Mushroom trial: Tears flow as video showing happier times before lethal lunch played in court
The accused and her estranged husband struggled to watch as a video showing a sweet family moment days before the lethal lunch that claimed three lives was played in court.
The Mushroom Cook
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In a case with no known motive, mushroom cook Erin Patterson’s murder trial has not had a day without emotion.
Minutes into day four of this trial, and the second day her estranged husband Simon Patterson gave evidence at the Supreme Court, the mood, for a moment, was nostalgic.
Both Simon and his accused wife struggled as the screens beamed a flashback of happier times, reminding them of the lives lost.
A home video, taken 12 days before the poisonous beef wellington allegedly laced with death cap mushrooms irreparably changed their lives, showed the spontaneity of a soon-to-be deceased grandfather, Don Patterson, 70, sharing a moment with his grandson.
On screen, they followed one another across a driveway and waited, and waited, for their “rocket-car” to blast off.
The toy car blew smoke but failed to launch.
Then the voice of Gail Patterson, the witnesses’ mother, chimed in, echoing all our thoughts.
“It’s working but why isn’t it going?” the 70-year-old said.
The next family gathering, at Ms Patterson’s Leongatha home, would be their last.
And this time, Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian were invited.
Only Ian would survive the July 29, 2023, lunch during which Ms Patterson announced to her four guests she had been diagnosed with cancer.
The advice she was seeking for her fake diagnosis was how to break it to the children as she fought an illness she never had.
Ms Patterson’s barrister, Colin Mandy SC, put it to Simon that there had been a history of complaining she was unwell, with no substance.
But Simon said she had struggled with various ailments, including mental illness.
Then it was Simon who started to stumble over his words.
“So she struggled with, she told me, she struggled with arrhythmia of her heart, where she’d get quick, double heart beats, and that affected sleeping and I believed that to be true and I still have no reason to disbelieve that,’’ he told the court.
“She went to hospital a number of times and I believed that she genuinely needed hospital care.
“She struggled a lot with mental illness, both postnatal depression, especially after (our son) was born, and I believe that was real.
“She did tell me a few years ago that she had been diagnosed with …..chronic fatigue, not chronic fatigue. You know, the kind of thing that is Lupus, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, those kinds of diseases.
”I forget the words to describe them.”
In the end, Simon said they were the kind of ailments that could not be diagnosed.
“They thought probably MS but you can’t, she told me, you can’t diagnose MS by just doing a blood test ….”
But there was something Simon found intriguing as his parents, his aunt and his uncle fought for life in hospital following the lunch.
Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC asked Simon whether he told his wife how seriously ill his family members had become as they were treated in hospital.
“It intrigued me that she never actually asked,” Simon responded.
He then conceded that although his wife knew her lunch guests had all become ill, he did not tell her how bad their conditions had become.
As the judge adjourned the case for the weekend, he implored his jurors not to talk about the case to anyone, and to enjoy themselves.
The battlelines have been mapped out in the King v Erin Patterson.
The prosecution alleges she deliberately killed her three victims, and intended to kill another.
The defence has cast it as a tragic accident.
In other words, is she bad or just sad?
That is for the jury to decide.
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Originally published as Mushroom trial: Tears flow as video showing happier times before lethal lunch played in court
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