How the cops’ investigation at Erin Patterson’s house unfolded
The homicide squad trawled over every facet of Erin Patterson’s life and her home. Detectives collected and reviewed CCTV, phone data, messages, medical and bank records and more.
The Mushroom Cook
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The pressure on Erin Patterson was mounting when the homicide squad knocked on her door.
It was a week after Patterson had served a lethal lunch to her family.
And it was Patterson’s odd behaviour which had first triggered the police involvement in the unfolding tragedy.
She had turned up at Leongatha hospital complaining of gastro – a day later than her guests.
Dr Chris Webster had told Patterson that her life was at risk. Along with other medical staff, he urged her to stay.
She didn’t listen. Patterson left the hospital.
That’s when Dr Webster rang the police, setting in motion an investigation which lasted more than a year.
Dr Webster’s call was about Patterson’s welfare.
But he also wanted to understand what had caused “the mass” food poisoning outbreak which had critically endangered four of Patterson’s guests at the July 29, 2023, lunch.
The first cop who attended Patterson’s sprawling Gibson St property on the outskirts of Leongatha was Senior Constable Adrian Martinez-Villalobos.
Patterson, who had returned to the hospital about 90 minutes after leaving, talked to the officer over the phone, directing him on how to open the gate and where he could find the leftovers.
Senior Constable Martinez-Villalobos donned a pair of gloves and picked the remnants of beef wellington from the bin.
What was immediately apparent to Leongatha Hospital medical staff was that Patterson was nowhere near as sick as her guests, if she was sick at all.
Her in-laws, Don and Gail, were critically ill as was Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson and her husband, Ian.
Within five days their organs, in particular their livers, were failing.
None were expected to live.
Enter the homicide squad.
Detective Sergeant Luke Farrell and Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall knocked on Patterson’s door on August 5, armed with a warrant to seize whatever they could from her home.
Sergeant Farrell explained why they were there: two people were dead, he said, prompting Patterson to ask: “Who died?”
The first to perish was Heather Wilkinson, at 2.50am on August 4, aged 66.
Later that evening, her sister Gail, 70, was also dead.
Gail’s husband, Don, died on August 5, hours after his daughter-in-law had been visited by police.
Patterson explained how helpful she had been with the authorities and made calls from a mobile phone she would soon factory reset, as police officers searched her home.
Over four hours officers bagged up computers, two mobile phones, SIM cards and an instruction manual for a dehydrator that was nowhere to be seen.
“We seized everything we saw,” Senior Constable Eppingstall said.
Later that day, at Wonthaggi police station, detectives interviewed a woman who was prepared to lie.
She lied about two key matters.
The first was that she had “never” foraged for mushrooms.
The second was that she did not own a dehydrator.
“I’m sure you understand too that I’ve never been in a situation like this before, and I’ve been very, very helpful with the health department through the week, because I wanted to help that side of things as much as possible, because I do want to know what happened,” Patterson told police.
This too was misleading.
Patterson later testified that, by then, she feared that she had unwittingly mixed foraged mushrooms with ones she had bought from an Asian grocer. This would be framed by her trial defence as a “terrible mistake”.
The homicide squad trawled over every facet of Patterson’s life. Detectives collected and reviewed CCTV footage, phone data, messages, medical and bank records and her web browser history.
Piquing the investigators’ interest was CCTV from the nearby tip, which showed Patterson dumping a dehydrator.
She used her credit card to pay for the panicked trip on August 2.
Her browser history revealed she had visited a website called iNaturalist.
There were warnings posted on the website of death cap mushrooms sprouting in the nearby townships of Loch and Outtrim in April and May of 2023.
There was no direct evidence Patterson had read these posts, but police were never able to find her primary phone.
Although they were able to track her phone pings to telecommunications towers in those regions in the days after the death cap postings.
Investigators would also find a message to her mother-in-law, Gail, about a cancer biopsy appointment she had never attended.
It involved a lump on Patterson’s elbow – which never existed.
“Hi Erin, just wondering how you got on at your appointment today. Love Gail and Don,” Gail wrote to her in June, 2023.
Erin replied: “Hi Gail, sorry I had taken (daughter) to see a movie last night, we saw The Little Mermaid, the appointment went OK … I had a needle biopsy of the lump and am returning for an MRI next. Will know more after that.”
Reassuring her daughter-in-law, Gail wrote: “That’s a test of patience isn’t it. Praying you’ll know God’s peace.”
Pastor Ian Wilkinson, 70, the sole guest to survive the lunch, knew none of this background. But he provided a final clue to Patterson’s ruse.
He remembered the host’s grim news after lunch had finished. She told her guests that she had cancer.
Wilkinson said the guests prayed for her.
Police officers scoured medical data, including the Victorian cancer database and hospital records.
They found no evidence of Patterson ever having cancer.
Patterson was a hypochondriac, who foraged, who had dumped a dehydrator, and who lied to family and to the authorities.
And they also knew for certain she had faked having cancer.
On November 2, 2023, Patterson was again interviewed by investigators as federal cops raided her home with police sniffer dogs trained to detect electronic devices.
She was charged that day with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.
Four of those charges related to her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but they were dropped just before her trial started in Morwell.
Three people she said she loved are dead.
She will live with that for the rest of her days.
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