Court hears evidence from alleged mushroom cook: Erin Patterson trial day 24 as it happened

Erin Patterson will return to the witness box and continue giving evidence on day 25 of the trial.

Follow along to day 25 of the trial here. 

Accused triple murderer Erin Patterson has taken to the witness stand declaring she had always been close to her in-laws, but in the months before their deaths felt distance was growing between them.

On the opening day of her evidence, the 50-year-old spoke of her low self-esteem, her early life with now estranged husband Simon Patterson, and the spiritual moment that saw her turn from an atheist into a Christian.

Dressed in a paisley-patterned shirt, black pants and sandals, Patterson nodded along throughout questioning from her defence barrister, Colin Mandy, SC, with her hands visibly shaking as she lifted cups of water to her mouth.

Her decision to speak in her own defence came after the prosecution closed its case on Monday after 24 days of opening addresses and witness testimony to a Supreme Court jury in Morwell.

Erin Patterson is charged with murdering in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and attempting to murder pastor Ian Wilkinson by cooking death cap mushrooms into a beef Wellington dish she served them at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.

Asked about her relationship with Don and Gail during that year, Erin Patterson said she had begun to see them less.

“I had felt for some months that my relationship with the wider Patterson family, particularly Don and Gail had perhaps had a bit more distance or space put between us,” she said.

Erin Patterson and Simon Patterson.

“I’d begun to have concerns that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much with the family any more. Perhaps I wasn’t being invited to so many things.”

She explained that in the year the trio died, she had been busy helping her children settling into new schools. Erin Patterson said the pair lived with her full-time, visiting their father when they wished.

She said at the time, she was also preparing to return to study in 2024 after being accepted into a bachelor of nursing and midwifery at Federation University, which she had previously deferred to care for her children.

The accused was also asked about her Leongatha home, telling the jury she’d helped design it using Microsoft Paint and wanted it to be her forever home.

“Where once they moved away for uni or work, they could come back and stay wherever they liked, bring their children and I’d grow old there. That’s what I’d hoped,” she told the jury.

“I really liked living there. 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.”

A softly spoken Patterson, seated in the witness box, explained that in the early days of her relationship with Simon Patterson they had lived together in Perth.

There, she said, Don and Gail Patterson visited several times a year, even helping plan part of her wedding to their son by arranging a large marquee and food.

Gail and Don Patterson.

But in early 2023, she said she felt things began to change.

“Partly as a consequence that I no longer lived in the same town as Don and Gail,” she said.

Patterson said her relationship with Simon Patterson – after separating in 2015 – had grown to be only functional and they no longer related to “friend things” like they used to.

The accused said by 2023, she was also not feeling good about herself physically and had been fighting a never-ending battle with low self-esteem, putting on weight, and was unable to exercise as much as previously.

Court sketch of Erin Patterson.Credit: Anita Lester

“I was planning to have weight-loss surgery, you know, is it gastric bypass? I was planning to do that,” she said.

Mandy took Erin Patterson back to the beginning of her romantic relationship with Simon Patterson which she said began in mid-2005 before they married in June 2007.

She said it was while they were dating in early 2005 she first met Don and Gail Patterson while staying at their house during a weekend away.

The accused said at the time she knew her partner was Christian, but she described herself as a “fundamentalist atheist”. That all changed though, she said, during her first-ever visit to church where Ian Wilkinson was giving a sermon at Korumburra Baptist Church.

“So through the course of those months, December ’04, January, February ’05 we had a lot of conversations about life, religion, politics and a lot about religion, and I was trying to convert him to being an atheist, but things happened in reverse and I became a Christian,” she said.

Korumburra Baptist Church.Credit: Joe Armao

“I remember being really excited about [going to her first church service] because I’d never been to a church service before, I’d been to my sister’s wedding in a church but that was it.

“I remember that there was a banner up on the wall, behind where Ian was preaching … it said ... faith, hope and love.

“There’s a passage in the Bible that talks about faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.

“I had, what at best can be described as, like a spiritual experience.”

Patterson said she went on to attend Bible study sessions with Simon Patterson and some of his family and friends before the couple got married in June 2007.

