An Australian woman accused of intentionally cooking a fatal mushroom lunch has told her trial she had wanted the beef Wellington meal to be “special”.
Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering three people and attempting to kill another at her home in regional Victoria in July 2023.
The 50-year-old says it was a tragic accident, and that she never intended to hurt family members she loved. But prosecutors argue Ms Patterson put poisonous fungi into their food in a carefully crafted plot to kill them.
On Friday, the court heard it was “unusual” for Ms Patterson to host such an event at her house, and she was quizzed about her relationships with her guests.
Ms Patterson’s in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, all fell ill and died days after the lunch.
Heather’s husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, was also hospitalised but recovered after coming out of a weeks-long induced coma. Simon Patterson, the accused’s estranged spouse, had been invited too, but pulled out the day before.
More than 50 prosecution witnesses have given evidence at the trial, which began six weeks ago, but Ms Patterson became the first for the defence when she took to the stand on Monday.
On her second day of cross-examination on Friday, Ms Patterson told the court she accepted that invites to her house were rare, but said she’d arranged the occasion to discuss a health issue and wanted to make a nice meal for her relatives to thank them for their support.
“I wanted it to be special,” Ms Patterson said.
She has previously admitted she misled her guests into believing she may need cancer treatment, telling the jury she did so as a cover for weight-loss surgery she was planning to have but was too embarrassed to disclose.
Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, however, put to her that there was no health issue to discuss, and that she had invited Simon and his relatives over to kill them. She had even prepared a spare toxic meal in case Mr Patterson changed his mind and came over, Dr Rogers suggested.
Over and over this week, Ms Patterson has denied these allegations, often becoming emotional as she told the court she loved the lunch guests like her own family.
She has also repeatedly told the court that she realised, in the days after the lunch, that the beef Wellington may have accidentally included dried mushrooms she had foraged, which were kept in a container with store-bought ones.
Lies to the police and health authorities about the source of the mushrooms and her decision to dispose of a food dehydrator were both because she was scared of being blamed for the guests’ dire illnesses, she said.
“Surely if you had loved them, then you would have immediately notified the medical authorities?” Dr Rogers asked.
Ms Patterson said she didn’t tell doctors about the possibility that wild mushrooms had been unintentionally included because the lunch guests were already getting treatment for death cap mushroom poisoning.
“Even after you were discharged from hospital you did not tell a single person that there may have been foraged mushroom used in the meal,” Dr Rogers said.
“Instead you got up, you drove your children to school… and drove home. And then you got rid of the dehydrator.”
“Correct,” Ms Patterson said.
The court heard there’d been conflict between Ms Patterson and her husband, and Dr Rogers suggested the accused was still angry at her in-laws for taking their son’s side.
“You had two faces,” Dr Rogers said, after making Ms Patterson read aloud messages in which she is critical of both Simon Patterson and his parents.
There was her “public face” of appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail, Dr Rogers said, and a “private face” which she showed in the messages.
“How you truly felt about Don and Gail was how you expressed it [there],” she said.
“And that is how you really felt about Simon Patterson… you did not regard him as being a decent human being at his core, correct or incorrect?”
That was “incorrect”, Ms Patterson replied, her head shaking and voice faltering.
Ms Patterson’s use of the iNaturalist website – which listed locations of death cap mushrooms in areas close to her home – was also scrutinised, with the accused repeatedly saying she couldn’t clearly recall ever using the site.
She will resume being cross examined next week. The trial, initially expected to take six weeks, is now expected to run for at least another fortnight, the judge has told the court.
