DAY 25 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial, on Tuesday this week, took a sensational u-turn during the evidence of the accused Leongatha mother of two, Erin Patterson.
Where Mrs Patterson had previously told police, health department officials chasing down a potentially deadly food safety breach, and doctors treating herself and critically ill family members in the days and weeks after her lunch of beef Wellington, that she didn’t forage for mushrooms, she now says she did.
And not just once or twice, many times over the three years leading up to the ill-fated lunch on Saturday, July 29, 2023, out of which the three charges of murder and one of attempted murder against Erin Patterson arose.
She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
It was the evidence of Mrs Patterson that she started taking an interest in foraging for mushrooms, that is collecting and eating wild mushrooms, during the COVID lockdowns of 2020 while walking along the local rail trail between Leongatha and Korumburra, at the Korumburra Botanical Gardens, and also in the paddocks around her home in Shellcot Road Korumburra and also at Gibson Street, Leongatha.
Mrs Patterson said she initially experimented with mushrooms she thought might be OK to eat, at one stage frying up a small piece of mushroom in butter and after finding it good to eat, continuing to collect and eat those mushrooms and others as she became more confident about them.
She described cutting them up to put into food or drying them out in the new dehydrator she had purchased from Hartley Wells in Leongatha on April 28, 2023.
Under questioning by defence counsel Colin Mandy SC Mrs Patterson also considered whether she had picked some of those mushrooms under oak trees.
“Do you remember going to any locations with oak trees?” asked Mr Mandy.
“I think there's some oak trees at the gardens (at Korumburra),” said Mrs Patterson.
“Do you remember picking mushrooms in places near to or underneath oak trees?”
“Not underneath but I'm sure it would have been near them because there's two or three oak trees in those gardens,” she said.
“And in that period of May of 2023, what did you do with the mushrooms you picked in these locations?” asked Mr Mandy.
“I took them home, cleaned them, sliced them. If I didn't think I wanted to use them that day, I would dry them and put them in the pantry,” said Erin.
“And where in the pantry would you put them?” asked Mr Mandy.
“In a Tupperware container on one of the shelves,” she said.
It was the evidence of head mycologist at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Dr Tom May, on Day 10 of the trial that death cap mushrooms grow only in a symbiotic relationship with members of the oak tree family, also under beech and chestnut trees.
Mr Mandy also asked Mrs Patterson about some dried mushrooms she had purchased in April that year, 2023, from an Asian grocery store in the Mt Waverley area, near the house she owned in the suburb.
“I was going to use them to make a meal, but they had a very pungent smell. I didn't think that would be a great smell for what I was making."
Mrs Patterson said she initially put them in a container in the pantry at her Mt Waverley home, but ultimately took them back to Leongatha.
Asked by Mr Mandy what she did with those mushrooms when she got home, she said she took that container and put it in the pantry as well.
So, on the evidence of Erin Patterson, there were now multiple containers of dried mushrooms in the pantry at her Leongatha home, in the days and weeks leading up to the family lunch on July 29, 2023, some purchased at an Asian food store in the Mt Waverley area and some collected in the area around Leongatha and Korumburra.
"Was that container from Mt Waverley in your pantry at Gibson Street when you dehydrated the mushrooms in May and June?" asked Mr Mandy.
"Yes, it was," said Mrs Patterson.
Mr Mandy also asked Erin Patterson about the July 2023 lunch of beef Wellington.
“Now, in terms of the meal that you cooked for the lunch, which is the subject of this trial, do you accept that there must have been death cap mushrooms in that meal?” asked Mr Mandy.
“Yes, I do.”
The issue of what food was stored in her home at Leongatha was covered in an interview with Detective LSC Stepehen Eppingstall at the Wonthaggi Police Station on Saturday, August 5, a week after the lunch.
“On what we saw at your address in Leongatha we didn't see a lot of food that was from Asian grocers or Indian grocers or those kind of stores,” said Detective Eppingstall.
“Did you look in my fridge?” asked Mrs Patterson at the time.
“I've got a lot of Asian cooking stuff in my fridge.
It is an agreed fact that the lunch of beef Wellington, mashed potato, green beans and gravy contained death cap mushrooms and that three of the guests at the meal, Don and Gail Patterson, Erin Patterson’s father-in-law and mother-in-law, together with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson died of massive organ failure after eating the food that Erin Patterson prepared that day.
The other guest, Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson survived an horrific ordeal after 54 days in hospital, including three weeks in intensive care at the Austin Hospital, while Erin Patterson, who also sat down to the meal, recovered from gastro-like symptoms within a few days.
The trial continues in the Supreme Court in Morwell on Wednesday this week but given the rate of progress in the trial, it now looks likely to go into a seventh week, after the Kings Birthday Long Weekend.
