Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial: A fake cat and a Facebook post
‘My cat chewed on this mushroom just now. He’s having a vomit,’ Patterson wrote to on Facebook. But she never owned a cat.
Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson made a Facebook post raising urgent concerns her cat had eaten a poisoned mushroom … despite having never owned a cat.
The Australian can now reveal the Crown prosecuting Patterson for the murders of her estranged husband’s elderly relatives with a toxic beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms tried to enter into evidence a Facebook post made by Patterson titled: “Poisons help: emergency identification for mushrooms and plants”.
“The body of the post is, ‘My cat chewed on this mushroom just now. He is having a vomit. Was in grassland near trees, I’m in Victoria Australia’,” Ms Warren told the court on May 29. She said evidence had been adduced in the police investigation that Patterson “never owned a cat”.
Patterson last month was convicted for the murders of her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, at a lunch she hosted in her home on July 29, 2023. She was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, who survived after eating the deadly meal.
She currently awaits sentencing.
After Patterson was found guilty, Victorian Supreme Court judge Christopher Beale issued an interim suppression order over evidence given in pre-trial hearings. However, the suppression order was lifted on Friday morning.
The prosecution initially raised the cat Facebook post in pre-trial hearings, but it was brought up again during trial when Patterson’s legal team tried to enter into evidence
images she had taken while foraging for mushrooms during the Covid-19 mushrooms.
The court heard the post was accompanied by pictures of mushrooms Patterson had photographed in the wild.
Ms Warren said the prosecution had sought to use the evidence to show “her interest in mushrooms was in the poisonous properties of mushrooms”.
“Back in 2020, her interest in mushrooms had nothing to do with eating or anything of that nature,” she said.
“Her interest in mushrooms was in the poisonous properties of mushrooms and, in our submission, this post supports that inference and it rebuts any inference that she had an interest in foraging or picking mushrooms for the purposes of eating mushrooms.”
Patterson’s online presence formed a large part of the case formed against her during trial.
The court heard she sent photos to online friends she met through true crime Facebook groups of mushrooms dried out in a Sunbeam dehydrator. A mycologist, giving evidence, said the properties of the photographed fungi were consistent with death cap mushrooms.
Patterson’s search history for death cap mushrooms on the iNaturalist website from May 2022 were also entered into evidence.
During trial, Patterson denied intentionally foraging for death cap mushrooms, but said she did occasionally pick wild fungi.
But she had previously told police that she had never foraged.
She admitted to making searches for death cap mushrooms about a year before the fatal lunch, but said she only ever did so because she had a “burgeoning interest” in mushrooms and was curious to see if they grew near her.