“We got married in the Korumburra Anglican Church. A beautiful church. We wanted Ian and Heather to be able to come and relax as guests rather than have jobs for the day like they would have if we’d got married at Korumburra Baptist,” she said.

The accused said her husband’s cousin walked her down the aisle as her parents were “in Russia on a train” at the time.

“Don and Gail hired a huge marquee and put on a buffet for everybody,” she told the jury.

Trying to hold back tears, Erin Patterson detailed the help Gail Patterson had been to her after the “traumatic” birth of her first baby.

“Don and Gail came very quickly. It would have been only a couple weeks after,” she said.

“I remember being really relieved that Gail was there because I felt really out of my depth.”

Erin said Gail was really supportive, gentle and patient with her, giving advice about helping settle the baby and trying to interpret his cries.

“She gave me good advice about just relax and enjoy it, you don’t have to stick to this timetable, this schedule, just relax and enjoy your baby.”

In late 2009, Erin and Simon Patterson took their three-month-old son on a trip across the top of Australia, but she said travelling with a baby was difficult and she eventually returned to Perth where the couple separated for the first time.

The jury was told after reuniting two or three months later, the pair endured further separations during their relationship until 2015 when they split permanently.

She said there didn’t appear to be any conflict in their parenting of the children.

Several members of the Wilkinson and Patterson families were present in the court on Monday, including lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson and Don Patterson’s brother Colin Patterson.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder. She says the deaths were an accident.

The trial continues.

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Court artist Anita Lester captured this image of Erin Patterson as the murder accused gave evidence at the Latrobe Valley justice precinct in Morwell on Monday afternoon.

Court sketch of Erin Patterson.Credit: Anita Lester

Holding back tears, Erin Patterson told the jury about what came next for the young couple – parenting their son during their separations.

Patterson said that despite periods of separation between 2009 and 2015 due to struggles in their relationship, it was important for them to co-operate in the care of the children.

“That was our priority,” she said.

Patterson said the conflicts in their relationship stemmed from communication issues.

“We just couldn’t communicate well when we disagreed about something,” she said.

“We would just feel hurt and not know how to resolve it.”

Erin Patterson said that she, Simon and the baby continued towards Alice Springs, before heading over to Tennant Creek and the Queensland coast, eventually ending up in Cairns and Townsville around November 2009.

“It had been a good holiday, but I’d had enough. I wanted to sleep in a real bed,” she said.

Patterson said it was getting harder to camp with the baby. She said they used to joke that they didn’t remember his eye colour because he slept a lot, but by November 2009, he was crawling and standing, and it was getting tricky.

“I flew back to Perth, and Simon followed with [the baby],” she said.

Patterson said it took about a week for them to get back to Perth. She said she had rented a cottage for her and the baby to live in, while Simon stayed in a caravan nearby.

Patterson said they lived separately for about three months. The separation was over at the start of 2010.

During their time in WA, Patterson said, they had a lot of visitors, including Don, Gail and other family members.

Erin Patterson, crying, told the jury about the birth of her first child and is now describing life in Perth soon after that.

Back then, the couple and their newborn were living in a small unit in the inner city, so when Simon’s parents, Gail and Don Patterson, visited shortly after the birth, they stayed in an Airbnb.

“I remember being really relieved that Gail was there, because I felt really out of my depth,” Erin said.

Gail Patterson helped her daughter-in-law settle the baby after a feed, and tried to interpret his cries with her. She was, Erin recalls, supportive, gentle and patient.

Gail Patterson.

“She gave me good advice about just relaxing and enjoying it; you don’t have to stick to this timetable, this schedule, just relax and enjoy your baby,” she said.

After Don and Gail left, Erin said, they continued living in the Perth flat.

“Simon was pretty keen for us to resume the trip where we left off before we stopped to have [the baby],” she said.

In April, the couple put their belongings in a storage unit and decided to continue travelling the northern part of Australia without any time constraints, other than meeting relatives on Gibb River Road, in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.

“One of Simon’s friends also joined us, and we took a couple of weeks for the Gibb River Road,” she said.

Shortly after the couple rented a home near the beach about 40 minutes south of Perth, Patterson applied to go to university and became pregnant.

