Erin Patterson has told a court her estranged husband asked her if she had used a dehydrator to poison his parents, and admitted resetting her phone out of fear police would discover photos she had of foraged mushrooms.
In her third day in the witness box, Patterson also said she thinks there is a “possibility” that foraged mushrooms were unintentionally added to her beef wellington mixture as she tried to improve its “bland” flavour, and admitted she lied to her lunch guests about having cancer because she was embarrassed about planned weight-loss surgery.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to poisoning four in-laws with beef wellington served for lunch at her house in Leongatha on 29 July 2023.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering her estranged husband Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.
(July 29, 2023)
Erin Patterson hosts lunch for estranged husband Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt and uncle Heather and Ian Wilkinson. Patterson serves beef wellington.
(July 30, 2023)
All four lunch guests are admitted to hospital with gastro-like symptoms.
(August 4, 2023)
Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson die in hospital.
(August 5, 2023)
Don Patterson dies in hospital. Victoria police search Erin Patterson’s home and interview her.
(September 23, 2023)
Ian Wilkinson is discharged from hospital after weeks in intensive care.
(November 2, 2023)
Police again search Erin Patterson’s home, and she is arrested and interviewed. She is charged with three counts of murder relating to the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson.
(April 28, 2025)
Jury is sworn in.
(April 29, 2025)
Murder trial begins. Jury hears that charges of attempting to murder her estranged husband Simon are dropped.
Lawyers for Patterson say the death cap mushroom poisoning was a tragic and terrible accident.
Under questioning from her lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, on Wednesday, Patterson said she was at the Monash hospital in the days after the lunch when Simon asked her “is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator”.
“I said ‘of course not’,” Patterson told the court.
Patterson said Simon’s question made her “do a lot of thinking about a lot of things”.
She said she realised she had used her dehydrator frequently, including to dry foraged mushrooms, and she started to consider the possibility that dried mushrooms she foraged made their way into a container of dried mushrooms she bought from an Asian grocer.
“How did that make you feel?” Mandy asked her.
“Scared. Responsible,” Patterson replied.
“Really worried, because child protection were involved, and Simon seemed to be of the mind that maybe this was intentional, and I just got really scared, yeah.”
The following day, when she had been discharged from hospital, and after the children were taken to school, she dumped the dehydrator at the tip, Patterson told the court, in fear about it being seen by child protection workers due to visit later that day.
She said on 5 August, when police searched her house, that she decided to factory reset her phone, because she knew there were photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator accessible on the device.
“I just panicked and didn’t want them to see them,” she said.
“When you say them, who do you mean,” Mandy asked
“The detectives,” she responded.
Earlier on Wednesday, Patterson said she made multiple changes to a RecipeTin Eats recipe she was using to prepare the beef wellington.
It was a dish she had never made, but she wanted to try something special for her guests, she said.
The changes were mostly due to her not being able to source a larger “log” of steak, as specified in the recipe, and having to instead buy individual steaks.
This meant she needed more mushrooms for a duxelles, and more pastry, Patterson said.
She said that on the morning of the lunch she started reducing the mushrooms, as she needed to remove almost all water from them to stop the pastry in the dish from becoming soggy.
But after cooking them for about 45 minutes, she tasted the mixture and found it bland.
She went to her pantry to source dried mushrooms from a container she believed only had mushrooms in it that she had bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne several months earlier.
“At that time, to your knowledge, what was in the Tupperware container?” Mandy asked.
“At that time, just mushrooms … from Melbourne,” Patterson responded.
“And now what do you think?” Mandy asked.
“Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”
After this answer, Patterson took a long pause, and appeared to become emotional, before dabbing her eyes and cheeks with a tissue.
She also said she lied to her guests about needing cancer treatment, after having a previous scare for ovarian cancer, because she was too “embarrassed” to tell them about plans for weight-loss surgery.
“Not proud of this, but I led them to believe I might be needing some treatment … in regards to [ovarian cancer] in the coming weeks and months,” she said.
“They all showed a lot of compassion about that … Ian said, ‘Why don’t we pray for Erin’, and so that’s what we did.
“I did lie to them.”
When asked by Mandy why she didn’t tell them the truth about what she was intending to do, she said: “I was ashamed of the fact that I didn’t have control over my body or what I ate. I was ashamed of that, I felt embarrassed.
