No doubt things will be a bit quieter at Latrobe Valley Law Courts in rural Victoria next week. That’s because, while the trial of Erin Patterson still has a couple of weeks to run, Patterson herself this week finished giving evidence under cross-examination. Her last day in the witness box followed the same pattern as the previous ones: mostly Patterson denying various accusations and explaining her inconsistencies and outright lies as the result of panic.
It’s fairly certain that, if most of us hosted a lunch and everyone started dying that night, we’d panic, too. The question for the court to decide is whether it was the panic of innocent person caught in horribly implicating circumstances, or the panic of a murderer who got caught.
Erin Patterson is accused of lacing a beef Wellington meal with poisonous death cap mushrooms to kill three of her estranged husband’s elderly relatives at a lunch at her home in 2023. An attempted murder charge relates to the fourth guest, who survived after months of intensive care in hospital.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
[Defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC] questioned her about a web search for death cap mushrooms, which the court previously heard was made from a computer in her home.
“I don’t specifically remember doing it that day, but it’s possible it was me and possible that’s part of the process I went to to see if they grew in South Gippsland,” she said.
Erin denied ever foraging for mushrooms in Loch and Outtrim and denied seeing posts on iNaturalist, which reported death caps growing in the area […]
The court [was] shown a transcript of Erin’s interview with police, where she said she hadn’t dehydrated food before.
Erin says that was a lie.
In the same interview, she was asked if she knew anything about a dehydrator in her house or owned one, and she responded no.
Those were lies too, Erin says.
“I had disposed of it a few days earlier in the context of thinking that maybe mushrooms that I’d foraged, or the meal I’d prepared, was responsible for making people sick,” she says.
Patterson denied lying about buying mushrooms from an Asian grocer in the Oakleigh area in April, 2023, or that she lied about those mushrooms being used in the meal. She also stated that all six beef Wellingtons were the same and that there was just one batch of mushrooms cooked. Each of the five she served, she testified, were the same.
She also denied lying about being sick herself after the lunch.
Erin Patterson has denied pretending to be seriously unwell after the lunch due to concerns it would look “suspicious” if she did not appear sick like her lunch guests.
Senior crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC has taken the court through a table showing Ms Patterson’s potassium results from after the lunch.
The results varied from within the normal reference range to on the lower end of the reference range […]
Dr Rogers said Ms Patterson “deliberately tried to make it seem like you were” unwell, and did so because “you knew you had not eaten death cap mushrooms … and you knew how suspicious it would look if you did not seem sick like your guests”.
Ms Patterson disagreed with the suggestion.
According to Patterson, it’s other people who are mistaken – not that she’s lying. Those include Leongatha Hospital nurse Kylie Ashton:
The court was told Ms Ashton had said Ms Patterson told her she wasn’t prepared to be admitted and needed to leave.
Ms Patterson disputed this, saying: “I don’t think I used those words.”
Also mistaken, she says, is lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson, who gave evidence that the four guests were given different coloured plates to Patterson’s own.
Dr Rogers took Ms Patterson to her estranged husband’s evidence at the start of the trial where he recounted two conversations with Heather Wilkinson.
[Simon Patterson] told the court the morning after the lunch, Heather looked puzzled and remarked that she’d noticed Ms Patterson ate from a differently coloured plate to the rest of the guests.
Simon said Heather queried if Ms Patterson was “short on crockery” […]
Ms Patterson disagreed with this, suggesting Ian had given incorrect evidence.
Patterson also disputes her children’s testimony that she ate leftovers from the lunch with them that night. Patterson claims she only ate a bowl of cereal because she was feeling unwell.
Cross-examination over recent days has also focused on Patterson’s missing mobile phone.
Senior crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC has suggested Erin Patterson deliberately concealed her real phone from police to ensure they did not see incriminating data related to death cap mushrooms.
Throughout the trial, the court has heard evidence relating to two phones owned by Ms Patterson, known as Phone A and Phone B.
The prosecution allege Ms Patterson’s true phone was Phone A, which has never been recovered by police […]
Dr Rogers also suggested Ms Patterson swapped a SIM card out of Phone A while police were in her home.
As for Phone B, it was subjected to three factory resets in the days after the lunch, one of which was performed remotely after it had been seized by police.
Dr Rogers suggested the factory resets on Phone B and handing it to police as if it was her “usual mobile phone” was “all about hiding the contents of your usual phone, Phone A”.
Ms Patterson disagreed.
With questioning finished, prosecution and defence will close their cases to the jury in coming days. After which, the judge will deliver a final address to the jurors ahead of them being sent out to consider their verdict.
