‘You can’t change the past’: Mushroom cook panicked after guests sickened, defence says

No matter what she did afterwards in a panic, nothing can change accused triple murderer Erin Patterson’s intention when she served four lunch guests a poisoned beef Wellington lunch, defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, has said.

Mandy said Patterson invited Gail and Don Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson over for a friendly meal on July 29, 2023, because she wanted to maintain an amiable relationship with her family. He labelled the prosecution case against her as illogical and absurd.

Colin Mandy, SC, outside court on Thursday.Credit: Jason South

He reminded the jury in Erin Patterson’s trial that the burden of proof was on the prosecution – a principle that protects “all of us from being wrongfully convicted”.

“If you think at the end of your deliberations, taking into account the argument that we’ve made, that it’s possible this was an accident … you must find her not guilty,” Mandy said on Thursday.

With sickness heavy in his voice, the defence barrister said there were reasons why an innocent person might lie and dump a dehydrator after learning her guests were ill. But he told the jury there were also three test results in the accused woman’s hospital records, indicating she was also unwell, which could not be faked.

Mandy was not the only one who seemed to be succumbing to a winter cold. Many of the seats in the courtroom were empty for the first time on Thursday, and some who remained in the public gallery clutched tissues and bottles of water.

Soldiering on through increasing hoarseness, Mandy told the jury he rejected the Crown case that his client was lying about being unwell, telling the jury Erin Patterson had been asked about her symptoms by dozens of different people over days.

“Those variations are inevitable; they are part of the retelling of any account, even a truthful account,” Mandy said. “You tell 24 people in your life over a period of 24 hours the same story ... there will be variations.”

Thursday was the third day of the defence’s closing address to the jury at the Supreme Court sitting in Morwell.

Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, by serving them death cap mushrooms in a beef Wellington lunch at her Leongatha home on Saturday, July 29, 2023. Her in-laws and Heather Wilkinson died in the days after the meal from the effects of mushroom poisoning. Ian Wilkinson survived after weeks in hospital.

Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South

Mandy said his client’s account was consistent with being unwell. She had reported having loose stools on the Saturday, following the fatal lunch, and feeling more and more unwell before later in the evening developing nausea and diarrhoea.

The defence lawyer also questioned why a person, if faking an illness, would choose to drive their child to a flying lesson an hour away the day after the poisonous lunch. The barrister suggested a person faking illness would have instead stayed home and gone to bed.

Professor Andrew Berston, an intensive care specialist who testified earlier in the trial, had told the jury some of Patterson’s elevated levels in medical tests were also consistent with an acute illness, he said.

These, Mandy said, “cannot be faked”.

Mandy also said there was no evidence his client had rejected medical treatment when she arrived at hospital about 8am on July 31.

Erin Patterson, he said, was not prepared for the extremely intense five-minute reaction she received when she first arrived at hospital, before leaving for close to two hours.

“She was not refusing treatment. She left. Anxious, fidgety, she wants to leave,” Mandy said.

He said it was on August 1, while in Monash Hospital, that his client began panicking that she would be blamed.

“She was being isolated ever more than she had before. She was being kept out of the loop. People react differently in periods of stress. Some may shrink away, horrified by [what is] unfolding in front of them, saying nothing and hoping everything just works out,” he said.

“At that point in time all four lunch guests were getting the best possible treatment and nothing Erin Patterson said or did was going to make any difference at all. In fact, from a very early stage, from the early hours of July 31, before Erin Patterson even arrived at hospital … guests were being treated for death cap mushroom poisoning.”

Mandy said it was during a later conversation with her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, on August 1 that his client knew the meal was clearly the suspect, and “Erin was the cook”.

Mandy said that at that point, Patterson knew death cap mushrooms were the likely culprit and started suspecting foraged mushrooms “went into the meal”. He said Patterson’s actions after the lunch were motivated by the fear that if that was discovered she would be held responsible.

“That was the turning point, the August 1 conversation, that made a difference in Erin’s mind when the subject of a dehydrator came up,” Mandy said.

“Nothing can actually change what her intention was at the time of the lunch. Either she had the intention or she didn’t. You can’t change the past because you behave badly in the future.”

After Patterson entered the witness box, Mandy said, she told the jury she had panicked when confronted with the terrible realisation that her actions had caused the illnesses of people she loved.

“There is no rule of human behaviour that behaviour you engage in, or that Erin engaged in after the lunch, is only behaved in if you believe she’s guilty of murder,” he said.

The accused was not required to give evidence, Mandy said, but subjected herself to lengthy examination in which she answered questions in a consistent and coherent way, even under “rapid fire”.

“She made that decision as an innocent person. What more could she do?” Mandy said. “We say she came through unscathed.”

In closing his address, he told the jurors: “When you consider the actual evidence and consider it properly ... your verdict on these charges should be not guilty.

Justice Christopher Beale is expected to begin his final remarks to the jury on Tuesday.

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