“I didn’t want to tell anybody, but I shouldn’t have lied to them.”
The sole surviving lunch guest, Ian Wilkinson, who was in court on Wednesday, watched on impassively.
Patterson previously told the court she accepted death cap mushrooms were in the beef wellington she prepared.
Patterson said that after her lunch guests left, she felt over-full. The court heard on Tuesday that she had a habit of purging food after binge eating, dating back to her 20s.
Patterson said that this also happened in the hours after the beef wellington lunch.
“I felt sick, felt over-full, so I went to the toilet and brought it back up again,” she told the court.
She developed abdominal pain and diarrhoea later that evening, she said, and decided against going to church the next morning because she was still unwell.
Her son had a flying lesson later that day, and Patterson said she decided to make the almost hour drive as her symptoms had eased. But she again felt unwell on the drive, and stopped by the side of the road because of diarrhoea.
At this stage, she also knew Don and Gail were unwell after the lunch.
Patterson said her symptoms worsened, and by the following morning, 31 July, she decided she should go to hospital to receive fluids.
After dropping her kids off to catch a school bus, she went to Leongatha hospital.
She said that once she said her name to Dr Christopher Webster, he said, “We’ve been expecting you.
“When I said my name, his reaction communicated that he knew who I was … or that name triggered something for him, and that threw me, quite a bit,” she said.
Patterson said she was then asked questions about the meal, including confirming she had cooked it, and whether the beef wellingtons had been pre-made.
“I think I said ‘Why, why are you asking?’ And he said ‘There’s a concern’ or ‘We’re concerned you’ve been exposed to death cap mushrooms’.”
“I was shocked but confused as well. I was just expecting to come in for saline for gastro.
“I didn’t see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal and the information that I had was that I had diarrhoea, Don and Gail had been a bit unwell, but that was all I knew. I remember feeling very puzzled.”
Patterson said that when she was told soon after this that she would be admitted to hospital and then transported via ambulance to Melbourne for treatment, she “felt really anxious and stressed and confused. I felt really overwhelmed.
“I couldn’t move my brain out of being stuck in what I thought the day was going to look like,” Patterson said.
The court previously heard that Patterson discharged herself against medical advice soon after, which so worried Webster that he called local police to make her return to hospital.
Patterson told the court on Wednesday that she always planned to return, but went home to bring her dog inside, pen her lambs, and prepare a bag for a rehearsal her daughter was expected to attend after school.
It is the prosecution case that Patterson did not eat death cap mushrooms at the lunch and that she pretended she was suffering the same type of illness her guests had “to cover that up”.
It says that this was also why she was reluctant to receive medical treatment for death cap mushroom poisoning.
Earlier on Wednesday, she was shown a series of photos she said she had taken in 2020 of mushrooms she had foraged.
She was also shown a series of messages previously read to the court about an exchange with Gail regarding medical tests and a biopsy for a lump on her elbow.
Patterson said she had previously had elbow pain, and “thought” she had a lump, and when she told Gail and Don about this they had shown concern for her.
Although the pain eased, she decided to say the ailment persisted.
She admitted lying to Gail about an appointment, a needle biopsy and an MRI.
“Why did you tell those lies?” Mandy asked.
“Some weeks prior, I had been having an issue with my elbow with pain … and I’d told Don and Gail about that,” Patterson responded.
“They had shown quite a lot of care about that, which felt really nice.
“The issues started to resolve … I didn’t want their care of me to stop, so I just kept it going.”
Later, Patterson admitted making another “misleading statement” about getting test results back for her elbow.
She said she made that statement as she hoped it could become a way of solving “logistical” issues that could arise with her children when she had gastric bypass surgery, which she did not want to tell anyone about.
“Something I’d been thinking about in the background and doing some preparation for was I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do something once and for all about my weight and my poor eating habits, so I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery.
“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I had done, I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought letting them believe I had something that required serious treatment … [would] help me with logistics around the kids, and I wouldn’t have to tell them.”
Patterson said she had a pre-appointment regarding the surgery scheduled for September 2023.
Patterson also told the court there was no assigned plates or seats for the lunch, and that she did not own grey plates. Ian Wilkinson previously told the court that lunch guests were served on grey plates, while Patterson served herself on a smaller, coloured plate.
Erin Patterson’s evidence continues.
In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD’s eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope
