Erin Patterson tells court she foraged for mushrooms during Covid and enjoys eating them

Erin Patterson has detailed to her mushroom murder trial her affection for fungi and accepts she served death cap mushrooms to her three dead guests.

Lawyer Ophelia Hollway, barrister Sophie Stafford, lawyer Bill Doogue and barrister Colin Mandy SC, the legal team for Erin Patterson, arrive at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts on Tuesday. Picture: Getty Images

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It makes sense that Erin Trudi Patterson’s murder trial would eventually come down to a court session dealing with her outlook on mushrooms.

When not caught up in a lengthy legal battle, the court heard she appreciates them, dehydrates them and forages for them.

It was never written in stone that Ms Patterson, 50, of Leongatha in South Gippsland, would give evidence in her triple murder trial but now that she has, the court has been told of her appreciation for fungi and that she has been foraging for them since the despair of the Victorian Covid lockdowns in 2020-21.

Ms Patterson arrived in court on Tuesday wearing a navy top with small white spots, spending part of the day, tissue in hand, emotionally but confidently recounting various hurdles in life including what she said were her body image issues, her regrets over ­bagging her in-laws, her lack of faith in the medical system, and her consternation dealing with her daughter’s early diagnosis with an ovarian cyst.

Several times in the morning Ms Patterson became emotional, at times crying in the witness stand, wiping her eyes and lamenting aspects of her life, including her binge eating in adulthood that had included purging.

The courtroom temperature was raised somewhat when Colin Mandy SC turned the subject to mushrooms – or, more accurately, turned the legal spotlight on what she did with them and what sparked her interest.

Her silk asked the accused whether she had always liked mushrooms. “They taste good and they’re very healthy,” she replied.

Then it went on and on in detail about where she foraged for mushrooms, where she shopped for them, what she cooked them with, and where she claimed they were stored in her Leongatha house, itself in an area where fungi of different species can grow.

Ms Patterson told the court she first became interested in mushrooms in early 2020 during the Covid lockdowns when she took her young children for walks in the local Korumburra botanical gardens. “There were lots of them at the gardens. I remember that,’’ she said.

During the mushroom evidence, which lacked the emotion of the pre-lunch session, Ms Patterson told the court she had bought a dehydrator and acknowledged that death cap mushrooms had been in the meal that killed three elderly people after she prepared beef Wellington on July 29, 2023.

Ms Patterson told the court that around 2020 she had found mushrooms at her then house on Shellcot Road in Korumburra and that she was concerned because her dog was eating some.

She had consulted Facebook groups of mushroom lovers to help identify fungi she was uncertain about, later telling the court she had identified Slippery Jack and Honey mushrooms but by the time she got to her Gibson Street house in Leongatha she had mainly looked at field mushrooms.

Her children, she said, had been with her when she was foraging for mushrooms, and that she also had picked them on the rail trail that runs through Leongatha and heads towards Korumburra, 120km southeast of Melbourne.

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

“There were lots of them at the gardens, I remember that.’’

She would buy various mushrooms at Woolworths and she had also bought from Asian grocers in Melbourne. The court previously heard Ms Patterson could not state specifically where the death caps had come from.

“I’d buy all the different types that Woolies would sell, I would get different sorts there, from grocers up in Melbourne,” Ms Patterson said. 

She said she had bought a dehydrator three years ago but the court has previously heard she told police she did not own one.

People line up at court in Morwell for Erin Patterson trial. Picture: David Crosling/NewsWire

The accused also told the jury she stored mushrooms in Tupperware at home: “I would just dry them and put them into a container and if there wasn’t a container I’d start one.’’

At times on Tuesday, in week six of her trial, it seemed like the witness box was a wall of emotion as she talked about consulting “Dr Google” for various possible ailments and, in particular, became upset when talking about her body image issues.

“I’ve had it ever since I was a teenager, as long as I can remember,’’ she said.

“I’ve tried every diet under the sun.’’

She told the jury she had never had a good relationship with food and that as a child her mother had weighed her every week, adding that it had been a “roller coaster” over the years dealing with the issue of weight gain.

She would sometimes eat and then bring it up again, going through the process at various intervals since her 20s.

In July 2023, she said that she had been suffering as a result – maybe two or three times a week or maybe even more.

Asked who knew, Ms Patterson told the court that it was effectively a secret.

“Everybody now, but nobody knew then,’’ she said.