‘A bit mushy inside’: Erin Patterson details dehydrator ‘experiments’

The triple-murder accused has for the first time publicly accepted that her beef Wellington meal that killed her elderly relatives must have contained death cap mushrooms.

Mushroom cook Erin Patterson is standing trial for the murder of three people. Art: Emilia Tortorella

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Triple-murder accused Erin Patterson has for the first time publicly accepted her beef Wellington meal that killed her elderly relatives must have contained death cap mushrooms, after admitting to foraging and dehydrating wild fungi.

Ms Patterson, giving evidence at her murder trial, told the court she would find mushrooms in the wild, dry them out, cook them in butter and eat them, saying they were “very healthy”.

She participated in Facebook groups for “mushroom lovers” and fed the foraged food to her family, she said, telling the court exotic mushrooms “just taste more interesting, there’s more flavour”.

Ms Patterson is on trial in Morwell, Victoria, for the murder of her estranged husband’s parents and aunt after allegedly deliberately feeding them a poisonous beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms in July 2023. She has also been charged with the attempted murder of a fourth relative, who survived eating the meal.

She has pleaded not guilty.

Defence counsel Colin Mandy on Tuesday continued his questioning of Ms Patterson before a packed courtroom of people who had flocked from regional towns – some having queued for hours – to catch a glimpse of the trial.

Ms Patterson, in a navy and white polka-dotted blouse, told the court she developed an interest in foraging mushrooms during the Covid-19 pandemic when she would go on lockdown walks with her two children. She said they would often frequent the Korumburra Botanic Gardens, where she saw “lots of them”.

She said she also noticed wild mushrooms growing at her former home in Korumburra, she said. She noticed her dog eating them but “picked all the mushrooms I could see” because she worried they might make him ill.

Eventually, she joined Facebook groups for “mushroom lovers” where people would “share what they find and talk about the identity”, she said. “It was a process over several months in the lead-up to it but when I got to a point where I was confident where I knew what they were, I cut a bit off a mushroom, dried it up with some butter, ate it, and saw what happened,” Ms Patterson told the court.

She said “they tasted good, and I didn’t get sick”.

On Tuesday, Ms Patterson also admitted to owning a dehydrator that she used to dry out the mushrooms she had foraged, telling the court she conducted “experiments” with the device.

This was despite her telling a police interviewer she did not own a dehydrator.

During her evidence-in-chief, Ms Patterson was shown a series of photos she sent to her online Facebook friends of mushrooms drying out on trays from a dehydrator.

Of one photo showing dozens of dried mushrooms on a tray, she said: “That was a bit of an experiment to see if they turned up OK dehydrated whole like that rather than being sliced.”

“They were still a bit mushy inside and their general condition didn’t help things too much – they didn’t dry properly,” she said.

Ms Patterson told the court she picked Slippery Jacks and Honey Mushrooms, which she said tasted “very nice”. She also gave evidence of buying mushrooms from Asian grocers in Melbourne.

“There were shiitake, porcini, I think enoki was one of them,” she said. “Sometimes the bag might say something like wild mushroom mix or forest mushroom – they wouldn’t be specific about the types of them.”

Ms Patterson’s defence team led by Colin Mandy SC arrive at court. Picture: David Crosling/NewsWire

She recalled storing dried mushrooms in Tupperware containers in her pantry

Mr Mandy asked her about wild mushrooms she dehydrated in May or June 2023, and whether she put them in a Tupperware “that already contained other dried mushrooms”.

She replied: “Yes, I did do that.”

Mr Mandy also asked her about the beef Wellington meal she prepared that killed her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, in July 2023.

He said: “In terms of the meal you cooked for the lunch which is the subject of this trial, do you accept there must have been death cap mushrooms in the meal?”

She replied: “Yes, I do.”

Ms Patterson said the “vast majority” of the mushrooms contained in the meal “came from the local Woolworths in Leongatha, and there were some from the ­grocer in Melbourne.”

