Erin Patterson murder trial day 28 as it happened: Prosecutor suggests accused mushroom cook didn’t love her in-laws, questions her about lunch invitation to estranged husband

• Erin Patterson returned to the witness box for a fifth day to be cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC.
• Asked about evidence given by her son that her interactions with estranged husband Simon were “very negative”, Patterson described the relationship as being “strained”.
• Patterson denied telling Simon that she wanted to discuss “important medical news” when she invited him to the lunch. “That wasn’t the purpose of the lunch or the purpose of the invitation,” she told the jury.
• Rogers suggested that Patterson prepared a poisoned beef Wellington for Simon in case he turned up at the lunch. “No, that’s not true,” Patterson replied.
• Patterson said that she realised after the lunch that foraged mushrooms could have ended up in the beef Wellington, but she told no one.
• Patterson said of her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson: “They did love me and I did love them.”
• In her police interview, the court heard, Patterson told officers she invited the Pattersons and Wilkinsons to the lunch as she had no other family. “They are the only support I’ve got,” Patterson told police at the time. “Nothing [Simon’s] ever done to me will change the fact they are good, decent people.”
• “I suggest you didn’t love them”, said the prosecutor, who suggested Patterson had public and private faces when it came to her relationship with her in-laws. Patterson said this was not true.
• Patterson cried in the witness box as she explained why she invited Ian and Heather Wilkinson to the lunch. “Ian had been my pastor for years and years. I would see and speak with Ian and Heather a lot after church and I really liked them. And I wanted to have a stronger relationship with them,” Patterson said.

Read a recap of the day in full here.

Court has adjourned for today, and will resume on Tuesday due to the public holiday on Monday.

Here are some photographs taken today outside the court in Morwell by our award-winning photographer Jason South.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, arrives at court in Morwell on Friday morning.Credit: Jason South

Erin Patterson’s defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, arriving at court.Credit: Jason South

The sole survivor of the beef Wellington lunch, pastor Ian Wilkinson, outside court. Credit: Jason South

Ian Wilkinson leaving court on Friday afternoon. Credit: Jason South

Erin Patterson’s legal team on Friday. Credit: Jason South

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, is now asking the accused about evidence previously given in the trial about records obtained from a Cooler Master computer found by police at Erin Patterson’s home in Leongatha.

The records suggested access to a map on the iNaturalist website showing the location of death cap mushrooms.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, on Friday.Credit: Jason South

The prosecutor suggests to Patterson that she had used Bing to access the website in May 2022.

“It does look like somebody did that, yes,” Patterson replied.

“I don’t remember doing it. It’s possible it was me. The only thing that gives me cause is I didn’t use Internet Explorer or Bing, but I accept maybe that I did this time, I’m not sure.”

Patterson said she could not comment on whether she had used the iNaturalist site beforehand as she couldn’t remember using it in May 2022. However, she said it was possible she could have done so as she remembered at one point wanting to find out whether death cap mushrooms were growing in Gippsland.

“You put to me this was not the first time I had done this, but it looks like the computer record says it was the first time,” Patterson said.

Rogers clarified that she was asking the accused whether she had accessed it beforehand.

The court has now adjourned for the day. Patterson is expected to continue giving evidence when the trial resumes next week.

Erin Patterson has started crying in the witness box as she told the jury why she invited pastor Ian Wilkinson and his wife Heather to lunch in July 2023.

Reaching for a tissue, her voice grew croaky and she dabbed her left eye as she explained she wanted to thank them for being kind to her over the years.

Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

About half a dozen members of the Wilkinson and Patterson families watched on in court, with little reaction.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, asked Erin Patterson about her relationship with the Wilkinsons.

Patterson agreed with evidence given by her teenage son earlier in the trial that her relationship with the Wilkinsons was “not a negative one, but not strong”. She agreed Ian and Heather had never been to her house as a couple before the lunch on July 29, 2023.

Ian Wilkinson on Friday.Credit: Jason South

Asked by Rogers why she invited the couple for lunch that day, Patterson said there were “a few reasons”.

“Ian had been my pastor for years and years. I would see and speak with Ian and Heather a lot after church and I really liked them. And I wanted to have a stronger relationship with them,” Patterson said.

“When I had invited Don and Gail [Patterson] for lunch in June they said that what I had done with the garden was really nice and Heather would love to see it.”

Patterson told the court she wanted to thank the Wilkinsons for being good to her over the years. She said Heather had helped her a lot when her Patterson’s daughter was little and began attending playgroup at the church.

“Heather would sit with me through those playgroup times and was really kind to me and I wanted to say thank you to her,” Patterson told the jury.

