The evidence that brought down the mushroom cook murderer
As Erin Patterson was peppered with questions about the beef wellington meal that killed three people, she had an answer for everything. But these are the damning pieces of evidence she couldn’t lie her way out of.
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Triple murderer Erin Patterson lies, but the evidence against her does not.
Patterson has been found guilty of the murders of her estranged husband’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and the attempted murder of Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson.
The calculated killer had claimed their deaths were the result of a culinary accident, but a jury found she served her lunch guests a beef wellington meal she had deliberately laced with lethal death cap mushrooms.
Here are the seven most damning pieces of evidence that brought down the triple murderer.
Individual parcels & coloured plates
Ian, who survived the meal against all odds, was able to reveal that Patterson cooked individual beef wellingtons.
This is despite the mother of two following a recipe from a best-selling RecipeTin Eats cookbook that called for a latticed log.
Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC said Patterson’s choice to make individual beef wellingtons gave her “complete control” of the ingredients in each parcel.
“It allowed her to give the appearance of sharing in the same meal, whilst ensuring that she did not consume a beef wellington parcel that she had laced with death cap mushrooms,” she said.
Ian testified that Patterson refused Gail and Heather’s help when it came to plating up the food, serving the guests on stone grey plates and herself on a smaller, “orangey-tan” plate.
The morning after the lunch, Heather remarked: “Is Erin short of crockery? I was wondering why she served herself on a different plate to the rest of us.”
Dr Rogers said Patterson deliberately served herself on a different plate to the others in order to ensure she served herself the non-poisonous parcel, with either regular mushrooms or no mushrooms at all.
Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC tried to argue that it would have made more sense for her to mark the pastry of the non-poisonous parcel, instead of using different coloured plates.
But the jury took the pastor at his word.
Lying about cancer
Simon Patterson said his estranged wife had invited him, along with his parents and his uncle and aunt, to lunch as she wanted to discuss some “important medical news”.
According to Ian, Patterson “announced” that she had cancer after they had finished the meal and described it as “life threatening”.
“In that moment, I thought: ‘This is the reason we’ve been invited to the lunch’,” he said.
Dr Rogers said Patterson planted the seed of this lie far in advance when she told Don and Gail in June she was having medical tests on her elbow.
But she said this was “all a fabrication” since there was no lump at all.
Patterson said she misled her guests at the lunch by telling them she may be needing treatment for cancer to cover for her future gastric bypass surgery.
She also denied the conversation was the purpose of the lunch.
Dr Rogers said Patterson spun a story about cancer to manufacture a reason for the lunch.
“The prosecution says that the accused never thought she would have to account for this lie,” she said.
“She did not think her lunch guests would live to reveal it. Her lie would die with them.”
Ultimately, the true purpose of the lunch was murder.
Lack of symptoms
Twelve hours after the lunch, the guests started to develop severe gastro-like symptoms.
The next morning, on July 30, Patterson told her son she was also experiencing diarrhoea, but he remembered her drinking coffee.
He said she also insisted she would take him to his flying lesson more than an hour away.
On the way, Patterson, who was wearing white pants, stopped at a BP service station and spent nine seconds in the toilet.
Out of desperation, she claimed to the jury – and the world at large – that she had earlier relieved herself in the bushes on the side of the road.
She claimed that she entered the toilet to throw away her soiled tissues.
But her son said he did not remember them pulling over for an emergency toilet stop.
The next day, on July 31, Patterson drove herself to Leongatha Hospital where she was told she had been potentially exposed to death cap toxins.
But she stayed for only five minutes and discharged herself against medical advice.
She returned 90 minutes later before she was transferred to Monash Medical Centre where doctors concluded she was not suffering from death cap mushroom poisoning.
Patterson was discharged on August 1, the same day the guests were in an advanced state of multiple organ failure on life support at the Austin Hospital.
The prosecution said Patterson was never sick because she never ate any of the toxic fungi.
“The only reason she would do something like that, pretend to be suffering from the same illness as the others, is because she knew she had not been poisoned,” Dr Rogers said.
Patterson claimed that after the lunch, she binged almost an entire cake then made herself throw up, with Mr Mandy arguing her weight and age may have also explained why she was not as sick as the others.
But the jury was not convinced.
Patterson’s two children also never developed symptoms, with the jury rejecting her story that she unknowingly fed them a poisoned beef wellington after scraping off the mushrooms.
iNaturalist & phone pings
Patterson’s phone pinged off towers near Loch and Outtrim, two areas where lethal death cap mushrooms were growing, in the lead up to the lunch.
After analysing her phone records, digital forensics expert Dr Matthew Sorell told the jury it was his opinion that her phone made a “possible visit” to Loch on April 28.
Ten days earlier, retired pharmacist Christine McKenzie spotted death caps in Loch and posted their location to citizen science website iNaturalist.
Dr Sorell also told the jury it was his opinion that her phone made “possible visits” to both Loch and Neilson St in Outtrim on May 22.
