In her own words: Erin Patterson takes the stand in mushroom trial

Accused triple killer Erin Patterson has taken the witness stand in her Supreme Court murder trial.

Prosecutors claim she laced a beef Wellington with poisonous death cap mushrooms and fed it to her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson; Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson; and Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, on July 29, 2023.

The Pattersons and Heather Wilkinson died, while pastor Ian Wilkinson survived after spending weeks in a coma.

A court sketch of Erin Patterson.Credit: Anita Lester

Erin Patterson’s defence team argue the trio’s deaths were a tragic accident. Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

This is what Patterson, 50, has told the jury about key issues and people in the case:

Her husband, Simon

Patterson told the jury that she met Simon at the City of Monash, where they both worked in 2004.

“I was employed by the RSPCA but as part of that role, I was located at the City of Monash offices as an administration officer,” she said.

Patterson said Simon had worked as a traffic engineer at the time. “We had mutual friends, is how I remember it,” she said.

“We would come up against each other at lunch, after-work drinks, that sort of thing.”

They started dating in July 2005 and enjoyed camping and going on trips together. Simon was a churchgoer, and eventually Erin followed him into faith, with the pair attending Bible study together.

Simon Patterson outside the Supreme Court in Morwell.Credit: Jason South

The pair married in 2007 and had two children, but their relationship was marred by repeated break-ups and reconciliations.

Her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson

Erin spoke positively to the jury about her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and the role they had played in her life and the lives of her children.

Erin and Simon’s firstborn, a son, arrived while the couple were living in Perth, and the in-laws had travelled there to help.

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

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

“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.

When the pair moved back to Victoria, they stayed with Don and Gail for six weeks, living in a spare room.

“It was crammed in that all three of us were in one room, but it didn’t matter because Don and Gail were so welcoming to us.”

Erin recalled her children calling the pair “nan and papa” and said that even when the family was away, Don and Gail would speak to their grandkids.

Despite her separation from Simon in 2015, Erin said the pair had continued to attend family gatherings with Don and Gail, and her relationship with them didn’t change.

“They just continued to love me,” she said.

The pair would often come and visit their grandkids without Simon, and the children went to their house for sleepovers.

But in the later part of 2022 and into 2023, Erin said she felt her bond with Don and Gail had deteriorated. She told the jury she believed moving away to another town might have played a part.

“I’d come 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 some things,” she said.

The Wilkinsons

Erin met Ian and Heather Wilkinson through Ian’s role as pastor of the Korumburra Baptist Church.

She said she remembered sitting in with her newborn daughter in church.

Ian Wilkinson outside the court in Morwell.Credit: Jason South

“I’d always have a chat with [Ian and Heather] after church if I could. Ian was very popular as the pastor ... Heather would always make the point to come and talk to me,” she said.

Erin said she would sometimes see the pair at Christmas gatherings and Heather always made a point to sit with her to ensure she had company.

When Simon and Erin married, they chose a church away from Korumburra Baptist so that Ian and Heather could attend and relax as guests.

The separation

Erin and Simon formally separated in 2015, after several years of being in an on-again, off-again marriage.

At first, they continued to be on good terms, sending each other friendly text messages and working together on arrangements for their children and property.

“We went back to being really good friends,” she said.

“I didn’t want to be separated, but I felt we had no choice.”

Erin said the main issues in their relationship stemmed from not being able to discuss their problems in a way where each person would feel understood.

“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.

“We really liked each other still. It was just the living together that didn’t work.”

Erin said Simon had created his own engineering consulting company, so they had arranged the care of the children around his commitments.

She said it was important for them to co-operate in the care of the children. “That was our priority,” she said.

The pair also continued to holiday as a family, including to Tasmania, Darwin, Queensland, New Zealand, South Africa and Erin’s mother’s house in Eden, NSW.

“We tried to figure out an arrangement for the children. They had different needs,” Erin said.

“We just wrote down what we had. Property, cash, what was owed to us and then just divided it down the middle, that’s the best way to describe it.”

Erin said no lawyers had been involved and there was no acrimony.

The disputes

Simon and Erin’s friendly interactions began to change in 2022. Erin attempted to engage Don and Gail Patterson to help sort through their disputes.

In an exchange between Erin and Simon starting on December 6, 2022, Simon told Erin he was aware she had asked Don and Gail to come over for a discussion.

“I was struggling to achieve good communication with Simon about a few things, and I was wanting or hoping Don and Gail might help mediate that a little bit,” Erin explained to the jury.

Erin said one of the topics she had wanted to discuss was her son’s struggles at school – she and Simon had been unable to reach an agreement about the nature or the solution to his problems.

She also wanted to discuss financial issues around the children, including school fees, which until then had been paid by Simon.

“[Simon] wanted me to pay all of them from now on,” Erin said.

Erin said Don and Gail had come over the following day to talk about the issue.

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

“Almost immediately, they said if money was an issue, they’ll pay for all the schools fees, which wasn’t what I needed. That was their first response,” she said.

Erin said her in-laws had strongly believed she and Simon should sort through the issue together. “They didn’t want to become official mediators.”

The four continued to discuss ongoing issues around the children’s schooling and child support fees, with Erin complaining Simon appeared to believe that child support payments should cover every expense “under the sun” but they only covered basic schooling and care.

In the later part of 2022, Simon had also declared himself “single” on his tax return, Erin said.

“I said words to the effect of: ‘Well that’s good, now I can claim tax benefits’,” Erin told the jury.

Erin said she had not been upset about the change, but she had been annoyed that Simon had not told her earlier.

During a New Zealand holiday, Erin said she had had time to reflect and when she returned, she apologised to Don and Gail for trying to involve them.

“I wanted them to agree with me that I was right and Simon was wrong and that wasn’t fair,” she said. “They helped us mediate issues in the past, but that was long before Gail had been unwell, and I shouldn’t have done this to them at this point or ever.”

Erin said her relationship with Simon had been “functional” in 2023.

“From the start of the year to July, we mainly just related on logistical things like church, the streaming, the kids, but we didn’t relate on friend things, banter, like we used to. That changed at the start of the year,” she said.

‘This family, I swear to God’

Erin said that around that time, she was also communicating with a group of online friends venting with them about her issues.

“This family, I swear to f----g God,” one of the messages read.

Erin was shown the message and detailed to the jury the thinking behind it.

“I was really hurt, and I was really frustrated and felt a little bit desperate,” she said.

“I knew that the women would probably support me.

“I wish I’d never said it. I feel ashamed for saying it, and I wished the family did not have to hear that I said that. They did not deserve it.”

Asked about a separate message where she complained she was “sick of this shit” and wanted “nothing to do with” Don and Gail, Erin said: “I needed to vent, I needed to get my frustration off my chest and the choice was either going to the paddock and tell the sheep or vent to these women.

“I knew they would rally around me. I probably played up the emotion of that a bit to get that support.

“I was really frustrated with Simon ... It wasn’t the family’s fault.

“I think at the time I thought I was right and he was wrong.”

The 70th birthday oversight

In October 2022, Simon texted Erin to ask her if she was going to his mother Gail’s 70th birthday.

Erin said that she had not been not aware of the celebrations at the time Simon messaged, and she had felt “hurt” about not being invited. “I thought I’d been left off the invite list,” she said.

“I was also annoyed with myself because I had forgotten it was a big birthday coming up for Gail.”

The jury heard the exchange between Erin and Simon turned tense, as they continued to debate the issue over messages. “I was really trying to get Simon to understand why I was hurt,” she said.

The following morning, he apologised for raising his voice and interrupting her in that conversation. Erin told the jury that was a classic example of how they had resolved their problems.

“What happened in this exchange was a typical I might feel hurt about something, I didn’t communicate it really well, Simon maybe doesn’t get feelings so well ... and I would feel hurt and hurt and then we’d be annoyed at each other for a day or two and then apologise.”

Erin said she had eventually agreed to attend the celebrations after Don Patterson contacted her, explaining it was an oversight, and they really wanted her to attend.

Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South

Cancer

Erin said she had never been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, despite telling her lunch guests she had, or had a biopsy on her elbow.

“I’d been having for a few months a multitude of symptoms. I felt very fatigued, I had ongoing abdominal pain, I had chronic headaches. I put on a lot of weight in quite a short period of time ... my feet and my hands seemed to retain a lot of fluid,” she said.

Erin said that what had sent her “over the edge” into believing she had cancer was that her wedding ring no longer fit

“I consulted with Dr Google,” she said. “I had a family history of it on both sides of my parents. I’d had an ovarian cyst myself in about 2002.”

Erin said she also googled MS and lupus as well as a whole family of immune diseases. She said she had been referred to a rheumatologist and general physician, among other medical professionals.

