When asked how she felt about herself at the time of the fatal lunch, Erin Patterson said: ‘Not good’
In testimony the world has been waiting 674 days to hear, mushroom cook Erin Patterson has taken the stand and offered a raw response to a key question.
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“I’d been fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my adult life, and the further inroads I made into being middle aged, the less I felt good about myself.”
These were among the first words uttered by Erin Patterson in a testimony the world waited 674 days to hear.
Ms Patterson had been asked how she felt about herself in July 2023, the month she hosted a lunch that killed three members of her estranged husband’s family and almost took the life of another.
The raw response was one of many that provided a new perspective on her tumultuous relationship with husband Simon, her beliefs and deepest fears, across 41 minutes of evidence on Monday afternoon.
Until then, it had been unclear whether Ms Patterson would even take the stand.
But at 3.12pm, after the prosecution closed its case, Justice Christopher Beale asked defence barrister Colin Mandy SC: “What course will the accused be taking?”
Mr Mandy declared: “Your Honour, the defence will call Erin Patterson.”
There was a hush before the jury was swiftly ushered out of the courtroom.
When the jurors returned, 18 minutes later, Ms Patterson had departed the dock, where she has spent 24 days, and sat across from them in the witness box.
Her husband, Simon, was not in the packed Courtroom 4 at Latrobe Valley Law Courts.
He has only attended the marathon trial on the days he has been required to testify.
Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor of the beef wellington lunch, sat arms crossed.
In an unwavering voice, the accused triple murderer stated her name: Erin Trudi Patterson.
Dressed in a feminine paisley black top with splashes of colour, her long brown hair was draped over her shoulders.
She took an affirmation, not a religious oath, to tell the whole truth.
LIFE IN JULY 2023
After Ms Patterson was sworn in, Mr Mandy rose to his feet and told the court he would start by asking her what life was like in July 2023, the month of the fatal lunch.
She explained that her two children were enrolled in a new school and she had hoped to start a nursing and midwifery degree at Federation University the following year.
Mr Mandy asked Ms Patterson about the new house she had built and moved into a year prior to the lunch.
“I wanted it to be a house where the children would grow up, 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,” she said, her voice trailing off.
While she said she was financially comfortable in mid-2023, Ms Patterson acknowledged her relationship with the extended family – including her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian – was drifting.
Only Ian would survive the beef wellington lunch she prepared for them at her Leongatha home on July 29.
Prosecutors allege she laced the meal with lethal death cap mushrooms, but Ms Patterson has always maintained what happened was “a tragedy and a terrible accident”.
“I had felt for some months that my relationship with the wider Patterson family and particularly Don and Gail perhaps had a bit more distance or space put between us,” she testified.
“We saw each other less … I no longer lived in the same town as Don and Gail, but I had become (sic) to have concerns that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much with the family anymore. Perhaps I wasn’t being invited to so many things.”
Ms Patterson said her relationship with her estranged husband had become “functional”, mostly relating to logistic matters involving the church and their children.
“We didn’t relate on friend things, banter, like we used to,” she said.
“That changed at the start of the year.”
When asked how she felt about herself at the time of the fatal lunch, Ms Patterson replied: “Not good … I’d been fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my whole life, and the further inroads I made into being middle aged, the less I felt good about myself, I suppose.
“Put on more weight. Could handle exercise less … that was the bulk of it.”
Her voice cracking, she revealed: “I was planning to have weight-loss surgery.
“Gastric bypass. I was planning to do that.”
YOUNG LOVE AND ENLIGHTENMENT
As Ms Patterson recovered her composure, Mr Mandy took the court back to how she and Simon first met at Monash City Council, in the early 2000s, while she worked as an admin assistant for the RSPCA and he worked as a traffic engineer.
When asked when they met, she initially replied: “2003.”
“No, I beg your pardon, it was 2004, I’m sorry,” she added, correcting herself.
She said they shared mutual friends and socialised over lunch or after-work drinks.
“I would say we became friends around November ’04 and we were friends only until July ’05 … that’s when we started dating,” she told the court.
Ms Patterson described herself as a “fundamentalist atheist” in early 2005, while Simon was “a Christian”.
“We had a lot of conversations about life, religion, politics … and I was trying to convert him to being an atheist, but things happened in reverse, and I became a Christian,” she said.
She met his parents for the first time at Korumburra Baptist Church that year.
“I remember being really excited about it because I’d never been to a church service before,” she said.
“I’d been to my sister’s wedding in a church, but that was it.”
Ms Patterson recalled Ian, the pastor, was preaching and there was a banner on the wall behind him.
“It could still be there now, but it said … faith, hope and love,” she said, gesturing with her arms with each word.
“Ian gave a sermon, talking about that.”
