The six-week trial of Erin ‘Mushroom Lady’ Patterson continues in the Victorian Supreme Court this week, with the only surviving guest from the fateful weekend lunch in August, 2023, Ian Wilkinson, whose wife Heather, sister to Erin Patterson’s mother-in-law Gail, died a week after the lunch, taking the stand on Tuesday.
As Wilkinson told the court, it all began routinely enough: a lunch invitation and an ordinary Saturday morning for a retired couple in a semi-rural township. Breakfast at home, heading down the street to buy the Sunday paper and a coffee at a local cafe. At a little after 12, Ian and Heather Wilkinson were picked up by Erin Patterson’s in-laws: Heather’s sister Gail and her husband Don Patterson.
When they arrived at Erin Patterson’s house half an hour later, the first inklings that things might not be what they seemed began. First, they learned that Patterson’s estranged husband Simon wouldn’t be there. Then, Erin Patterson seemed at pains not to let them see the lunch they were about to be served.
During the conversation, Erin mentioned there was a pantry behind the wall in the kitchen area.
“Heather was very interested in pantries at that time, because we’d just built one at home,” Ian says […]
“I’d noticed that Erin was very reluctant about the visit to the pantry.”
It wasn’t the only thing Erin was reluctant about.
The jury hears that Heather and Gail offered to help Erin plate the food, but she rejected the offer and did it all herself at the bench […]
There were four large, grey dinner plates – and one smaller plate in a different colour.
“It was an orangey-tan colour,” he says.
Ian says Gail picked up two of the grey plates and placed them on the table, and Heather took the other two. Erin took the unique plate and placed it at her seat.
Still, nothing particularly sinister. The rest of the lunch proceeded as you would expect a family lunch to. It was when lunch was over that the first really unusual thing occurred.
Erin told her guests she had cancer and was very concerned.
“She believed it was very serious, life-threatening,” Ian recalls.
“She was anxious about telling the kids. She was asking our advice about that.”
There was only one problem: what the guests didn’t know was that Erin Patterson didn’t have cancer. Why she lied about it is a key part of the prosecution case: that Patterson made up the story as a ruse to make sure her children weren’t at the fatal lunch.
Later that night, when all the guests had returned home, the first signs that something truly sinister was afoot began. Ian, a pastor at Korumburra Baptist Church, prepared for the next morning’s service, then tried to sleep. Neither he nor his wife Heather managed to fall asleep, he says.
“But Heather got up abruptly, out of the bed and made her way to the laundry, and I could hear her vomiting.”
It wasn’t long after Heather got out of bed that Ian felt the need to vomit, the jury heard.
“It continued right through the night. We had vomiting and diarrhoea.”
The illness continued through the night. Both Wilkinsons ‘parked’ themselves near separate toilets through the house. Suspecting the eye fillet used in the beef Wellington served at lunch, Heather Wilkinson rang the Pattersons and learned that they were also unwell. Still, the Wilkinsons suspected nothing worse than gastro.
They eventually called an ambulance, but found there were delays. Simon Patterson drove them to first Korumburra hospital, which was at capacity, so they wound up at Leongatha.
At Leongatha Hospital, Ian says he and Heather discussed the fact that lunch had been served on differently coloured plates. “I think she just plainly said there were different coloured plates in a conversation, wondering why we were ill,” Ian tells the court.
The jury hears that hospital staff soon determined they were likely experiencing food poisoning.
But not, as Wilkinson had thought, from the meat.
His doctor, the pastor recalled, had received communications from Dandenong Hospital indicating suspected mushroom poisoning.
“He was very frank, he said it’s an extremely serious situation. He said: ‘There is time-critical treatment available’. And he was very concerned that we be transported quickly to Dandenong,” Ian recalls.
“Arrangements were already in progress. It was during that conversation that the first ambulance arrived.”
Wilkinson spent the next two weeks in the ICU at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital. His wife Heather died on 4 August. So did Gail Patterson. Her husband Don died the next day, 5 August.
After Don Wilkinson finished giving evidence at yesterday’s hearing, the next witnesses were medical staff from the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Korumburra Hospital.