One day earlier, mycologist Dr Tom May spotted death caps growing along Neilson St and posted their location to iNaturalist.
Patterson admitted she visited the iNaturalist website in May 2022 and navigated to a sighting of death caps in Melbourne’s southeast.
She claimed she must have visited the website to see if death caps were growing in Gippsland because she knew they would be toxic to her dog.
The prosecution conceded it had no direct evidence to prove Patterson saw Ms McKenzie and Dr May’s posts or travelled to the sites in Loch and Outtrim.
Mr Mandy mocked the prosecution, arguing that it was “extraordinary” to suggest that his client was “sitting there, waiting” for these posts to pop up, considering no sightings of death caps in Gippsland had been posted to the website before 2023.
But it turns out that is exactly what she did.
Dumped dehydrator
Patterson bought a Sunbeam dehydrator on April 28 from Betta Home Living in Leongatha, three months before the lunch.
It was an innocent enough purchase until police connected the dots.
She had bought the appliance only hours after she visited Loch to forage for death caps.
Either on or before April 30, she took photos of button mushrooms sitting on a tray of her new dehydrator, which had been placed on top of kitchen scales.
The prosecution said Patterson was practicing by dehydrating the button mushrooms to not “waste” the precious death caps she had found.
Over the next couple of days, she took more photos. This time of yellow-tinged mushrooms – believed to be the death caps – on top of the kitchen scales.
Dr Rogers said she was figuring out the weight required for “five fatal doses”.
Mr Mandy questioned why his client would take photos of her eventual murder weapon.
But perhaps she thought her trophy photos would never be discovered.
After dehydrating her death caps, she stashed them away until her lunch on July 29.
She may have even topped up her supply after foraging in Loch and Outtrim on May 22.
Four days after the lunch, on August 2, she dumped the dehydrator at the Koonwarra tip.
It was tracked down by police and two samples taken from the dehydrator later tested positive for death cap toxins.
Patterson admitted to dumping the dehydrator, but claimed she panicked because Simon had accused her of poisoning his parents using the dehydrator.
But Dr Rogers warned the jury against believing her.
“The prosecution says that the only reason the accused would dump the dehydrator in this way, and at this time, is because she knew she had used it to prepare the deadly meal and she wanted to hide the evidence,” she said.
Lying about Asian grocer
Patterson told almost a dozen witnesses the mushrooms in the beef wellington came from a local Woolworths and an Asian grocer in Melbourne’s southeast.
But she claimed she could not remember the exact store, sending the Department of Health on a “wild goose chase” as they investigated the mushroom supply at 14 different grocers across Oakleigh, Clayton and Mount Waverley.
No product fitting Patterson’s exact description was found.
Dr Rogers said Patterson lied about the source of the mushrooms because she knew that she had deliberately foraged death caps and was trying to deflect blame.
“The accused sent the Department of Health on a frolic, hopelessly looking for an Asian grocer that never sold her the dried mushrooms she said went into the beef wellington,” she said.
“It was a lie she told over and over again, all the while knowing she had dehydrated those death cap mushrooms in her own Sunbeam dehydrator.
“Yet, she continued to pedal this story, false story, about the mushrooms coming from an Asian grocer.”
Dr Rogers said it “simply beggars belief” that she could not remember the location of the Asian grocer, given her memory when giving her evidence had been “remarkable”.
“She could even recall that April 18, 2023, was a Friday and not Monday as I had put to her, but in August 2023 she could not recall the shop or suburb she bought the mushrooms from,” she said.
Mr Mandy tried to argue his client’s account of the location of the Asian grocer had been “consistent”, but the jury was not buying what he was selling.
Game of Phones
During 2023, Patterson had three phones, dubbed Phone A, B and C.
In short, she concealed Phone A, her usual phone, from the police and she handed over Phone B, a “dummy phone”, to police during the search of her house.
Then, she used Phone C, having ditched and handed over the other two phones.
The prosecution said Patterson secretly took her SIM card out of Phone A while police were searching her house on August 5 before hiding the device.
“To this day, police have never been able to recover Phone A,” Dr Rogers said.
“She knew that the information on Phone A … would implicate her in the deliberate poisoning of the lunch guests.”
Dr Rogers explained that Patterson set up Phone B in the days after the lunch to “trick the police” as she prepared for them to come knocking.
But police “found nothing” on Phone B because Patterson wiped it twice by performing factory resets, perhaps to delay them from realising it was not her usual phone.
After her record of interview, she returned home and pulled out Phone C – which had not been seized – and inserted her SIM card.
“All of this conduct … was designed to frustrate the police investigation,” Dr Rogers said.
Mr Mandy tried to argue that Phone A was missed by police during the search and his client was simply setting up Phone B because Phone A had been damaged, but the Game of Phones caught up to Patterson.
Originally published as The evidence that brought down the mushroom cook murderer
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