photos about it in the chat, including a photograph of the dehydrator on her kitchen bench.
“The accused explained in the chat that she’d been dehydrating mushrooms, blitzing them into powder, and hiding powdered mushrooms in everything,” Rogers said.
The jury heard this included using powdered mushrooms in chocolate brownies without her children knowing.
This dehydrator, Rogers said, was bought in Leongatha on April 28, 2023, 2½ hours before the data from Patterson’s mobile phone suggested she was in the Loch area, where a person had posted online they’d seen death cap mushrooms growing under a tree.
Some time after the deaths, Patterson dumped the dehydrator, in a plastic bag, at a local landfill. Police searched the site the next day and recovered the dehydrator, which was found to have material from death cap mushrooms in it.
Rogers said after the deaths, a police investigation uncovered Patterson had reset her mobile phone to factory settings three times, including once while police were raiding her home on August 5, 2023.
Police also seized other electronic devices then and during a second search on November 3 the same year, but one of her phones was never found.
“You will hear about what was located on those devices during the course of this trial,” Rogers said.
In the months before the deaths, Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, had also fallen seriously ill and been hospitalised. Attempted murder charges relating to that incident have been dropped.
Simon Patterson was the first person to give evidence, yesterday. He described the circumstances of their marriage, its breakdown and its aftermath. After inheriting $2 million from her grandmother, Erin bought a separate house and moved into it. Simon stated that the separation was amicable until late 2022, when Erin discovered his previous year’s tax return, which noted that they were separated. Erin was concerned that it would affect her Family Tax Benefit and that she would have to start claiming child support from him.
“That was probably the first thing that made me feel that there was a substantial change in our relationship,” he said.
