CROWN Prosecutor in the marathon ‘mushroom murder’ trial in the Supreme Court at Morwell, Dr Nanette Rogers SC, wasted no time getting down to business on Monday, June 16.

“At the heart of this case,” said Dr Rogers, “are four calculated deceptions made by the accused.”

It was Day 32 of the trial. The evidence is in, and it’s now left to the prosecution and the defence to wrap up the case with their closing submissions. Dr Rogers was first up.

She laid out the alleged deceptions that formed the central part of her submission to the jury and spent the rest of the day backing up her claims.

On trial is 50-year-old Leongatha mother of two, Erin Patterson, charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, arising out of a family lunch of beef Wellington, containing death cap mushrooms, at her home on Saturday, July 29, 2023.

As a result of eating the meal that day, three of her guests, Don and Gail Patterson, the parents of her estranged husband Simon, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, have each died with a clinical diagnosis of amanita mushroom poisoning. The only guest to survive the lunch, Ian Wilkinson, very nearly died with the same diagnosis but made a miraculous recovery after 54 days in hospital.

Mrs Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges, maintaining that death cap mushrooms were accidentally included in the individual beef Wellington portions and what happened on the day was a tragedy and a terrible mistake.

The alleged deceptions suggested by Dr Rogers are as follows:

• The first deception was the fabricated cancer claim used by Erin Patterson as a pretence for the lunch invitation.
• The second deception was the lethal doses of poison the accused secreted in the home cooked beef Wellingtons
• The third deception was her attempts to make it seem that she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning and,
• The fourth deception was the sustained cover-up she embarked on to conceal the truth about what really happened.

“Members of the jury, the 29th of July 2023 lunch was arranged by the accused. Each of the guests were there by her invitation. She, alone, chose what to cook, obtained the ingredients and prepared the meal,” said Dr Rogers.

“Despite the recipe calling for a single dish, intended to be cut into smaller serves, the accused made individual portions,” she said.

“That choice to make individual portions allowed her complete control over the ingredients in each individual parcel. It is a control, the prosecution says, that she exercised with devastating effect.”

Once Dr Rogers concludes her remarks on Tuesday, Colin Mandy SC, the defence counsel for Erin Patterson, gets his opportunity to answer the claims being made by the defence.

It is expected that once the two closing submissions are completed, and the judge, Justice Beale, delivers his charge to the jury, it will not be until early next week that they retire to consider their verdict in a trial that has captured world-wide attention.

Erin Patterson stood up in the dock, at the rear of the courtroom, as the jury filed into their assigned seats, to the left of the judge. There had been a cold start to the day in the Latrobe Valley, where the trial is taking place, and Mrs Patterson wore a brown woollen cardigan over her now familiar paisley shirt, her dark hair loose over shoulders, and a pair of reading glasses off and then on again as Dr Rogers started her submission which she directed towards the jury.

Two of the rows of seats in the public gallery were again filled by members of the Wilkinson and Patterson families, including Ian Wilkinson, who has attended every day of the trial since giving his own evidence on Day 6.

It was while developing her second proposition, about the lethal doses of poison disguised as the home cooked beef Wellington parcels, that Dr Rogers described Pastor Wilkinson as a “compelling witness who was able to recall a substantial amount of detail about the lunch”.

She said his evidence was clear, recalling substantial detail about the lunch, who sat where, what was served, eaten and by whom, and the conversation, conveying no doubt about what he had observed under under cross-examination.

“He gave clear evidence of four matching, large grey dinner plates, not dark or light grey but a sort of middle grey colour was his evidence, and then a fifth smaller orangey-tan coloured plate” used by the accused who plated the food herself.

Dr Rogers claimed the jury could confidently accept what he told you about the details of the lunch, including the four grey plates and the odd fifth plate.

'The cancer deception'

However, Dr Rogers started with point one in her submission, the cancer deception.

“When you look at the evidence of the circumstances surrounding the lunch invitation, you will be satisfied, we suggest, that she fabricated a cancer claim to provide a reason for her otherwise unusual lunch invitation,” said Dr Rogers.

She went on to describe how unusual it was for Don and Gail Patterson, and especially Ian and Heather Wilkinson to be invited to Erin Patterson’s home and also Erin’s irritation at her estranged husband’s decision not to attend.

She said the jury could reject anything other than a “fake medical issue” as being the reason for the lunch.

Erin Patterson has since admitted she’s not proud about lying to her husband’s family about needing treatment for cancer in the next few weeks or months.

'The mushroom deception'

Dr Rogers then moved on to the “critical deception” number two, the lethal doses of poisonous death cap mushrooms in the meals prepared for the guests.

She alleged that while Erin Patterson “sought out and located death cap mushrooms and then secreted lethal doses of those deadly mushrooms into the individual beef Wellingtons she had made for the lunch” she made sure she would not suffer the same fate as her guests by making individual beef Wellingtons, not as called for in the recipe, where a whole beef fillet is wrapped and sliced.

“The sinister deception was to use a nourishing meal as the vehicle to deliver a deadly poison,” Dr Rogers alleged.

