Leongatha poisoning deaths: Sound of silence tortures mushroom meal mum Erin Patterson
There are no visitors for Erin Patterson, a shy, quirky, well-heeled and self-confessed liar. Nor anything yet to clear or convict her of killing her family with a beef Wellington pie. But for Tim Watson-Munro, there are red flags everywhere.
Erin Patterson is being tortured by silence.
Three dead by toxic mushrooms but no lights, no sirens.
No police outside her home.
No helicopters whirring above the scene at Leongatha.
No detectives with clipboards, no technicians visibly hacking into the family’s computers and phones, looking for anything to clear or convict Ms Patterson of killing three elderly people with a beef Wellington pie.
Just silence.
Perhaps worst of all for her, the occasional media car aside, there are no visitors.
“This is unfair,’’ Ms Patterson told The Weekend Australian on Tuesday.
In a bright, late-morning conversation, she revealed another layer of a complex personality.
Yes, the 48-year-old police suspect and separated mother of two is shy, quirky, well-heeled and a self-confessed liar who doesn’t like her photograph being taken.
She is also smart, probably well read and forthright, lamenting at her front door how she he had been “painted as an evil witch’’.
Police still don’t know definitively whether Ms Patterson deliberately or accidentally poisoned her elderly former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson.
Red flags everywhere
Forensic psychologist Tim Watson-Munro, who built the base of his career in the grime of the old school Parramatta Gaol in Sydney’s west, sees “red flags’’ everywhere in the case of the death cap mushrooms. “I’m not a big believer in coincidences,’’ he says.
Mr Watson-Munro, who has assessed some of Australia’s biggest criminal offenders including Carlton Crew gangster Alphonse Gangitano and corporate fraudster Alan Bond, is concerned about key aspects of the death cap mushrooms case.
The first “red flag’’ comes in the fact that Ms Patterson’s former husband almost died twice last year from gastric-related complications and also, according to Ms Patterson’s own police statement, has in turn questioned whether she poisoned his parents and aunt.
“Obviously he was either wilfully poisoned or it was just bad luck,’’ says Mr Watson-Munro of Simon Patterson’s 2022 illness.
He says the story of where Ms Patterson says she secured the mushrooms – including at an unnamed Asian supermarket – sounds “ludicrous’’ because death cap mushrooms are not commercial products: “People just don’t retail them. It’s not that loose.”
Mr Watson-Munro also feels it is “weird’’ the children were out of the house at the movies during the ill-fated lunch, where their grandparents and great aunt were eating; within days they would be dying of organ failure, while the local Baptist minister Ian Wilkinson is still fighting for life but poised potentially to become a key witness.
While Ms Patterson says she visited two hospitals in the wake of the lunch, there is no evidence to suggest she fell seriously ill; indeed her presence roaring around country Victoria and Melbourne in her MG SUV shows she has weathered the best of the five who ate the meal on July 29 at her country home.
Ms Patterson owns a city townhouse bought in 2019 for more than $913,000 with then husband Simon and lives in a $900,000 home on acreage in Leongatha, 130km southeast of Melbourne.
She also inherited a beachfront holiday house at Eden on the NSW south coast, later sold.
This was after the reported death in 2019 of her mother Heather Scutter, a reasonably well-known Melbourne academic who specialised in child literature.
Ms Patterson is a city girl who made her way to nearby Korumburra, population 4700, which is best known for cattle and its main street bakery.
It is clear police are very quietly going about their business investigating the case and that the more pressure Ms Patterson is under, the better for them.
There is no rush. This is an investigation that is being conducted one task at a time. Drip, drip, drip.
Mr Watson-Munro says police would be looking for points of weakness and the slow, steady approach would be tactical. “It is a fascinating case. Everyone is talking about it,’’ he said.
Police tactics
Former homicide squad investigator Charlie Bezzina says the lack of visual police activity in Leongatha belies what is going on.
He says Ms Patterson appeared to be in damage control with the release of a statement given to police repositioning herself after a wave of speculation about her guilt or otherwise.
“You’re not going to see a flurry of police everywhere,’’ he says.
“She’s on the back-burner, she’s not going anywhere.’’
The Weekend Australian is not suggesting Ms Patterson has committed any crimes and is simply reporting the facts around the case; police have said while Ms Patterson is a suspect, the deaths may not be deliberate.
It is also clear the families of the dead have been told to keep their silence.
The family PR spokeswoman has been told there will be no comment and the community around the dead and sick have also kept their distance.
It will test the area’s patience, however, when the bodies of the three dead are released to the families and they are finally buried, weeks after their deaths.
Town in spotlight
Korumburra, comfortably far from Melbourne, is out of its comfort zone.
In nearby Leongatha this week, two young baristas at Le Cafe were bemused by the story. It has spread across the world via The Times of London, the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post.
“It’s on the news in the US,’’ one girl mutters to the other.
Her colleague responds: “My dad rang me about it and he’s in England.
“Everyone’s talking about it.’’
A neighbour last week suggested Ms Patterson was into unicorns; this week it was confirmed that a wall of macabre graffiti had been left in a house once owned by the family.
A painter had been called in to cover over a series of random messages on a main wall inside the house that have been attributed to school-aged children. “Your (sic) dead from my sword,” one read, another adding “I am dead” and “no I am really dead”.
One message, according to news.com.au, appears to say “grandma R.I.P.”
Another says: “ME R.I.P.”
One local who had seen the photographs tells The Weekend Australian that there “wouldn’t be another house in Australia with that sort of stuff scribbled on a main wall … It’s very odd.’’
Like so much of the case, there is oddity in abundance.
Defence preparations
Ms Patterson is rumoured to have engaged a high-end criminal solicitor but the lawyer did not respond to The Weekend Australian.
The ABC this week reported a statement that Ms Patterson – or her lawyers – sent to police that details how her estranged husband allegedly accused her of poisoning his parents.
Perhaps most significantly, she concedes she lied to police about the dumping of a food dehydrator used to help prepare the mushrooms, claiming she dumped the implement for fear of losing custody of her high school-age kids.
She also regretted giving police a no-comment interview, which is her legal right.
Ms Patterson said the meal was a mix of button mushrooms bought at a supermarket and dried fungi from an Asian grocery store in eastern Melbourne months before, but she did not recall exactly which Asian grocery, triggering health officials to try to track down the alleged source.
Perhaps most ominously for all involved, she said she was at a hospital taking about her food dehydrator when Simon Patterson allegedly asked: “Is that what you used to poison them?”
The Weekend Australian has approached Mr Patterson but he has not responded.
Syd White, president of the Korumburra Community Development and Action group, says the deaths have permeated the town.
“It’s pretty sad how it eventuated but we will get through it,’’ he says. “You’ve got to get on with it.’’
Police, meanwhile, are flat out in Melbourne investigating what happened.
It might be quiet at Gibson Street in Leongatha but it’s not at the homicide squad.
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