Australia mushroom trial live: Erin Patterson tells court ‘I shouldn’t have lied to’ lunch guests about having cancer

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Patterson says around 11pm she began to feel nauseous and was experiencing diarrhoea.

She says she experienced “quite strong cramping” and an “urgent need to go”.

She says it was “every 20 minutes” at times and was difficult to go back to sleep.

Patterson says this lasted several hours. She took an anti-diarrhoea tablet and was able to sleep for a little bit, the court hears.

Patterson got up around 10am the day after the lunch – 30 July 2023.

She says she made herself a herbal tea.

The jury is shown CCTV footage, previously shown to the court, from Subway in Leongatha.

The court was previously told the footage, captured hours after the lunch, showed Patterson dropping her son at Subway.

Patterson says she did take her son to Subway after the lunch but says the footage does not depict her son.

Mandy then turns to what occurred after the lunch guests left.

Patterson says her son helped her tidy up. She said the leftovers included the remainder of her beef wellington and the entire sixth one.

Patterson says “quite a lot” of the cake Gail had brought was leftover. She says about two-thirds of the cake remained after lunch.

She says afterwards she began eating the cake and continued to eat slice after slice.

Mandy asks how many pieces of cake she ate.

“All of it,” she says.

Asked what happened afterwards, Patterson says she “felt sick”.

“I felt over-full,” she says.

“So I went to the toilet and brought it back up again.”

She says she began to have loose stools about 5.30pm that evening.

Erin Patterson says she ate between ‘a quarter’ and a ‘third’ of her beef wellington

Mandy asks about how much each guest ate of their beef wellington.

She says Ian and Heather ate all of theirs. Don ate all of his while Gail ate a lot of hers, but not all of it, the court hears.

Patterson says she ate somewhere around “a quarter” or a “third” of hers.

When pressed by Mandy about evidence heard earlier that his client ate half of hers, Patterson says she cannot be precise.

She then says she ate “some” of her beef wellington.

Mandy asks her why this was. She says she was “talking a lot” and “eating slowly”.

Patterson tells court 'I shouldn't have lied to' lunch guests about having ovarian cancer

Mandy shows Patterson a photo of the dining room table and chairs, marked up by Ian to show where each guest sat.

My memory was that Gail and Don were reversed.

But I could have been wrong about that too.

Patterson says there were no assigned seats or plates at the lunch.

Mandy asks Paterson what was discussed at the lunch.

She says they spoke about what her children had been up to and a bit of politics and. She says Don mentioned a relative of his who had throat cancer.

Paterson says the conversation stayed on this topic.

I mentioned I’d had an issue a year or two earlier when I thought I had ovarian cancer.

Then – I’m not proud of this – but I led them to believe that I might be getting some treatment in regards to that in the next few weeks to months.

Patterson says she referred to “upcoming treatment”. She says she was thinking she may need help getting her children to their activities and needed an explanation for why she was going to hospital.

Mandy asks if she misled her guests.

“I did,” she says.

Patterson says they “all showed a lot of compassion about that”.

The guests then noticed Simon’s car pulling into the driveway and Ian suggested praying for Erin.

“That’s what we did,” she says as her voice trembles.

Patterson says “I did lie to them.”

She explains her decision:

I was ashamed of the fact that I didn’t have control over my body or what I ate. I was ashamed of that and embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell anybody. But I shouldn’t have lied to them.

Mandy asks Patterson about her children’s movements on the day of the lunch.

She says she dropped her kids off at McDonald’s at about 11.45am to 12pm.

Mandy shows the court a photograph of Patterson’s dining room table in her room.

He asks about Patterson’s evidence that Heather and Gail spoke to her at the island bench in the kitchen before the group sat down to eat.

Patterson says “at least one or both” of them offered to help her serve.

She says she did not need any help.

Patetrson says she was preparing the gravy at the stove before she sat at the table.

Patterson tells court she does not own any grey dinner plates

Patterson says her children were at the movies with a friend during the lunch.

Mandy asks Patterson about the lunch guests’ arrival at 12.30pm.

She says the group went into the garden before returning to the kitchen.

Patterson says she started serving mashed potato, beef wellingtons and beans.

Mandy asks what plates she used.

“Just the dinner plates I had,” she says.

I think there are a couple of black, a couple of white, one that’s red on top and black underneath and then I’ve got one that [my daughter] made at kindergarten.

Mandy asks if she owns any other plates or grey plates. Patterson replies “no” to both questions.

