How Erin Patterson’s dream home in a ‘nature wonderland’ was used to kill

In what Erin Patterson told her friends was a “silver lining” to her mother’s death, money that followed allowed her to build her dream home on a “bush block”. It would become the scene of her chilling murder plot.

Erin Patterson told her online friends that she couldn’t wait to build her dream home on a “bush block” that would eventually be the scene of her chilling murder plot.

In messages obtained by the Herald Sun, Patterson gushed to her Facebook mates about buying the Leongatha land for about a quarter of a million dollars in 2019.

“I bought this today,” she wrote with a link attached to the block.

“Literally so excited I can’t breathe!!!”

Patterson said she was able to purchase the Gibson St land after she sold her mother Heather Scutter’s home following her death in 2019.

“It’s been a dream to build all my life and can only do it thanks to my mum’s house selling,” she said.

“Silver lining to her passing!”

Erin Patterson’s “dream” Leongatha home. Picture: William West

Patterson told her online friends that she brought the 1ha block – described in real estate listings at the time as a “nature wonderland” and “very special parcel of land” offering the chance to “be at one with mother nature” – for $260,000.

“Houses are so damn expensive these days! A basic house in a decent suburb in Melbourne is 800K to a mill (sic). Who can afford that??!” she wrote.

“I have been eyeing off that block for months! I have inspected it fifteen times!”

Patterson said she had a notebook full of house sketches.

“All my life I’ve wanted to live in the forest and this feels like living in the forest! There are even a couple of koalas in those trees,” she said.

“I’ve got a notebook full of sketches of house layouts I’ve been drawing for years.

“Thinking of getting a goat or two to keep the weeds down until building starts.”

Don and Gail Patterson.

Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

This week, Patterson was found guilty of murdering her estranged husband’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson and attempting to murder his uncle Ian Wilkinson.

Patterson deliberately poisoned their beef wellington meal with death cap mushrooms when she invited them to lunch on July 29, 2023, at the Leongatha home she had newly built.

During her mammoth murder trial, Patterson told the jury she was heavily involved in the design of the two-storey house.

“I was involved right from the beginning of the design,” she said when she took the stand.

Erin Patterson outside her Leongatha home. Picture: Brooke Grebert-Craig.

“I drew a design myself first in Microsoft Paint and gave that to the building designer and he said, ‘that will never work engineering-wise, let’s move it around a bit’, but it modelled quite closely on how I wanted things sorted out.”

Patterson said she hoped she would “grow old” in the house.

“I saw it as the final house, meaning I wanted it to be a house where the children would grow up,” she said.

“Where once they moved away for uni or work, they could come back and stay whenever they liked, bring their children, and I’d grow old there. That’s what I hoped.”

Mushrooms growing around the base of a tree on the Gibson St property.

But Patterson is now staring down the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars.

The true crime fanatic’s lethal lunch sparked worldwide attention, and was one of the biggest trials in Victorian history.

Books, TV tell-alls and documentaries are likely to follow.

The mushroom cook has also been immortalised in a mural at Queen Victoria Market, with new posters appearing at the site today featuring AI images of Patterson cooking “a meal to die for”.

The mother of two will be sentenced at a later date.

Originally published as How Erin Patterson’s dream home in a ‘nature wonderland’ was used to kill