How a $2 million bequest paid for the best defence killer cook could buy

Erin Scutter was 32 years old when she received a gift that would change the trajectory of her whole life – and make all the difference for her defence when, as Erin Patterson, she was accused of being a triple killer.

In 2006, her beloved grandmother died, leaving her a bequest worth about $2 million. The money was tied up in a complicated estate that would pay out in regular, sizeable instalments over the next eight years.

Erin Patterson and Simon Patterson.Credit: Jason South

The windfall helped fund her defence when Erin Patterson was prosecuted for the murders of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, after serving them a mushroom lunch at her Leongatha home in July 2023.

Six weeks after she was charged, Erin sold her Mount Waverley home for $1.025 million.

She had retained the top-flight criminal firm of Doogue + George to defend her, and the case was expensive.

The day after her arrest, she would be represented by Phil Dunn, KC, and then for more than 18 months by Mandy, a veteran barrister, and junior counsel Sophie Stafford.

The high-powered team represented Patterson in court on more than 30 occasions.

It was a mammoth effort built toward a trial that ran for 40 days, living and working Monday to Friday for nine weeks from a rented property near the Latrobe Law Court.

Just before the start of the trial, Erin’s Leongatha dream home – which the council values at $1,175,000 – had a mortgage taken out on it in the name of her law firm, Doogue + George, in a standard move to secure their future fees.

It’s the first time it appears Erin Patterson has ever been in real debt to anyone.

Patterson’s trial went into some detail about her and estranged husband Simon’s finances.

Erin, who married Simon in 2007, used the first tranches of her inheritance payments to set up the new family with a home in Western Australia, and later, back in Korumburra, near Simon’s parents in South Gippsland.

There was enough cash coming in that the family didn’t have to worry about money.

“Money has never been the most important motivation to either Erin or me in our decisions,” Simon told the Supreme Court trial on May 1.

Erin Patterson’s Leongatha home, the scene of the fatal lunch.Credit: Joe Armao

The cash she inherited afforded Erin and her growing family – including a son born in 2009 and a daughter in 2014 – a life most would be envious of.

There were epic road trips around Australia, an African safari, holidays in New Zealand and a score of trips interstate, including to Erin’s mother’s home in Eden on the NSW South Coast.

Erin could also financially indulge her passion for reading by opening a bookstore in Western Australia, and explore her love of learning with courses in law and veterinary science. Without the need to be tied to a regular income from work, she could even afford to take on a quasi-vanity role as “editor” of the local Gippsland community newsletter, The Burra Flyer, in Korumburra.

“I was comfortable financially, such that I could afford to go to university and I didn’t need to work a full-time job at the same time,” she told a jury about her life in the months before the fatal lunch.

The money also allowed Erin to be extraordinarily generous to Simon’s family.

More than $1 million was loaned to Simon’s three siblings so they could buy their own homes. These loans were interest-free – only indexed to inflation – and had no repayment terms or demands.

The largesse continued even when Erin and Simon’s differences became irreconcilable in 2015 and they separated.

The kitty was split in half and both “walked away” with about $800,000 each.

“We agreed on those things and we didn’t get any lawyers or anyone else involved,” Simon told the court.

A child protection investigator would later tell the trial that Erin had said she “had given Simon half the inheritance and that she had done that because that’s what she thought you did when you separated”.

But the “settlement” certainly wasn’t the end of the now-estranged couple’s entanglements.

When the Scutter matriarch, Heather, an academic and expert in children’s literature, died from cancer in NSW in 2019, it left her daughters – Erin and her sister, Ceinwen – another windfall.

Erin would use this money in a series of property deals in and around Korumburra and Leongatha, buying and selling houses for cash.

Erin Patterson’s defence team (from left) Ophelia Hollway, barrister Colin Mandy, SC, and Bill Doogue outside court last week.Credit: Jason South

By this time, the couple had been separated for four years, yet Erin continued to put Simon’s name on the titles of properties she was buying. She was also still forking out for regular holidays for the family of four.

At Erin’s trial, defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, asked her: “Why was that?”

“Well, from my perspective ... I always thought that we would bring the family back together,” the accused said. “That was what I wanted, and I did that because I wanted some way to demonstrate to Simon that that’s what I really believed and wanted.

“It was something, you know, tangible to say this is – I see a future for us.”

The bequests also helped fund construction of Erin’s “forever house” on Gibson Street, Leongatha, after she initially sketched out the vision for the home on Microsoft Paint.

The block of land it was built on had been purchased jointly in Simon’s name in 2019, and a lot of work had gone into designing and building the house.

“I saw it as the final house, meaning 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,” Erin told the court.

In mid-2019, the mother of two also purchased a townhouse on Lyons Street in Mount Waverley, in Melbourne’s south-east, where the family often stayed during the school holidays.

But dissatisfaction was growing with this strange, informal arrangement between Erin and Simon, her estranged husband told the court.

“I asked her about her intentions for the Gibson Street property, which is what started the conversation, because of the way she was relating to me made me wonder about whether she was using me for my expertise and contacts to build her house or whether she genuinely thought that this was, you know, a move towards living together as a family again,” Simon said in his evidence.

“I just said I wanted to be on the Nason Street [Korumburra] title.

“She responded – I think she gave me my answer without saying it. She responded by saying she wanted my name off the Gibson Street title and the Lyons Street title and she would put just my name on the Nason Street title.”

By early 2022, it was a done deal.

Erin took the townhouse in Mount Waverley and the soon-to-be finished homestead on Gibson Street in Leongatha. Simon got the house in Nason Street, Korumburra, free and clear.

The Mount Waverley home Erin Patterson sold.

But that year, financial problems of a different kind reared their head between the former couple.

After Simon filed a tax return telling the government they were officially separated in 2022, Erin told him she was going to apply for child support payments.

Despite his assets and a former high-paying job as an engineering consultant, Simon’s contribution towards their two children, now eight and 13, was assessed at just $38 a month.

It became a point of contention between the pair, especially after Simon refused to pay an anaesthetist’s bill for their son and half of the children’s private school fees. He said he did so after being advised by government staff to only pay his allocated monthly payment in December 2022.

Erin attempted to get her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, involved as mediators, but after the couple refused to adjudicate, she sent a lengthy rant to a family group chat, complaining that Simon’s decision seemed to be a punishment for her claiming child support and claiming she had been entitled to $30,000 in child support payments over the years that she hadn’t claimed.

“Both parents have a duty to financially support the children they made,” she wrote.

“Simon is hiding behind the communication from the government, but now I’ve made a child support claim, he doesn’t have to pay any bills outside of it. That is an instruction for people who want to be a bare-minimum parent because any money or bills paid outside the official child support.”

Meanwhile, Erin was privately whingeing to her online friends telling them Simon was a “deadbeat” and Don and Gail a lost cause.

“This family, I swear to f---ing God,” one message read.

“They’re staying out of it. I’m sick of this shit I want nothing to do with them … f--- ’em,” read another of her messages.

The prosecution in the trial argued that Erin’s potential motive for wanting to kill Gail and Don, and by extension, Ian and Heather Wilkinson, was a dispute over her ex-husband’s alleged failure to provide for their children. Don and Gail’s failure to pull their son into line made them targets, it argued.

The defence argued that these intra-family ructions were resolved by December 2022 – seven months before the fatal lunch.

But the jury’s guilty verdict indicates they didn’t believe all was fine between Erin and the Patterson clan.

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