Earlier in the trial, Ian Wilkinson said Patterson served beef wellingtons for her guests on grey plates while she ate from an “orangey-tan” coloured plate.

Patterson says she plated up five beef wellingtons and put the oven tray with the remaining beef wellington in the oven to “worry about later.”

Patterson says at this point Gail asked if she was coming to an upcoming birthday celebration.

Patterson told Gail she would attend, the court hears.

Patterson says she assumed “everybody grabbed a plate”.

She says she accepts Ian’s evidence that Gail and Heather “took two plates each” to the table.

Patterson tells court she was ‘hurt’ Simon would not attend lunch

Mandy takes Patterson to messages between her and Simon the evening before the lunch. In the message, Simon said he felt uncomfortable about attending the lunch. Patterson said she was “disappointed” Simon would not attend and had spent a “small fortune on beef eye fillet” and had spent “hours” preparing for the lunch.

Paterson says apart from the fact she had spent a “small fortune” she was “exaggerating” in the message.

She says she was “hurt” Simon would not attend.

I was also really anxious and stressed about this upcoming procedure that I was going to have, and I just wanted to know that it would be sorted.

Asked about the “upcoming procedure,” Patterson says she had an upcoming appointment booked for weight-loss surgery.

Erin Patterson says it was ‘a possibility’ foraged mushrooms were in container

Mandy turns to preparations for the meal.

Patterson says she “did a bit on the Friday” including salting the steaks and “Googling tips for how to not stuff it up”.

Patterson says on the day of the lunch she started preparing the mushroom duxelle for the beef wellington at about 9.30am-10am.

“I fried up garlic and chopped shallots,” she says.

She says she emptied “two tubs” of mushrooms from Woolworths into a blender.

“It was a lot,” she says.

I cooked that for a very long time.

You’ve got to get almost all of the water out so it won’t turn your pastry soggy.

She says she tasted it and it tasted “bland”.

I decided to put in the dried mushrooms which I bought from the grocer which I still had in the pantry.

She says she put them in a strainer, poured water over them to remove the “crispness”, chopped them up and “sprinkled over the mushroom duxelle” and pushed them in “with an egg flip, something like that”.

Patterson says she believed the container with the dried mushrooms contained only store-bought mushrooms from a grocer in Melbourne.

“Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,” she says as her voice breaks.

A visibly emotional Patterson dabs her eyes with a tissue.

Patterson says if you make a beef wellington as individual steaks you need to use more mushrooms and puff pastry.

“That wasn’t the only change I had to make,” she says.

She says the recipe “called for making a crepe” and bought filo instead.

Patterson says she omitted mustard and prosciutto in the version she made.

She says this was because Don did not eat pork.

Erin Patterson tells court about ‘deviations’ from beef wellington recipe

Mandy asks Patterson about her reasons for hosting the fateful lunch on 29 July 2023.

Patterson says her kids had enjoyed seeing their grandparents when she hosted them for lunch in June and wanted to do it again. Earlier, she said she invited them to her Leongatha home in June because she had become worried about “some distance” between her and the Patterson family.

She says at the June lunch, Gail remarked that Heather would like to see her garden.

“Heather and Ian had been really good to me over the years. I wanted to have some more connection to them,” she says.

Patterson recalls asking Gail and Heather to come to lunch at church.

“They said they’d love to,” Patterson says as her voice trembles.

Mandy asks why Patterson decided to cook a beef wellington dish.

Patterson says she made a shepherd’s pie when Don and Gail came to her place in June. She says they liked it but it “didn’t seem special enough”.

She says her mother had made beef wellington when she was a child.

“It was in my recipe book. RecipeTin Eats. I think that’s where I found it initially,” she says

She says in the lead-up to the lunch, she bought the “majority” of ingredients from Woolworths in Leongatha. She says she also bought some ingredients at the IGA and Aldi.

Mandy asks if she followed the recipe for beef wellington in the Recipe TinEats cookbook.

She replies “roughly” but says she made some “deviations”.

She said she could not buy a single beef tenderloin so bought individual eye-fillet steaks.

Patterson agrees text messages about medical appointments 'were lies'

Mandy takes the jury to messages from June 2023 between Patterson and her mother-in-law Gail.

In the messages, Gail asked Patterson about a medical appointment. Patterson later replied and said she had a needle biopsy conducted.

Patterson says:

I must have told them I was having a medical appointment that day.

I think I just said I was having a problem or a lump on my arm checked out.