Her self-esteem

Erin detailed her “never-ending battle” with low self-esteem.

“I was planning to have weight-loss surgery. Is it a gastric bypass? I was planning to do that,” she told the jury.

“I tried every diet under the sun. When I was a kid, Mum would weigh us every week to make sure we didn’t put much weight.”

Erin said she went to the extreme of barely eating when she was young before bingeing in her adult life.

“Eating everything you can get your hands on before feeling sick,” she said. “In some intense periods, it could be daily.”

Hospitals

Erin detailed how she had grown to distrust the medical system after incidents involving her children.

She said her daughter had been diagnosed with an ovarian mass as a baby, but only after she was initially dismissed as an “over-anxious mother” for raising concerns.

“She was eight months old by the time it was actually diagnosed,” Erin said.

“It considerably damaged my faith in the health system. I didn’t want to lose her.”

Erin said she had a similar issue with her son, who had developed issues with his knees after a bike accident. She said a GP had X-rayed the wrong side of her son’s body.

Erin said she had lost so much faith in the medical system that she decided that anything to do with her health and the children’s health, she would have to sort out by herself.

Her spirituality

Erin said 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,” she recalled.

Erin 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 remembered a banner on the church wall behind where Ian Wilkinson was preaching that said, “Faith, hope and love”.

“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.”

Her inheritance

Erin confirmed she was one of many beneficiaries to the estate of her grandmother when she passed away in 2006.

The first of the distributions was in about February 2007 and the last towards the end of 2015.

“There were a number of commercial companies that needed to be sold,” she said.

Erin said the funds had allowed her to travel internationally and to buy a home.

“We were able to help out Simon’s siblings with loans as well to help them buy homes,” Erin said.

“I started a second-hand bookstore. I spent months travelling around south-west Western Australia collecting books.”

Erin Patterson’s house and car in Leongatha in August 2023.Credit: Joe Armao

The jury heard Erin’s father passed away in 2011 and her mother in 2019, which allowed her to buy a Mount Waverley property and a block of land in Leongatha.

Patterson said that in July 2023, she was “comfortable” financially, which meant she could go to university – she had been accepted into a bachelor’s degree of nursing and midwifery.

Mushroom foraging

Erin said she spent a lot of time bushwalking and camping and agreed she really loved mushrooms.

“The first COVID lockdown, when you are allowed for an hour a day, I would force the children to go out and get away from their devices for an hour,” she said.

Erin said they would go to the Korumburra gardens or the rail trail, where she first spotted wild mushrooms.

Erin said mushrooms also grew at her former property. “As far as I could see, there were ones that were potentially edible, but there was one species that I was a bit worried about,” she said.

“There’s Facebook groups for mushroom lovers ... where people share what they found and talk about the identity. I scrolled a lot of them.”

Erin said she was eventually confident the mushrooms growing in the paddocks of her 1.2-hectare property were field and horse mushrooms, so she decided to cut a piece, fry it up with butter and eat it.

“They tasted good, and I didn’t get sick,” she said.

Erin said that from then on, whenever she would see the same mushrooms growing in the paddocks, she would pick them up and eat them.

“Sometimes, [I would] put them in meals we all ate,” she said.

Erin said she also bought mushrooms in supermarkets and Asian grocery stores.

“They taste good and are very healthy. I’d buy all the different types that Woolies would sell.

“I’d use them in curries or pasta dishes or soup, spaghetti,” she said.

The beef Wellington recipe from the RecipeTin Eats cookbook, Dinner, by Nagi Maehashi.

She said exotic mushrooms tasted “more interesting” and had more flavour.

She told the jury she accepted that there must have been death cap mushrooms in the beef Wellington lunch she fed the Wilkinsons and Pattersons.

“The vast majority came from the local Woolworths in Leongatha, and there were some from the grocer in Melbourne,” she told the jury about the mushrooms in the lunch, referring to an unnamed Asian grocer in Melbourne.

When asked about the kinds of mushrooms she had bought from Asian shops, she told the jury: “There was shiitake, porcini, I think enoki was one of them. Sometimes the bag would say, ‘wild mushroom mix’.”

She said she had bought a dehydrator because she liked eating wild mushrooms and wanted to preserve them, and after dehydrating them, she would put them in a Tupperware container.

Patterson said she mainly picked field mushrooms but sometimes foraged slippery Jack or honey mushrooms.

She said she did not remember picking mushrooms underneath oak trees but did pick them nearby.

The trial continues.

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