Erin Patterson, the 50-year-old Australian woman accused of killing her relatives with death cap mushrooms, told the court on Thursday that she did not knowingly dehydrate deadly death cap mushrooms or attempt to destroy evidence following the fatal lunch she served to her former in-laws.
Ms Patterson is charged with deliberately serving death cap mushrooms to her estranged husband’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, and Heather’s husband Ian during a lunch at her home in Leongatha, Victoria. Ian Wilkinson was the only guest to survive after spending days in hospital. Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murder.
During Thursday’s trial proceedings, Ms Patterson was shown a photograph of a food dehydrator found at a rubbish tip, which she acknowledged was likely hers. The court heard that fingerprint analysis confirmed her prints were on the device.
Earlier, she told the court that she disposed of the food dehydrator after learning her lunch might have fatally poisoned her former in-laws. “I was scared that they would blame me for it, for making everyone sick. And I was scared they would remove the children,” she said on Wednesday, referring to child welfare department workers. She had disposed of the dehydrator, she said, because she thought there might be “evidence of foraged mushrooms in there”.
On Thursday, the prosecution showed her the picture of the food dehydrator and asked her if it was hers. She said: “Unless somebody else put in a dehydrator as well as me, I presume this is the one I put in.”
The chief prosecutor, Nanette Rogers SC suggested to Ms Patterson that she had been “keen” to dispose of the dehydrator because it had been used to dry death cap mushrooms.
“No, I didn’t know they’d been in it,” she replied.
She had earlier testified that she became interested in wild mushroom foraging during the Covid lockdown.
Ms Patterson maintained that she did not know the mushrooms were toxic.
She also denied that a photo of sliced mushrooms on a dehydrator tray was death cap mushrooms she had picked. Shown a series of images retrieved from a Samsung tablet’s Google Photos cache, Ms Patterson said they were “likely” taken by her but added that “I only phrase it that way [because] I don’t have a specific memory of taking the photo”.
The crown prosecutor, Dr Rogers, pointed to expert testimony from mycologist Dr Tom May, who said one image was “consistent with Amanita Phalloides (death cap mushrooms)”.
Dr Rogers claimed the photo, last modified on 4 May 2023, showed mushrooms Ms Patterson collected in Loch after spotting them on the iNaturalist app. “That is not correct,” Ms Patterson replied.
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When Rogers suggested she was weighing the mushrooms to “calculate the lethal dose”, Ms Patterson responded: “Disagree.”
On Tuesday, she had told the court she had added dried mushrooms from her pantry to the beef wellington that she served her in-laws, which might have included foraged wild mushrooms.
“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 earlier. “At the time, I believed 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.”
Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson fabricated a cancer diagnosis to lure her four lunch guests to her home for the lunch. Messages she sent to her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, suggested she had undergone tests for a lump and hinted at serious news she would share in person.
However, police reviewed her 2023 medical records and found no evidence of an MRI, biopsy, or cancer diagnosis.
She told the court earlier: “I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do something, for once and for all about my weight and my poor eating habits. So I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery and so I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done,” she said.
“I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought perhaps letting them believe 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.”
On Thursday, Dr Rogers told the accused: “I suggest that you never thought you would have to account for this lie of having cancer, because you thought that the lunch guests would die and your lie would never be found out.”
Ms Patterson replied: “That’s not true.”
The trial continues.
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