Mandy asks if Patterson had a lump on her arm.

“I thought I did at one point,” she replies.

He asks if she had been to a medical appointment.

“No,” replies Patterson.

“Had you had a needle biopsy of the lump?” asks Mandy.

“No,” says Patterson.

Mandy:

Were those lies?

Patterson:

Yes.

He asks why she said that.

She says a few weeks prior she had pain in her arm and thought there was a lump. She says Don and Gail had shown a lot of care in response.

“Which felt really nice,” she says.

The issue started to resolve and I felt a bit embarrassed I had made such a big deal about it. I didn’t want their care of me to stop so I just kept it going.

I shouldn’t have done it.

Mandy asks Patterson if at some stage she began aware of poisonous mushrooms growing in Gippsland.

“I did,” says Patterson.

She says she also found out there were mushrooms growing on her property that were “probably toxic to dogs”. She says these included inocybe.

She says found out about toxic mushroom species in Gippsland that “shouldn’t be eaten”.

Asked about death caps, Patterson says:

I became aware of death caps quite early in this period.

She says she looked up to see if they grew in south Gippsland and found out “they didn’t”.

Mandy takes his client to previous evidence about the search history found on a computer seized at her house. It showed a webpage on death cap mushrooms sightings had been visited in May 2022.

“Was that you conducting that search?” Mandy says.

I don’t specifically remember doing that day but it’s possible it was me.

It’s possible that’s part of the process I went through to see if they grew in Gippsland.

Mandy asks: “Did you ever forage for mushrooms in Loch?”

“No,” says Patterson.

Mandy asks: “Did you ever forage for mushrooms in Outtrim?”

“No,” replies Patterson.

Patterson says she did not see the posts reporting sightings of death cap mushrooms from mycologist Thomas May in Outtrim and retired pharmacist Christine McKenzie in Loch.

Patterson says she did not.

Patterson has placed her glasses on as she looks at the photos on the screen in front of her in the witness box.

Mandy asks his client about the photo showing mushrooms on pages of newspapers.

“That was on the bench in my kitchen,” she says.

Patterson says it was taken at her home in Korumburra.

In another photo showing mushrooms laid on a newspaper. Patterson says the person in the background is her daughter.

A reminder that a suppression order prevents either of the Patterson children from being named.

Mandy takes Patterson to her prior evidence that from early 2020 she became interested in wild mushrooms.

He shows the court images from an SD card police seized from Patterson’s home in Leongatha.

Some images show mushrooms laid out on pages of a newspaper. Others are closeup shots of mushrooms in the wild.

Mandy asks Patterson if these are images she took.

“Yes, I did,” she says.

Patterson says she took these photos “early in 2020” during the first Covid lockdown.

The jury is also shown stills of videos. Two people are captured in some of the stills. Patterson says they are her children, as her voice begins to crack.

“We were on the rail trail. I believe that was coming out of the Leongatha trailhead,” Patterson says.

The jury have entered the courtroom in Morwell.

Patterson, dressed in a grey jumper, has returned to the witness box to give evidence for a third day.

Defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC is questioning his client.

While we wait for today’s proceedings to get under way, here’s a reminder of what the jury heard on Tuesday:

1. Erin Patterson said she accepted the beef wellington she served her lunch guests on 29 July 2023 contained death cap mushrooms.

2. Patterson said she developed an interest in wild mushrooms during Covid walks in early 2020 when she noticed them in the Korumburra Botanic Gardens.

3. The accused said she wished she had never messaged her online friends in a private Facebook group chat “this family I swear to fucking god” in relation to her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson. She told the court she felt “ashamed” for saying it.

4. Patterson told the court she had not been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She said she was worried about potentially having ovarian cancer and described her history of consulting Google to research her symptoms.

5. Patterson detailed her daughter’s health history, including being diagnosed with an ovarian mass as a baby in 2014. She says from her daughter’s birth, when she cried a lot, she believed something was wrong but doctors told her she was an overly anxious mother. Patterson said she eventually lost faith in the medical system.

Good morning

Welcome to day 26 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.

Patterson, who began testifying on Monday, is expected to continue giving evidence this morning.

We’re expecting the trial to resume from 10.30am once the jurors enter the courtroom in Morwell.

Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha, in regional Victoria, on 29 July 2023.

She is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and her estranged husband’s aunt, Heather Wilkinson. The attempted murder charge relates to Heather’s husband, Ian.

She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests with “murderous intent”, but her lawyers say the poisoning was a tragic accident.