Poignant Instagram post a window into Erin Patterson’s strange world
Detectives were hot on the heels of Erin Patterson’s sandals as she went on a mad race to delete data, wipe her social media footprint and hide evidence. But the few historical photographs she left behind paint a rather odd picture.
Erin Patterson was trapped and unravelling.
Detectives were hot on the heels of her sandals as she went on a mad race to delete data, wipe her social media footprint and hide evidence.
But for all her forensic efforts to censor her past, she left behind one poignant Instagram page that was a window into her strange world.
It chronicled a small child’s birthday in Korumburra, a visit to the local railway station and family celebrations.
Patterson has left behind few historical photographs of herself but the surviving Instagram page shows a rare but rather odd picture of her in 2013, sitting down, showing only two legs, a pair of denim jeans, upturned at the cuff, and an encouraging response from her husband Simon.
“The closest you get to a selfie!??’ Simon responded on January 12, 2013, two years before they separated for good.
What to make of a headless photograph?
The Supreme Court heard that the death cap mushrooms killer had body-image issues, apparently loathing her chins and heavy features, which might explain her reluctance to be photographed, and the recoil when she was snapped so confrontingly in the back of a prison van during her trial.
On the other hand, evidence is mounting that Patterson, 50, had been for decades a rude, almost unemployable confrontationist who traded on her intelligence but died under the weight of her ill-placed arrogance, which led to a poor work record and her race from the law when she was in a potentially fatal accident while drink driving before marrying Simon.
“She is a vindictive liar,’’ a former colleague from her air traffic controller days said.
That job ended badly for her in 2002 after a litany of workplace problems.
“She thought she was smarter than everyone else,’’ the colleague said.
Colleagues have told The Australian how she was rude, insubordinate, played tricks on staff, cheated Airservices by often leaving work early and had openly rebuffed senior management.
“She was a disaster,’’ another colleague said, although she had at least two relationships in the short time she was there between 2001 and 2002.
In the lead-up to her arrest in November 2023, neighbours reported Patterson holding a party but a friend suggests a much more complex reason for the loud noises from 84 Gibson Street, Leongatha.
Patterson had told the friend that she was autistic and one of her responses to stress was to crank up the music to the point the windows shook and scream her lungs out. The autism diagnosis may, or may not, be true, given Patterson’s history of lying about ovarian cancer.
“Once I scream my lungs out, I feel better,’’ Patterson had reportedly said, with text messages clearly stating that she had been diagnosed with autism and that it was an issue for Simon to deal with.
One Patterson message seen by The Australian reads: “I have Asperger’s (they don’t call it that anymore but that’s what it was called when I was diagnosed) so I often run into misunderstandings and miscommunication in real life and then go on about it a bit too long and over-analyse the effects.”
The other theory about the noise down the country lane was that Patterson was trying to prevent any police bugs in her house picking up her discussions; while the murderer wasn’t blessed with many friends, there was a small number and most came from her true crime online obsession.
They included social worker Ali Rose Prior, who left court in tears on Monday after Patterson’s guilty verdicts on three murder charges and one for attempted murder.
Prior seems genuine in her support for Patterson but was part of the online world that split sharply over her when she was charged with killing Simon’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, 66, with death cap mushroom-laced beef Wellingtons served on July 29, 2023. Wilkinson’s husband also ate the lunch meal but survived.
Friends of Prior have described her as devastated by the sentencing and the evidence that brought Patterson down.
She was acting during the court case as an intermediary, politely listening to media pitches for interviews and information and making clear that Patterson was running her own show. As always, Erin the boss of her own tiny world.
There are women who knew Patterson who are still scared of her, even though she is in prison, likely for decades.
The legal process is yet to run its course and until then it’s likely that many will remain silent, for fear of retribution, although Patterson is no gun-toting gangster. Her bullets are fired from things that grow under trees.
During the trial, which will have cost the value of a decent country house in legal fees with her defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC on between $6000 and $7000 a day, Patterson would glare in the direction of the gallery members supporting her former husband and she would sometimes return the stare of journalists and members of the public gallery.
On the night she killed the three, Patterson was so cold and odd that she went upstairs to play Lego, knowing her guests were about to be struck down.
As well as Lego, Patterson, another person with knowledge of her said, had been a heavy user of the online game FarmVille, where people logged in to plant crops, raise animals and harvest goods for coins to spend on decorations. Let’s think of it as Clarkson’s Farm for nerds.
Criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro nailed the Patterson story in 2023 on multiple levels when he spoke to The Australian, warning of multiple “red flags” around the case.
“I’m not a big believer in coincidences,’’ he said at the time.
This week after Patterson was sent back to her Melbourne prison, Watson-Munro was not shocked by the outcome, adding that he thought she had benefited from a strong defence, led by Mandy.
“She’s bad, not mad,’’ he said.
Watson-Munro, who has not assessed Patterson, said there appeared to have been too many lies and too much obfuscation and that there had been considerable amount of planning and execution of the crimes.
He said she appeared to have had a reasonable degree of intelligence by having worked as an air traffic controller. “They are not dills,’’ he said. “She got the job, she’s an intelligent woman.’’
He said Patterson’s behaviour suggested she was aware that she had done wrong but as to motivation?
“The only person who can answer that is Erin Patterson,’’ he said.
Surviving prison requires the sort of nuance with which Patterson will likely struggle .
It’s important to get on well with the guards but not so well that other prisoners are suspicious of the inmate’s connections.
Be a speed bump for the guards and life becomes more difficult, including raising the possibility of sanctions or negative reports. Fewer opportunities to make phone calls to family and friends and the spectre of a less comfortable prison job.
Patterson took up knitting when she was sent to the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre but there already are rumours that she doesn’t get on with people, which would be true to form. She railed against the facilities at the Morwell police cells, but they were always going to be vastly different to the privilege she grew up in.
Patterson has lost pretty much everything.
Her much-loved family dog, a black Labrador, has been spotted in Korumburra lifting its leg. She must miss her children and her newly built, $1.1m home at Leongatha has become something of a tourist attraction.
One curious gawker at a time, locals roll along Gibson Street for a glimpse of number 84. Slowing just enough to stare without looking too obvious, people have been gliding past: teenagers on bikes, retirees in hatchbacks and minivans, some with dogs in tow and others riding solo.
“There’s not much to look at,” admitted one man named Gary, who’d driven past five times since the verdict on Monday. His wife riding shotgun said she was “fascinated”, but saddened for the families.
A few take the subtle approach of parking nearby and lingering just long enough to cast a glance. Two teenagers were seen standing at the gate for several minutes and taking pictures.
Some neighbours say lights have come on late at night, prompting speculation that someone has returned to the house; a woman has been seen there in recent days but she is secretive and unfriendly.
A cafe two streets over has noticed a slight increase in customers asking vaguely for “directions”, often while nursing a takeaway coffee.
Miller Richards and Izak Kennedy live just down the road and remember their brief encounters with the triple murderer.
“I collected firewood from her house a few months before she was arrested,” Richards said. “I thought she was definitely weird, but she was friendly. She seemed like she was very shy and she sort of hid around the house. She was also watching us the whole time we were getting firewood, which was pretty weird.”
Richards said the dead-end, dirt road was inundated when the verdict came down.
“There were so many cars,” he said. “When the verdict was made, there were around 50 cars around her house. People were just keen to drive around the scene. I thought it was pretty crazy that something like that happens around here.
“I still think it’s crazy that’s where the murderer lived. I lived next door to a murderer.”
Not just any murderer. Erin Trudi Patterson.
