Mushroom cook Erin Patterson admits to ‘possible’ death cap searches

The senior prosecutor at Erin Patterson’s triple-murder trial has suggested the accused mushroom killer had ‘two-faces’ and publicly pretended to love her in-laws before killing them with a poisoned beef Wellington.

Mushroom meal survivor Ian Wilkinson leaves the court with one of his daughters on Friday. Picture: David Crosling/NewsWire

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The senior prosecutor of Erin ­Patterson’s triple-murder trial has suggested to the accused mushroom killer she had “two-faces” and pretended to love her in-laws before killing them with a poisonous beef Wellington, as Ms Patterson says it is “possible” she made internet searches for deadly fungi a year before the lunch.

Under cross-examination on Friday, Ms Patterson said it was “unusual” for her to host people in her home for lunch, but said she wanted to host her estranged ­husband’s parents and aunt and uncle, who had always been “kind” to her.

Asked whether she had an “interest” in poisonous death cap mushrooms a year before the fatal lunch, Ms Patterson replied: “Depends what you mean by interest.”

Ms Patterson spent more than four days in the witness box this week, telling the court she never intended to kill her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, with a beef Wellington laced with the deadly mushrooms at the July 2023 lunch.

Senior Crown prosecutor ­Nanette Rogers SC, continuing her cross-examination on Friday, read aloud a police interview transcript with Ms Patterson from ­August 5, 2023.

In the interview, Ms Patterson told officers she loved Don and Gail Patterson, and said: “They’re the only family that I’ve got and the only grandparents that my children have and I want them to stay in my kids’ life and that’s really important to me.”

But Dr Rogers suggested to Ms Patterson: “You didn’t love them.”

Ms Patterson disagreed.

“In fact you had two faces,” Dr Rogers continued, asking Ms Patterson if she had “a public face of appearing to have good relations to Don and Gail”.

Ms Patterson initially replied, saying: “Are you asking me to agree if I had two faces?” She later added: “I had a good relationship with Don and Gail.”

Dr Rogers suggested Ms Patterson had a “private face” which she showed to her online Facebook friends when describing Don and Gail Patterson as a “lost cause” and their son Simon Patterson as a “deadbeat”.

“How you truly felt about Don and Gail was how you expressed it in your Facebook messages. Correct or incorrect?” she asked.

Ms Patterson: “Incorrect.”

Dr Rogers: “And that is how you really felt about Simon Patterson as expressed to your Facebook friends. Correct or incorrect?”

Ms Patterson: “Incorrect.”

Ms Patterson on Friday said it was “probably true” that it was “unusual” for her to invite people to her home for lunch, but said she wanted to host Simon Patterson’s aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson, because they had been kind to her.

“There was a few reasons,” she said, when asked why the Wilkinson’s were invited to the meal.

“Ian had been my pastor for years and years and I would see and speak with Ian and Heather a lot after church and I really liked them and I wanted to have a stronger relationship with them.” She continued: “When I had invited Don and Gail for lunch in June, Gail had said what I had done to the garden was really nice and Heather would love to see it, and I thought ‘that’s a nice opportunity’.”

Ms Patterson said she wished to thank the Wilkinsons for “being good to me over the years”.

“Heather helped me a lot when (my daughter) was little and I started taking her to playgroup at Korumburra Baptist and I was shy and didn’t really know many people and Heather would sit with me through those playgroup times and was really kind to me and I wanted to say thank you to her,” she said.

She denied inviting Heather and Ian Wilkinson to the lunch to ensure Don, Gail and Simon Patterson would attend.

Mr Wilkinson, the sole survivor of the lunch, was present in court on Friday and watched as Ms Patterson gave evidence about him.

Ms Patterson told the court said she was booked for an appointment for weight loss surgery at the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne, but could not remember its exact date.

Earlier in the trial, Ms Patterson gave evidence that she was intending on getting gastric bypass surgery, but she was “embarrassed” and “ashamed” of it. She says she misled her lunch guests to believe she had ovarian cancer so that she could seek their assistance with her children when she needed to go to hospital for the weight-loss procedure.

“I had an appointment for early September,” she told the court on Friday.

Asked where the appointment was booked, she said: “The Enrich Clinic, in Melbourne.”

“I don’t remember the exact date,” she said. “The appointment was not the surgery itself, but a pre-surgery appointment.”

Dr Rogers on Friday asked Ms Patterson about website searches from May 28, 2022 extracted from a Cooler Master computer seized from her home after the lunch.

Screenshots of the website searches, taken in December last year, showed searches for death cap mushrooms on the iNaturalist nature sharing forum.

“You navigated to an observations page on the iNaturalist site featuring a world map with geographic locations of death cap mushroom sightings,” Dr Rogers said. “Is it your evidence that you don’t know whether it was you?”

Ms Patterson: “I don’t have a specific memory of this day or this internet search, but it’s possible.”

Dr Rogers asked Ms Patterson about another search showing death cap mushrooms at the Bricker Reserve in Moorabbin, Melbourne.

“You agree that you navigated to that specific post?” she said.

Ms Patterson: “I agree it’s possible.”

Dr Rogers asked if Ms Patterson “had an interest in death cap mushrooms on 28 May, 2022”.

Ms Patterson: “Depends what you mean by interest.”

Victorian Supreme Court judge Christopher Beale interjected, and court adjourned.

Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.