Erin Patterson: Online searches probed in mushroom murder trial as protester kicked out
Erin Patterson told a public health official she had “explosive diarrhoea” after a lunch she is alleged to have poisoned with death cap mushrooms, a court has been told.
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Mushroom cook Erin Patterson told a public health official a lunch she prepared for family members, which she is alleged to have poisoned, left her with explosive diarrhoea, her triple-murder trial has been told.
Called to give evidence, Department of Health senior public health officer Sally Ann Atkinson told the jury she spoke with Ms Patterson for 15 minutes in a phone call on August 1.
She said Dr Connor McDermott, from the Austin Hospital, flagged the suspected mushroom poisoning outbreak with the Department on July 31.
Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering three members of her husband Simon Patterson’s family; his parents Don and Gail Patterson and his aunt Heather, as well as to the attempted murder of Ms Wilkinson’s husband Ian.
Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately poisoned a lunch on July 29, 2023 with death cap mushrooms, while her defence argues the poisoning was an unintentional tragic accident.
Ms Wilkinson, Gail and Don died in the week following the beef wellington meal, while Mr Wilkinson survived.
She said Ms Patterson informed her she “started to feel unwell” about midnight on July 30 and began to experience “explosive diarrhoea” every 15 to 20 minutes.
She said Ms Patterson said she began to feel better that afternoon and ate a bowl of cereal before beginning to feel ill again that night.
The following morning, on July 31, Ms Atkinson said the accused woman dropped her children off at the school bus and checked herself into hospital.
Quizzing Ms Patterson about the meal, the public health officer said she was told dried mushrooms were used alongside fresh button mushrooms from Woolworths.
“The way she explained it, she needed a kilo so added the rest of those mushrooms into the mushroom mix,” she said.
“She explained that for the dehydrated mushrooms she rehydrated them and chopped them up and added them to the Woolworths mushrooms.”
Ms Patterson, she said, told her they were purchased in April at an Asian grocer in Melbourne while the family were attending school holiday activities.
“She said she wasn’t sure where she had purchased them… it might have been Clayton, Oakleigh or Mount Waverley,” she said.
“She said she had driven around a lot and she was not sure.”
Ms Atkinson told the jury Ms Patterson said she initially purchased the dried mushrooms for a pasta dish, but she “thought they smelt funny”.
“The way she explained it, she said she could have used some in that original dish,” the officer said.
Health official’s texts with alleged poisoner aired
A series of text messages exchanged between Ms Atkinson and Ms Patterson in the days following the lunch were displayed on screens in the courtroom as the public health officer was questioned by prosecutor Jane Warren.
Ms Atkinson told the court the exchange began about 3.50pm on August 1, after Ms Patterson did not answer a follow up call.
“Hi Erin, Sally from the Department of Health here I spoke with you this morning. I have left a message for you to call me but though it might be helpful if I let you know the sort of information I wanted to discuss,” the message reads.
In the text, Ms Atkinson requests further details about the food and drink served at the fatal lunch and details on where Ms Patterson purchased the dried mushrooms.
“If you can think of the names of the road you were parked on or near when you went to the different grocery stores then I can get officers out looking around those areas. Even a landmark you might have remembered at the time would be helpful,” the message continues.
At 4.08pm Ms Patterson responded; “Hi Sally, sure I will try to get that information all to you as soon as possible”.
“I’m just dealing with trying to manage and look after the kids in hospital here and a bit snowed under trying to manage that. I’ll get this info to you as soon as I can but I’ve just been in a couple of meetings with people at the hospital when you’ve been trying to call.”
Ms Atkinson told the court she had attempted to call Ms Patterson the following day, and sent a follow up text message after there was no answer with a series of questions about the lunch.
She told the court the pair called and spoke at 1.14pm on August 2.
A short time later, the jury saw, Ms Atkinson sent another message with a follow up question about when she purchased ingredients for the lunch.
“Hi Sally, I’m not sure exactly what time of day,” Ms Patterson responded.
“I went a few times last week and I know I got some of the ingredients on maybe Wednesday or Thursday (I know I bought some discounted eye fillet steaks one time on one of those two days) and then I went back on either Thursday or Friday and bought a couple more but they weren’t discounted just normal price.
“And I bought the rest of the ingredients at one of those shopping trips. I often go daily or every second day to pick up a bag or two and get what I need as I go so it’s hard to pinpoint an exact day I bought this or that but I know I bought all of it at some stage last week on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.”
“Thanks so much for clarifying,” Ms Atkinson replied.
Later that day, the messages show Ms Atkinson sent through a series of photos of sandwich and snack-sized resealable bags, questioning if the size and label shape looked correct.
Ms Patterson responded by circling one bag in red.
“Looking at the size and volume of things in the supermarket I realise there’s no way it can have been 100g worth,” the message reads.
“I was thinking about the weight of that amount of fresh mushrooms I think but dried weigh a lot less. It was probably more like 20g dry in a little snack size bag but without the resealable top.”