Surrounded by loved ones in the courtroom, Ian listened to Ms Patterson speak of him with the same composure he has displayed throughout the trial.
She took part in a communion following the service, she said, that changed her.
“I had what I would call a religious experience there and it quite overwhelmed me,” Ms Patterson told the court.
“I’d been approaching religion as an intellectual exercise up until that point.”
After they began dating in July 2005, Ms Patterson said she attended Simon’s church, Glen Eira Christian Community Church in Melbourne, a few times.
They also attended Korumburra Baptist Church several times with his parents, while she went to Bible studies with his cousin and two of his school friends.
MARRIAGE, NEW LIFE AND TRAUMA
Ms Patterson said she moved to a “little hamlet town” called Almurta, near Korumburra, in 2006, while Simon was living in Melbourne.
The couple wed in June 2007 at Korumburra Anglican Church.
“Beautiful church,” she observed, recounting how they shared their nuptials there, rather than at Korumburra Baptist Church.
She said this was because they wanted Ian and Heather to enjoy themselves as guests, instead of worrying about running the service themselves.
In the second week of the trial, Ian described Ms Patterson and himself as “more like acquaintances”.
She revealed she was walked down the aisle by David Wilkinson, Ian’s son.
“Where were your parents?” Mr Mandy asked.
“In Russia, on a train,” Ms Patterson pointedly replied, without expanding on her answer.
After Don and Gail hosted the reception for the newlyweds, they escaped to Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges for a short honeymoon.
“But what we really wanted for our honeymoon was to drive around Australia,” she added.
“Simon gave notice at his job, we gave away everything we had, sold Simon’s car to Ian and Heather, bought a Nissan Patrol and we just hit the open road.”
They first travelled to Sydney before they “slowly meandered” their way across and “through the guts” of the continent.
Eventually, they settled in Perth in the latter half of 2007.
“Simon was pretty keen to keep travelling and I was pretty keen to stop for a while and put down roots. I was keen to start having babies … so we did,” she said.
Simon got a council job south of Perth while Erin applied for university.
She fell pregnant in early 2008 before their son was born in January the following year.
It was while describing the “very traumatic” birth that her voice cracked for the second time of her testimony.
“It went for a very long time and they tried to get him out with forceps and he wouldn’t come out and he started to go into distress and they lost his heartbeat, so they did an emergency caesarean and got him out quickly,” she told the court.
She said she stayed in hospital for about a week, while her son was in the neonatal ICU.
Her son was eventually discharged into the care of Simon, but Ms Patterson was asked to stay so she could continue to recover from her surgery.
“I was really upset and I said: ‘I don’t want to stay here by myself, I want to go home with (our son)’,” she said. “Simon said to me: ‘You can just do it. Let’s just leave’.”
Ms Patterson said she discharged herself against medical advice.
JOURNEY TO THE FIRST SEPARATION
Three months after their son was born, Ms Patterson said Simon was keen to resume their travels and head to the Top End.
They drove north to Broome and along the Gibb River Rd, before travelling to the Northern Territory and into Queensland.
They arrived in Townsville towards the end of 2009.
By that time, Ms Patterson said she had a “good holiday”, but it had been enough.
“I wanted to sleep in a real bed and it was getting harder to camp with (our son),” she told the court.
“When we started off, he was three months old, he slept a lot, I remember joking at the time that I couldn’t remember his eye colour because his eyes were never opened.”
But by November, the infant was sitting up and crawling and trying to stand.
“It was a lot harder,” she said.
They agreed she would fly back to Perth while Simon and the baby would drive back.
After their return to Western Australia, Ms Patterson said the couple had their first period of separation.
She rented a cottage to live with her son, while Simon stayed in a caravan close by, but they moved back in together after two or three months.
She told the court their extended family visited during their time in Perth, including Don and Gail once or twice a year.
But she said there were other periods of separation where the couple “struggled”.
When asked by Mr Mandy whether there was “some tension to cause the separations”, Ms Patterson let out a sigh.
“If we had any problems at all, it was … we just couldn’t communicate well when we disagreed about something,” she said.
“We could never communicate in a way that made each of us feel heard or understood so we would just feel hurt and not know how to resolve it.”
The tension did not extend to their son, she said, and they both thought it was important to co-operate for his sake.
“We just both loved him … they were adult problems, they’re not problems for a child,” she told the court.
As Ms Patterson exhaled, Mr Mandy said: “Your Honour, is that a convenient time?”
“Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, see you tomorrow,” Justice Beale responded, sending the jury home until another day of evidence from Ms Patterson on Tuesday.
The 50-year-old mother of two has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.
With her first 41 minutes of testimony setting a tantalising scene, the coming days are expected to have people across Victoria – and the globe – gripped.
Additional reporting by Anna Shreeves
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