The Australian woman accused of killing three relatives and gravely injuring another with a toxic mushroom meal has taken to the witness stand at her trial.
Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.
Prosecutors argue she intentionally sought out death cap mushrooms and cooked them for her relatives, before lying to police and disposing of evidence.
However the defence case is that Patterson had unintentionally served poison to family members she loved, and then “panicked”.
Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.
A single lunch guest survived – local pastor Ian Wilkinson – after weeks of treatment in hospital.
Over six weeks, the jury in the Victorian Supreme Court has heard from more than 50 witnesses called by the prosecution, including Ms Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, and the surviving lunch guest, Ian.
It is now the defence’s turn to call witnesses, and first up was Ms Patterson herself.
The 50-year-old told the court that by 2023 she had felt for some months that her relationship with the wider Patterson family – Don and Gail in particular – had perhaps developed a bit more distance or space.
“We saw each other less,” she says.
“I’d come to have concerns that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much with the family anymore.”
After detailing a brief period of separation between the couple when their first child was an infant, Erin Patterson told the court that she and Simon Patterson struggled to work out their disagreements.
“If we had any problems at all it was… we couldn’t communicate well when we disagreed about something,” she said.
“We would just feel hurt and not know how to resolve it.”
She also told the court about the traumatic birth of her first child in 2009, less than a year before the couple’s first break.
“He started to go into distress and they lost his heartbeat,” she said.
Her voice choking up, she explained doctors performed an emergency caesarean to get her son out quickly.
When he was ready to go home, Ms Patterson said she discharged herself from hospital against medical advice as she didn’t want to remain there alone.
The jury has heard that Ms Patterson discharged herself from hospital against medical advice in the days after the fatal lunch, which prosecutors earlier pointed to as evidence that she was not unwell.
However her barrister Colin Mandy in his opening address said she had done so at several occasions over her life.
Ms Patterson gave less than an hour of evidence before court broke up for the day, and will return to resume her testimony on Tuesday.
