MAYBE you know Erin Patterson from church. On her evidence she attended both the Korumburra Baptist Church and for a brief period around October 2022, the EquipChurch in Leongatha.
Perhaps you met her at a school function or maybe at the basketball at Poowong.
You might have come across Erin Patterson when she was running the Korumburra Flyer after she took over as editor from her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson.
Perhaps you assisted her with the purchase of one of her properties in Korumburra, either the two houses in Shellcots Road, the one in Nason Street or the block of land in Gibson Street Leongatha in 2019.
Or you think you remember seeing her up at the supermarket in Korumburra or around the town in Leongatha.
Maybe you don’t know Erin Patterson at all, but you were taught by Don Patterson at the Korumburra Secondary College and have fond memories of Gail working in the office.
I saw Erin Patterson in Morwell today.
The circumstances, of course, could not be more different.
Today, the Sentinel-Times had a seat in Court Room 4 of the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, one of the six chairs reserved each day for the media at Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial, now into its sixth week.
There’s been significant media interest in the case from early August 2023, when everyone initially thought the incident of mushroom poisoning at Leongatha might have been a serious breach of food safety regulations.
On the evidence of the police informant in the case, Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall, the mainstream media was “well and truly” engaged in the story by Saturday, August 5, following the tragic deaths of two Korumburra people on the Friday, sisters Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson, and Don Patterson on Saturday.
The Health Department had issued an alert about eating mushrooms.
By the time police put out a media release on Sunday, August 6, 2023 the homicide squad was involved, and by Monday, August 7, after a press conference with Homicide Inspector Dean Thomas, the media started camping out at Erin Patterson’s home. It hasn’t stopped since.
Erin Patterson was in the witness stand. She was wearing a light sage-green-coloured woollen jumper, black slacks and black sandals.
Her long dark hair was out, over her shoulders, and she stood as the jury came into the room, eight seated at the back, six in front of the jury box ready with their laptops and notebooks.
Defence counsel Colin Mandy SC wasted no time getting into his work.
“It was March 2020 when you became interested in mushrooms,” he said continuing on from where he left off the day before, taking Erin Patterson through her evidence.
“I want to show you some images from an SD card located at 84 Gibson Street,” he said.
He ran through upwards of 25 photos, many of them pictures of mushrooms, some of her children out walking or using their scooters at the park or along the rail trail, for which Mrs Patterson provided a commentary…
“Yes I took that photo… that’s the kitchen bench at 120 Shellcots Road… that’s our paddock… that’s another mushroom… I took that in the garden at Shellcots Road…”
The jury members scrolled through as well, along with Erin Patterson, according to Mr Mandy’s instructions.
Erin Patterson named some of the mushrooms, a yellow stainer for one, an Inocybe, and those red ones with white spots.
“What about death cap mushrooms?” asked Mr Mandy.
“Yes, I became aware of them quite early,” Mrs Patterson said.
He asked Erin about looking up mushrooms on the iNaturalist website and if she remembered doing so around the same time she ordered food online from the Middle Pub at Korumburra in May 2022.
“I don’t specifically remember doing it that day, but it was possibly part of the process I went through,” she said, noting that she did recall ordering the food.
She recalled taking photos of mushrooms around Korumburra but denied ever going to Loch or Outtrim to forage for mushrooms.
Mr Mandy then addressed the issue of Erin claiming she had either a needle biopsy or MRI as part of a cancer diagnosis. No and no, she said.
She said she had a lump on her arm she was a bit worried about but then felt a bit embarrassed about the fuss Gail made over it, so she kept up the pretence.
Then came one of the revelations of the day, Erin Patterson told the court that she had made up her mind to have gastric bypass surgery, after a lifetime battling weight, even going as far as making an appointment for September 2023, but that she was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it.
She let the pretence of the cancer diagnosis go forward, right up until inviting family members to the ill-fated lunch of beef Wellington on Saturday, July 29, rather than reveal the real reason for her health concerns.
It was the first time anyone had heard about plans to pursue lap-band surgery.
“I’m not proud of this, but I may have misled them about needing treatment. But in my mind I was thinking about getting the other treatment,” said Erin.
“You misled them?” said Mr Mandy.
“I did.”
They all showed a lot of compassion about that, she said, with a waver in her voice.
“I asked you if you misled them. Did you lie to them?” asked Mr Mandy.
“Yes. I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my weight, but I shouldn’t have lied to them.”
Mr Mandy asked about the ingredients for the meal, how Erin Patterson cooked it and ultimately how she served it after the arrival of her guests on that fateful day.
Erin accepted, under questioning from Mr Mandy, that there were “foraged mushrooms” in there as well.
She said the meal was served out on a couple of black plates, a couple of white plates and another black plate with red underneath, also her daughter’s coloured plate was in there somewhere as well, six plates in all, but Erin said she couldn’t recall which plate her meal was served on.
“Did you own any grey plates?”
“No.”
“I said grab the plates guys and I heated up the gravy in a saucepan,” said Erin.
It was the evidence of the only other person to survive the meal of beef Wellington and death cap mushrooms, Ian Wilkinson, that the four guests had their meals served to them on grey plates and Erin’s meal was on the only tan or orange-coloured plate. It was a recollection, about Erin’s plate being different to the others, that had also occurred to Heather Wilkinson in a conversation with her nephew Simon prior to her death, according to Simon Patterson’s own evidence.
Ian was in the court to hear Erin Patterson’s denial. He sat passively, watching, arms crossed, but with no outward sign of his thoughts.
In another revelation, Erin Patterson was able to explain why she apparently hadn’t stopped to go to the toilet on her two-hour drive from Leongatha to Tyabb and back again on Sunday, July 30, 2023, the day after the beef Wellington lunch, despite complaining of on-going problems with diarrhoea.
She said she pulled the car over near Nyora and took a toilet break in the bush, cleaning up with a doggie bag and tissues which she deposited in the bin at the toilets in the BP service station at Caldermeade during what has been documented on CCTV video as a nine-second visit to the toilet.
Mrs Patterson was also shown a video, allegedly depicting her son visiting the Subway fast-food store in Leongatha on Saturday night, July 29, 2023 denying that the teenager, dressed in a Leongatha Parrots’ training top was her son.
She said she thought the distinctive green and yellow top was associated with some sort of local sports club that her son wasn’t a member of, in fact he wasn’t playing sport at all at that time, she said.
Somewhere along the way, a member of the packed public gallery was ejected, allegedly for taking out their mobile phone. The taking of photos in court is strictly prohibited.
Mr Mandy’s questioning stopped momentarily and another member of the public, waiting outside, quickly filled the spare seat.
That all happened, and more, before lunch on Day 26 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial in the Supreme Court at Morwell on Wednesday this week, June 6.
Erin Patterson has been charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder arising out of the family lunch of beef Wellington and death cap mushrooms at her home in July 2023. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges maintaining that what happened on the day was a tragedy and a terrible accident.