‘She was only here for five minutes’: The ominous hospital discharge that triggered a doctor’s alarm

“She just got up and left?”

The triple-zero operator’s question hung in the air, directed at a doctor already stretched thin, who had spent hours managing critically ill patients suspected of mushroom poisoning.

Dr Chris Webster inside the clinic he owns in Leongatha.Credit: Jason South

Dr Chris Webster was worried: Erin Patterson, who had consumed the same meal as his sick patients, had just discharged herself from Leongatha Hospital after barely five minutes of medical attention.

So Webster called triple zero. This transcript of his phone call, expressing concern over Patterson discharging herself, became a piece of evidence jurors heard before they convicted her of three murders and one attempted murder.

Exhibits released by the Supreme Court of Victoria after Monday’s verdict showed that Webster, a physician at Leongatha Hospital, contacted emergency services shortly after Patterson’s departure, requesting police to check on her wellbeing.

“She was only here for five minutes,” Webster told the operator during the call on July 31, 2023. “I’ve tried several times to get hold of her on her mobile phone.”

The operator then asked what time Patterson had presented at hospital.

“At 8.05,” Webster replied.

“Today?”

“Yep.”

“With mushroom poisoning, you said.”

“Yeah. So there was five people that ate a meal on Saturday and two of them are in intensive care at Dandenong Hospital. Two have just been transferred from Leongatha Hospital to Dandenong Hospital, and Erin presented this morning with symptoms of poisoning.”

The operator asked: “And what happened when she presented? She just got up and left?”

Webster replied: “No. She was – there – it was time for the nurse to begin observations and I ... I was managing the other critically unwell patients. So I had a brief chat to her about where the mushrooms were obtained. And after that, while I was attending the other patients, nurses informed me that she had discharged herself against medical advice.”

Webster then briefly consulted a form with Patterson’s details in the hope it mentioned exactly when she discharged herself. “No, it doesn’t have a time,” he said eventually. “She left at ... she left at 10 past. She was only here for five minutes.”

Webster provided Patterson’s home address and mobile number, and asked to be contacted with the outcome of the police check-up before the call ended.

Where the call fits in

The recording was played to the court as Webster gave evidence on day seven of the trial.

“I was surprised,” he told the court. “I had just informed her that she had been potentially exposed to deadly death cap poison.”

Covering on the proceedings at the time, The Age reported that shortly after, Webster got a phone call from police informing him that they were at Patterson’s house in Leongatha.

He told them Patterson was back at the hospital and requested the officers collect any leftovers from the beef Wellington.

“I had no idea [if there were any leftovers] but I figured there was a chance,” the jury heard.

Webster asked Patterson if she would give permission for police to go inside her home, and she said they would find some leftovers in the bin.

Photos of the leftovers were shown to the jury, and also released as part of Monday’s cache of exhibits.

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