Ms Atkinson thanks her and sent through photos from an Oakleigh store showing dried mushrooms that had been repackaged with a white handwritten label.
“Yes that store doesn’t look familiar but that style of packaging and label is exactly what I mean.. They weren’t whole like those shitake mushies in the photos they were sliced. And yes the packaging was about half the size of that,” Ms Patterson replies.
Ms Atkinson is expected to return to the witness box when the trial returns on Tuesday.
Protester ejected from mushroom trial
A protester has swiftly been ejected from the triple-murder trial of mushroom cook Erin Patterson after heckling the trial judge.
Shortly after noon, a man jumped to his feet in the public gallery and interrupted the proceedings in front of the jury before he was removed.
The man was speaking loudly and addressing the trial judge.
He was removed from the courtroom by court security and the police informant Detective Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall and the case continued.
The man’s jacket was open when he interrupted the trial, and underneath he was wearing a yellow shirt reading “all we are saying is give truth a chance”.
‘Extensive necrosis’: Pathologist details autopsy results
Called to the witness box on Monday, forensic pathologist Brian Beer gave evidence about autopsies conducted on Heather Wilkson and Gail and Don Patterson after their deaths.
Dr Beer told the jury there were no traces of amatoxins, the toxic compounds found in death cap mushrooms, located in samples taken from Ms Wilkinson and Gail before or after their deaths.
Because of this, Dr Beer said the pattern of injuries was “very consistent” with toxic mushroom poisoning.
“In essence there was very extensive necrosis of the liver,” he said of Ms Wilkinson.
Dr Beer gave evidence that there were no other identifiable injuries that may have contributed to death and Ms Wilkinson appeared to be “very healthy” prior to her death.
Dr Beer told the jury that Gail had been diagnosed with encephalitis in 2020, but the illness did not contribute to her death.
Don’s cause of death, the forensic pathologist said, was found to be liver failure and multi-organ failure, secondary to amanita poisoning.
Unlike Gail and Ms Wilkinson, urine samples taken while Don was still alive contained traces of alpha-amanitin and beta-amanitin toxins, Dr Beer said.
He told the court that Don showed signs of mild hypertensive heart disease but added this would not have contributed to his death.
Lunch survivor Mr Wilkinson was seated in the courtroom along with members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families.
Phone factory reset four times: court
Shamen Fox-Henry, from Victoria Police’s cybercrime squad, was taken to evidence he gave last week about a Samsung mobile phone seized from Ms Patterson’s home on August 5, 2023.
The jury was told analysis of the phone indicated that it had been factory rest four times on February 12 at 4.53pm, August 1 at 11.09am, August 5 at 12.20pm and August 6 at 5.16pm.
Ms Patterson’s barrister Colin Mandy SC took Mr Fox-Henry to the times and dates listed in the report, questioning their accuracy.
He questioned why the time was not written in UTC, also known as co-ordinated universal time, as other reports had been.
Mr Fox-Henry confirmed that he did not check the device’s settings and was unable to confirm the accuracy of the time.
“I’m unable to confirm if the UTC time has been applied or hasn’t been applied,” Mr Fox-Henry said.
He told the court that police usually applied “strict procedures” on seized devices to preserve data such as placing it in flight mode or using a faraday bag to interrupt signal.
3-minute window probed by defence
Mr Mandy also questioned Mr Fox-Henry about a report generated on about 67 data artefacts pulled from more than 2½ million records on a Cooler Master computer.
The jury was told the device was taken from Ms Patterson’s home on August 5 and, after processing using proprietary software, investigators used keyword searches to identify items of interest.
Records from the Cooler Master computer captured online activity over about three minutes from 7.20pm to 7.23pm on May 28, 2022.
Last week, the jury was told a Bing search for “iNaturalist” was located at 7.20pm, followed by a visit to the iNaturalist homepage through the Microsoft Edge browser.
Minutes later, at 7.23pm, a specific URL was visited with the recorded headline “Deathcap from Melbourne, Vic, Australia on May 18 2022 … Bricker Reserve, Moorabbin – iNaturalist”.
Just 21 seconds later another record captures a Google search for Korumburra Middle Pub at 7.23pm, a venue not far from Ms Patterson’s home.
Another record captured a phone number and “Erin Patterson” being auto-filled by Google.
Mr Mandy suggested this appeared to be an “auto-fill purchase” from the pub, but Mr Fox-Henry confirmed that anyone with access to the computer could use the auto-fill.
He told the jury that he did not examine the computer to check these settings, nor if the date and time of the computer was correct.
He conceded that he could have, if asked, re-examined the records of the computer to look at activity before and after the three minutes of records.
Questioned on if this could have given him more information about the activity, such as who conducted the search or past or subsequent activity, the forensic officer said “potentially, yes”.
The trial continues.
Originally published as Erin Patterson: Online searches probed in mushroom murder trial as protester kicked out
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