ERIN Patterson, the Leongatha mother of two accused of the murders of three of her in-laws and the attempted murder of another, told a number of health officials in the days following her family lunch of beef Wellington, on Saturday, July 29, 2023, that she may have purchased some of the mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in Glen Waverley.

However, as revealed under cross examination by defence counsel for Mrs Patterson, Sophie Stafford, the Environmental Health Team at the City of Monash did not visit any Asian food stores in Glen Waverley as part of their investigations.

They visited a total of 14 Asian and Indian food stores in Oakleigh (5), Mt Waverley (4) and Clayton (5) on Tuesday, August 2, 2023 and Wednesday, August 3, 2023, of which 11 sold dried mushrooms and nine sliced dried mushrooms, but none at all in Glen Waverley.

While questioning the Team Leader Public Health at the City of Monash, Troy Schonknecht, during the Supreme Court trial in Morwell last Thursday, May 22, Ms Stafford asked Mr Schonknecht if he was following instructions and directions from the Department of Health when he visited the stores in Oakleigh, Mt Waverley and Clayton, he said “that’s correct”.

“But the suburbs of Glen Waverley and Mount Waverley are both in the City of Monash; is that right?” said Ms Safford.

“That's correct, yes.”

Ms Stafford went on to ask if Mr Schonknecht worked for the City of Monash, if the city’s office was located in Glen Waverley, if it shared a boundary with Mt Waverley and if he was travelling from Glen Waverley when he visited the other three suburbs, he said yes.

“And the suburb of Glen Waverley contains the largest number of Asian grocers out of those four suburbs?” she asked.

“I haven't counted them, but I would say so, yes. The demographic would say that that's the case,” replied Mr Schonknecht.

Ms Stafford went on to ask Mr Schonknecht if after he finished visiting the stores in the other three suburbs if he asked the department whether there were any other suburbs and stores they wanted him to attend, he said he did ask that question, yes.

“And they effectively told you not to worry about going anywhere else?”

“That's correct,” said Mr Schonknecht.

“Did anyone from the Department of Health ever inform you about the fact that the mushrooms may have been purchased from Glen Waverley?”

He said no.

“So, just to confirm, there were no visits to any other stores?”

“That's correct.”

Dr Rhonda Stuart, Director of Infection Prevention and Public Health at Monash Health gave evidence on May 13, 2025 that she had questioned Erin Patterson at Monash Health on Monday, July 31 at 6pm about where she got the mushrooms.

One of the types she said were purchased from the supermarket in a container with plastic over the top, which Dr Stuart said she assumed were button mushrooms.

“The other pack she said she got from an Asian food shop a number of weeks prior,” said Dr Stuart.

“I recall she said it was either an Oakleigh or Glen Waverley shop,” she said.

Dr Conor McDermott, a toxicology registrar at the Austin Hospital, also tasked with providing information support to the Victorian Poisons Information Centre, gave evidence on May 8, 2025, about a phone conversation he had with Erin Patterson while she was still in the Leongatha hospital on the morning of Monday, July 31, 2023.

Concerned about a possible public health risk if the mushrooms had been sourced commercially, he asked Mrs Patterson where she had purchased the mushrooms. He told the court she said she purchased sliced mushrooms from Woolworths in Leongatha and the others were dried mushrooms purchased some months earlier, in April 2023, from a Chinese food shop in Oakleigh.

Dr McDermott said he Googled a list of Chinese food stores in Oakleigh, offering to read them out to Mrs Patterson to refresh her memory, but she said she wouldn't be able to recall where she bought them even if he named the shop, noting that she said it might even have been in Glen Waverley instead.

According to the evidence so far provided to the court, no Asian grocery stores in Glen Waverley were investigated in the days following the lunch of beef Wellington and poisoned death cap mushrooms.

Earlier in his evidence Mr Schonknecht said the scope of what they were looking for at the Asian food stores they visited was refined following the receipt of further details, at 3.40pm on August 2, 2023, to stores in strip shopping centres and mushrooms in see-through packets between snack and sandwich Ziploc bag size of 100gms, but not resealable, and labelled 'Shiitake' or 'Porcini' mushrooms. The mushrooms had to be dried and sliced.

But there was no further information that would narrow down the suburbs of interest.

At one of the grocery stores in Oakleigh, the Monash environmental health officers did find dried mushrooms answering to that description, including some that had been repackaged from bulk by the shop, and labelled by them in smaller clear bags with white labels.

Mr Schonknecht said he sent photos of the packaged mushrooms and one of the front of the store to a Department of Health officer who responded on August 3 that the photos had been shown to ‘the lady who had purchased or said she had purchased the mushrooms’.

She said that while the packaging looked right, the ones she allegedly bought were half the size and sliced. She also said she didn’t recognise the store.

Wrapping up her questions to Mr Schonknecht, prosecution counsel Jane Warren asked if any other complaints “of a similar nature” about the sale of poisonous mushrooms had been received by the City of Monash in the 12 months from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.

Mr Schonknecht said the complaints system offered the opportunity to search the key word ‘mushrooms’ but that there was nothing of that kind generated when he conducted the search.

The trial continues into its fifth week at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell. Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder, maintaining that what happened at her home on Saturday, July 29, 2023, when she prepared a family lunch of beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms was a tragedy and a terrible accident.