Dr Rogers alleged that Mrs Patterson did not use the same mushroom paste on her beef Wellington as the ones prepared for her guests, while rejecting her claims that very unpleasant smelling death cap mushrooms could accidentally have been included during the preparation of the meal.

Dr Rogers also went into detail, attempting to connect Erin Patterson to online research about the whereabouts of death cap mushrooms locally, at Outtrim and Loch in the months leading up to the meal, and mobile phone data analysis which supported the proposition that Mrs Patterson had the opportunity to go foraging for wild mushrooms in those areas.

'The illness deception'

Dr Rogers then moved to what she called the “third deception”, attempts made by Erin Patterson to look like she had death cap mushroom poisoning.

“We say that she did this to make it appear she ate exactly the same food as the four lunch guests in an effort to disguise her crimes,” said Dr Rogers.

She went on to contrast the severe illnesses suffered by the four guests with the relatively mild indications recorded by the accused during little more than 24 hours in hospital.

Dr Rogers looked at what was happening to Erin Patterson after she consumed the meal, as opposed to what was happening to her guests, which could not be explained away by eating only a portion of the meal, as Gail Patterson had also done, or the bout of bulimia vomiting after allegedly eating a large portion of the orange cake.

Dr Rogers said that while Erin Patterson reported to husband Simon that she started to feel unwell, with some diarrhoea at 4.30pm on the day of the meal, her lunch guests did not start to feel ill until after they went to bed, from about 12 midnight onwards. She said the delayed onset of their symptoms in the lunch guests was something that first alerted medical professionals to the possibility of death cap mushroom poisoning.

Dr Rogers addressed Mrs Patterson’s movements on the afternoon and evening of July 29, what she did on Sunday, including the two-hour round trip for the aborted flying lesson at Tyabb and the accused ultimately presenting at the Leongatha hospital on Monday, July 31, where she was told she might have consumed a lethal toxin from death cap mushrooms.

“She realised that what she had done was going to be uncovered,” said Dr Rogers.

“She fled back to her house to try and work out how she was going to manage the situation and how she might explain why she wasn't sick like her lunch guests.

“Of course, she could only have felt comfortable walking out of the hospital, not receiving any of the lifesaving treatment that doctors were telling her was necessary and time-critical because she knew very well that she had not eaten death cap mushrooms.”

In a case that so intently revolves around the health response to the incident of death cap mushroom poisoning, much has been made of Erin Patterson’s alleged occasions of diarrhoea.

Mrs Patterson allegedly had three bouts of diarrhoea within 15 minutes after her admission to the Leongatha Hospital, at 10am, 10.06am and 10.15am, but despite a PCR test being conducted on the material, which Mrs Patterson acknowledged looked like wee but self-reported as poo, there was no confirmation given either way.

Dr Rogers also addressed some irregularities in Erin Patterson’s vital signs, providing evidence that these fluctuations in heart rate were most likely the result of the accused's “own stress and panic at the situation she was in”.

Dr Rogers said it was the evidence of 25-year nurse at Leongatha, Cindy Munro, when she came in to cannulate the accused at Leongatha Hospital around midday on July 31, that the accused did not look unwell like Heather and Ian.

“I recall Ian being so unwell that he could barely lift his head off the pillow and Heather was a little bit unsteady on her feet but Erin was sitting up in the bed, on the trolley, and she didn't look unwell to me,” Nurse Munro told the court.

Dr Rogers said that when the accused was transferred to the Monash Medical Centre, paramedic Eleyne Spencer said Erin appeared well.

“When toxicology registrar Dr Laura Muldoon assessed the accused at around 4pm on the Monday afternoon at Monash she noted her vital signs were normal.

“By this time, Donald Patterson had already been transferred to the Austin Hospital in an induced coma.”

At the same time as the accused was coming and going from the Leongatha hospital on Monday, July 31, 2023, Don and Gail Patterson were being transferred to the Austin Hospital.

“At 2.30pm that day, Don Patterson was critically ill and in multiple organ failure. He was on life support ventilation with a tube down his windpipe. At this time, the accused was being transported by ambulance to Monash Medical Centre and was calm and chatty,” said Dr Rogers.

“By August 1, 2023, all four of the lunch guests had been conveyed to the Austin Hospital ICU on life support and in an advanced state of multiple organ failure, with their organs, essentially shutting down.”

It was the day the accused was discharged home from the Monash Medical Centre with no clinical or biochemical evidence of amanita mushroom poisoning or any other toxic substance and no liver damage.

'The cover-up deception'

Dr Rogers then moved to what she described as the “fourth deception”, the sustained coverup by the accused allegedly in order “to conceal the truth”.

Specifically, Dr Rogers said this included four elements:

• Firstly, allegedly lying about feeding her children leftover beef Wellington with mushroom scraped off the day after the lunch when she already knew that the other lunch guests had suffered bouts of food poisoning.
• Secondly, allegedly lying about all the mushrooms in the beef Wellington coming from Woolworths and an Asian grocer, since acknowledged by Erin Patterson as not being the case.
• Thirdly, disposing of the food dehydrator the accused had used to dehydrate the death cap mushrooms and,
• Fourthly, allegedly deliberately concealing her usual mobile phone 20 from police.

Dr Rogers’ closing submission to the jury will continue on Tuesday, June 17.