The court heard Patterson’s daughter was three or four at the time she attended playgroup and nine years old at the time of the fatal lunch on July 29, 2023.

Here’s some of the exchange between prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, and Erin Patterson in court today, during questioning over the accused woman’s relationship with her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson:

Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South

Rogers: I suggest that you didn’t love them.

Patterson: That’s not true.

Rogers: I suggest you were angry they had taken Simon’s side.

Patterson: That’s not true.

Rogers: And that feeling towards them continued.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: In fact you had two faces, a public face, one appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail as shown to people like [family members] Simon, Anna, Tanya, Matt, Ruth, Professor [Rhonda] Stuart and police.

Patterson: Are you asking me to agree if I had two faces?

Rogers: Did you agree you had a public face of appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail?

Patterson: I had a good relationship with Don and Gail.

Rogers: I suggest your private face is the one you’ve shown in your Facebook use.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: How you truly felt about Don and Gail is how you expressed it in your Facebook messages.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: That is how you really felt about Simon Patterson, as expressed to your Facebook friends.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: And that you did not regard him as being a decent human being at its core.

Patterson: Actually, I still believe that.”

Erin Patterson is now being questioned about her recorded interview with police on August 5, 2023, when she was asked about her relationship with estranged husband Simon, and why she invited her in-laws, along with Ian and Heather Wilkinson, for lunch.

“Because I’ve got no other family, and they are the only support I’ve got,” Patterson told police at the time.

Ian Wilkinson outside court on Friday.Credit: Jason South

Patterson also told police she wanted to maintain her relationship with Simon’s family, regardless of what happened with Simon, and that she felt he hated that she had a relationship with Don and Gail Patterson.

Erin Patterson also told officers she loved Don and Gail.

“Nothing [Simon’s] ever done to me will change the fact they are good, decent people,” she told police in her interview.

Dr Rhonda Stuart outside court on May 13.Credit: Joe Armao

Earlier today, Patterson was asked in court about a conversation she had with health official Professor Rhonda Stuart at the Monash Medical Centre in August 2023.

Patterson said she could not remember being visited by Stuart or speaking to her during her time at the hospital.

“I can’t remember the conversation,” she said.

Patterson said she had been visited by a number of medical staff while at hospital, and they had all blurred into one.

“Even when she came in to give evidence she did not look familiar to me,” Patterson told the jury.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, reminded Patterson of evidence Stuart gave in court earlier in the trial, that Patterson told Stuart she was having lunch with her ex-husband’s relatives, his parents, and his aunt and uncle.

“I would not have called Simon my ex-husband because he was not. He’s still not,” Patterson told the jury.

After a brief break, prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, has resumed her cross-examination by asking Erin Patterson about her relationship with her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson.

Patterson said that they got on well and loved each other.

Gail and Don Patterson.

“They did love me and I did love them. I do love them,” she said.

Rogers has taken Patterson to evidence from the accused killer’s estranged husband Simon during his cross-examination earlier in the trial. Simon Patterson earlier told the court that around October 2022 there was a lot of tension between Erin Patterson and his parents.

“From my point of view, I wasn’t aware of any tension between me and Don and Gail in that October period,” Erin Patterson told the jury today.

Patterson said there was some tension in the relationship in December 2022, as evidenced from her Signal messages to her in-laws and Facebook posts to her online friends. But she denied she sent “extremely aggressive” messages to a family group chat with her in-laws, as described by Simon in his evidence in the trial.

“I am not aware that there were any extremely aggressive messages, no,” Erin Patterson said.

Child protection worker Katrina Cripps outside court on May 15.Credit: Justin McManus

Patterson agreed she had told Katrina Cripps, a child protection worker, on August 1, 2023, that she loved Don and Gail.

Cripps told the jury earlier in the trial that Patterson told her she had a good relationship with her in-laws until some time before the lunch. Cripps said in court Patterson told her that she felt she was being isolated from the family following a change in her relationship with Simon.

“I did become concerned about that,” Erin Patterson said today. “I was concerned that I wasn’t being invited to [family events].”

Patterson disagreed that she told Cripps that she hadn’t been invited to family events. Instead, she said her recollection was that she had expressed concern that she wasn’t being invited.

“I don’t remember saying that, and I think she [Cripps] is wrong, but it is also possible that I did say that and that I am wrong. But I don’t specifically remember saying that,” Patterson said.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, has now taken Erin Patterson to part of her evidence-in-chief where the accused described realising there was a possibility dried foraged mushrooms could have ended up in a container with shop-bought Asian mushrooms that she used in the beef Wellington.