Their first child was born in January 2009 in a traumatic birth.

Crying, Patterson described to the jury the distressing birth of her son.

“It went for a very long time, and they tried to get him out with forceps, and he wouldn’t come out,” she recalls. “He started to go into distress, and they lost his heartbeat, so they performed an emergency cesarean.”

Erin and Simon Patterson.Credit: Suplied

She said doctors were happy for the baby to be discharged to be with Simon, but wanted Patterson to stay in hospital.

“I was really upset. I said ‘I don’t want to stay here by myself,’” she told the court.

“Simon said: ‘You can just do it; let’s just leave.’”

So Patterson did – she said she discharged herself against medical advice and went home to be with her husband and baby.

A little later, in 2006, Patterson tells the jury, she moved to a hamlet not far from Korumburra.

There, she says, Don and Gail Patterson would invite her to a meal almost monthly. Simon was living in Melbourne at the time.

In June 2007, she and Simon wed at the Korumburra Anglican Church. They invited Ian and Heather Wilkinson to the wedding and wanted them to relax as guests.

Mushroom lunch guest Ian Wilkinson outside court on Tuesday.Credit: Jason South

At the time, Erin said, her parents were on a train for a holiday in Russia, so Dave Wilkinson, Simon’s cousin, walked her down the aisle.

Her new in-laws, Don and Gail, hired a huge marquee and put on a buffet for the wedding guests.

Don and Gail Patterson.

Erin Patterson said her new husband lived in a unit in Clayton or Oakleigh, owned by Don and Gail Patterson, so she moved in briefly after the wedding.

The couple had a brief honeymoon in Olinda, but what they really wanted to do was drive around Australia. She said they sold everything and “hit the open road”.

Patterson told the jury they started by visiting Sydney, where Simon had a few friends.

Later, the pair travelled to Perth. She said they also went to South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia before returning to Perth at the end of the year to settle there.

“Simon was pretty keen to keep travelling, and I was pretty keen to stop for a while and put down roots,” she said.

Erin Patterson is still talking about the early days of her relationship with former husband Simon, back in July 2005 when they moved from friends to a couple.

Back then, she said, she and Simon spent much time camping and talking until they started dating in July 2005.

Even as a couple, she said, they continued camping.

Patterson told the jury that Simon wanted to switch off from work during the weekend and camping was a part of that. Sometimes they would also attend church in Melbourne.

“We started attending a Bible study with Simon’s cousin Dave and his girlfriend and two friends of Simon’s from school,” she said, adding that the group was the best part of the following 18 months.

Patterson said they got engaged and then married in 2007. She said the first people Simon told about the engagement were his parents, Don and Gail, who were living in Korumburra at the time.

Gail and Don Patterson.

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Some members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families can be seen staring at the floor and straight ahead in court, while a smaller number are watching Erin Patterson speak.

A dozen of them are here, seated across two rows of the court on the side opposite the witness box.

Erin Patterson is still seated, fiddling with her fingers as she answers questions from her barrister.

From the witness box, Erin Patterson has begun to tell the story of how she and Simon became a couple, and how she met his family.

“In 2005,” she said, “Simon wanted to go camping every weekend ... so he had other friends that he would do that with, and I was included in that.”

Back then, she told the jury, she was an atheist. However, her attitude towards religion changed during December 2004 and into early 2005, when she had conversations with Simon about life and religion.

“I was trying to convert him into being an atheist, but things happened in reverse, and I became a Christian,” Patterson recalled.

She said it was during a trip to Korumburra that she first attended church.

“I remembered being very excited about it because I’d never been to a church service before,” she said.

Before that, Patterson had only ever been to church for a wedding – her sister’s.

She said she remembered a banner up on the wall of the church behind where Ian Wilkinson was preaching that said: “Faith, hope, and love”.

Korumburra pastor Ian Wilkinson with his wife, Heather, who died from mushroom poisoning.

“Ian gave a sermon talking about that,” she said. “Then we had communion, which I was welcome to participate in.”

Patterson recalls having “a spiritual experience”.

“I’d been approaching religion as an intellectual exercise up until that point,” she said. “I had a religious experience there, and it quite overwhelmed me”.