Throughout the trial, the jury has been shown messages in which Ms Patterson was highly critical of her in-laws and her ­estranged husband, Simon Patterson, saying she wanted “nothing to do with them”.

Messages sent by Ms Patterson in a online chat with people she befriended through true crime Facebook groups were shown to the jury again on Tuesday.

Ms Patterson said she felt “ashamed” re-reading the mess­ages, and said the Patterson family “didn’t deserve it”.

“I wish the family didn’t have to see that,” she said.

She told the court the online Facebook group chat had become a “venting space” for group members. “We’d talk about what we did, what we’re cooking, what our kids are doing. what the people in our family and our lives were doing … general news, current ­affairs, politics,” she said.

She told the court as a member of the chat she “felt heard and validated and understood”, and said she “played up the emotion” of the situation to get the support of her online friends.

“I was really frustrated with Simon but it wasn’t Don and Gail’s fault, it wasn’t the family’s fault, it wasn’t even necessarily entirely Simon’s fault, I played a part in the issue, too,” she said.

She said her options were either to “go into the paddock and tell the sheep or vent” to the group chat.

Ms Patterson on Tuesday also gave evidence on her distrust of hospitals and the medical system.

She became very emotional describing the moment she discovered her daughter had an ovarian mass in August 2014 after a hospital had informed her she was “an over-anxious mother that should relax and she’s just a normal baby”.

“I discovered the mass myself because I had formed the habit of giving her a massage,” she said.

“When I did it that day I could feel something so I said ‘Simon, we’ve got to take her to the hospital’, so we did.”

The hospital “dismissed me”, she said. “They said they thought she had a very full bladder,” she told the court.

Ms Patterson said this event “severely damaged my faith in the health system”.

“I didn’t like hospitals before it – who does?” she said.

“But I didn’t trust that these people knew what they were doing and I was just in a heightened state of anxiety ever after about (my daughter’s) health.”

Ms Patterson said she had discharged herself from hospital more than once.

The court has previously heard Ms Patterson discharged herself from the Leongatha Hospital two days after the beef Wellington lunch against the advice of the on-call doctors.

Her voice cracked as she explained how Don and Gail Patterson “continued to love me” after she separated from their son in 2015.

She told the court the pair split amicably and shared their assets equally, without the assistance of lawyers.

“We just wrote down what we had, property, cash, what was owed to us and then just divided it down the middle,” she said.

“That’s the best way to describe it.”

She said Don and Gail Patterson continued to treat her as their daughter-in-law even though she was no longer romantically involved with their son.

“They would drop in and knock on my door sometimes to drop things off,” she said, adding that they “were very involved”.

Ms Patterson has also given evidence as to her relationship with Simon Patterson’s aunt and uncle – Ian and Heather Wilkinson – saying Mr Wilkinson was a very “popular” minister of the ­Korumburra Baptist Church.

Survivor from the meal Ian Wilkinson was present in court on Tuesday. Picture: Getty Images

Heather Wilkinson died after eating the meal, Mr Wilkinson survived after a lengthy hospital stay.

“I’d always have a chat with them after church if I could,” she said. “Heather would always make a point of coming to talk to me and I saw them sometimes at Christmas gatherings, that side of the family.”

On Tuesday, she also admitted to never having had ovarian ­cancer. The court has previously heard Ms Patterson faked a cancer diagnosis, and invited her lunch guests to her house under the guise of seeking their advice on how to break the news of her ill-health to her children.

When Ms Mandy asked Ms Patterson whether she had ever had ovarian cancer, she replied: “I have not.”

She said prior to the lunch she had become concerned about her health and had “consulted Dr Google”.

“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 and my feet and my hands seemed to retain a lot of fluid,” she said.

“What sent me over the edge to go to the doctor was my wedding ring wouldn’t fit so I took it to the local jeweller to be resized and a few weeks later when I went to pick them up my hands had outgrown them again.”

The trial continues.