Patterson agreed she had that realisation after estranged husband Simon Patterson asked her on August 1, 2023 at Monash Medical Centre if she had used the dehydrator to poison his parents.

Erin Patterson (left) and prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC.Credit: The Age

Here is part of today’s the exchange between the prosecutor and the accused:

Rogers: You told this jury that it was some time on August 1, 2023, after this conversation where Simon had asked you, ‘Did you use a dehydrator to poison my parents?’ that you realised the foraged mushrooms could have [ended up in the meal].

Patterson: That might have been a possibility, yes.

Rogers: Surely if you had loved them you would have immediately notified the medical authorities about there being a possibility that the foraged mushrooms would have gone in a container with the Chinese mushrooms.

Patterson: Well, I didn’t.

Rogers: No, you didn’t.

Patterson: I had been told that people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning so that was already happening.

Rogers: You did not feel the need to tell any medical authorities about the possibility that the dried foraged mushrooms, on your evidence that you found, had gone into the container with the dried mushrooms [from an Asian grocer]?

Patterson: That’s right. I did not tell anybody.

Rogers: In your evidence you never once told a medical professional that foraged mushrooms were involved or might have been involved.

Patterson: Correct.

Rogers: And you never told anyone else about that matter, for example [Department of Health manager] Sally Ann Atkinson?

Patterson: Correct.

Rogers: So this realisation, I suggest, this was days before anyone had died.

Patterson: It was.

Rogers: Even after you were discharged from hospital that day you did not tell a single person that this may have been foraged mushrooms used in the meal. Instead the next day, you got up, you drove your children to school ... came home and then you got rid of the dehydrator.

Patterson: Correct.”

Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, has asked Erin Patterson about a line in a message she sent to her estranged husband Simon Patterson that read: “I wanted it to be a special meal as I might not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time.”

Erin Patterson and Simon PattersonCredit: Jason South

Patterson agreed that was a reference to her medical issues.

Rogers questioned her about this:

Rogers: I suggest that on the 16th of July 2023, that you lied to Simon saying you had some medical issues to discuss.

Patterson: No, that wasn’t a lie.

Rogers: In your response to Simon on July 28, you wrote: ‘It’s important to me that you’re all there tomorrow and that I can have the conversations that I need to have’. Is that a reference to the medical issues you were confronting?

Patterson: It’s a reference to medical things, yes.

Rogers: But you weren’t confronting any medical issues.

Patterson: I think I was. I was going for my surgery then.

Rogers: What surgery?

Patterson: The gastric bypass surgery. I had an appointment in early September.”

Patterson said she had booked a pre-surgery appointment with Enrich Clinic in Melbourne but could not remember the exact date.

“The appointment was not the surgery itself but the pre-surgery appointment,” Patterson told the jury.

“I will return to that at a later time,” Rogers said.

Patterson agreed she was keen for Simon to attend the lunch and that she was hoping he would attend.

Rogers: I suggest that you prepared a poisoned beef Wellington for him in case he turned up.

Patterson: No, that’s not true.

Rogers: And when he didn’t show up for lunch at some stage you threw it in the rubbish bin.

Patterson: I did put the pastry and the mushrooms in the rubbish bin, yes.”

Accused killer Erin Patterson has disputed evidence given in the trial by her estranged husband Simon Patterson, that on July 16, 2023 she invited him to lunch on July 29, 2023 because she wanted to discuss “important medical news”.

“I did not say that,” Erin told the jury.

Patterson has also disputed evidence given by Simon that she told him she had invited his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Ian and Heather Wilkinson to lunch to discuss those medical issues.

From left: Don Patterson, Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson died after ingesting poisonous mushrooms. Ian Wilkinson (right) survived after spending months in hospital.

“That wasn’t the purpose of the lunch or the purpose of the invitation,” she told the jury.

Patterson said she did not tell Simon she was keen for the children not to be at the lunch when she invited him.

Here is some of the exchange between prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, and Patterson:

Rogers: You thought Simon would be more likely to accept an invitation if he knew that his parents and Ian and Heather [Wilkinson] would be attending. Agree or disagree?

Patterson: I would disagree with that.

Rogers: You deny saying you told Simon you had some important medical news and you wanted some advice on how to break that to the kids. Correct?

Patterson: Correct.

Roger: You flatly deny that.

Patterson. I do.

Rogers: I suggest you told him you had a medical issue to encourage him to attend.

Patterson: No, incorrect.

Rogers: I suggest that was also your excuse why the children would not be present at the lunch.

Patterson: I disagree with that.”

Rogers suggested Patterson didn’t want the children to be present at the lunch because she didn’t want them to eat the meal she served to her guests on July 29, 2023.

“That’s not true,” Patterson said.