AT THE urging of the media, without objection from the Patterson and Wilkinson families but against the wishes of convicted triple murderer, Erin Patterson, the full video recording of the police record of interview with Ms Patterson has now been released by the courts.
It was part of a great cache of information, previously kept from the public and the jury in the Erin Patterson trial, under a suppression order that was lifted by Justice Christopher Beale today, Friday, August 8, 2025.
The interview, conducted on Saturday, August 5 at 4.41pm at the Wonthaggi Police Station, by the police informant in the case, Detective Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall, details for the first time some of the many lies told by Erin Patterson in the days, weeks and months after she served a poisonous meal of beef Wellington, laced with death cap mushrooms, to family members a week earlier.
In the interview, just hours after passing a dummy phone to police during their first search of her home, Ms Patterson is at pains to say how helpful she has been to both health officials, allegedly revealing everything about where the food came from, and to police during their investigations.
Not only does Ms Patterson claim to have been helpful to health officials, despite denying she ever foraged for mushrooms or owned a food dehydrator, after being told two of the lunch guests have died and two others remain critically ill, Ms Patterson also supplies a bogus phone number to police and told them she would never want to harm her husband’s parents because she loved them.
Here’s part of the exchange about the foraging and the dehydrator (which police had already recovered from the tip the previous day).
- Detective Eppingstall: All right, no problem. Obviously, we've got concerns in relation to these mushrooms and where they've come from.
- Erin Patterson: Mmm.
- Eppingstall: O.K. Is that something you've done in the past, foraging for mushrooms.
- Erin: Never.
- Eppingstall: Or anything like that? Never?
- Erin: Never.
- Eppingstall: All right. Do you preserve foods or anything like that?
- Erin: No.
- Eppingstall: Have you ever dehydrated food or anything like that?
- Erin: No.
- Eppingstall: OK, all right.