Mushroom cook says she bought fungi from Asian grocer and her children ate the lunch leftovers

The leftovers of a poisonous mushroom beef Wellington that police suspect killed three people have been given to authorities to test as the cook who made the dish claims she bought the mushrooms it contained from an Asian grocer.

Erin Patterson has given a sworn written statement to police, seen by this masthead, documenting her side of the incident, in a bid to answer the questions of homicide investigators and refute what she claims has been wildly inaccurate media reporting.

Patterson’s in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson died after eating the dish at Erin Patterson’s house in Leongatha in South Gippsland on July 29. Korumburra Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, has been fighting for life in hospital since the lunch.

In the statement to police, Patterson claimed she kept the beef Wellington leftovers for investigators to collect as evidence.

Patterson, 48, said she was voluntarily providing a statement because she now believed it had been a serious mistake to provide a “no comment” interview to investigators, which she said was based on advice provided by a lawyer who no longer represented her.

In the statement, Patterson strenuously denied any wrongdoing and said she could not explain how the meal caused the group’s illnesses and deaths.

Erin Patterson’s statement mirrors comments she made to the media outside her Leongatha home last week, when she told reporters she could not “fathom what has happened”.

“I can’t believe that this has happened, and I am so sorry that they have lost their lives,” she said last week.

But the police statement also includes a concession from Patterson that she intentionally disposed of the food dehydrator that police found in a skip bin at the Koonwarra Transfer Station. In the statement, she claimed she had panicked and dumped the appliance after she says people began accusing her of intentionally poisoning the meal.

Homicide squad Detective Inspector Dean Thomas has said Patterson remained a suspect because she cooked the meals. But he has also said police were still considering an accidental poisoning “not at the hands of somebody else” to be a possibility, alongside a potentially “nefarious activity”.

Erin Patterson, pictured speaking to media outside her house last week, cooked the beef Wellington.Credit: Marta Pascual Juanola

About 50 parishioners packed Korumburra’s Baptist church on Sunday morning to pray for the town’s mushroom poisoning victims, after days of media attention and speculation about the deaths. In a statement on Sunday evening, the family of Ian Wilkinson said: “We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Austin Hospital for their unwavering care and support during this challenging time.”

Patterson claimed the media reporting on the incident had been wildly inaccurate and selective, which she said had intentionally but mistakenly portrayed her as a perpetrator, rather than an innocent party.

Patterson’s statement to police provides a detailed explanation of how she obtained the suspected poisonous mushrooms, how the beef Wellington dish was cooked, and what happened to the remnants of the meal, which is now considered evidence.

Patterson has told police she purchased a package of dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in Mount Waverley at least three months before the lunch. The package of mushrooms she bought was hand-labelled, she said.

For the meal, the rehydrated mushrooms were mixed with other mushrooms purchased from a supermarket and cooked into the beef Wellington dish.

Contrary to media reporting and information initially provided by homicide investigators, Patterson said her two young children were never at the lunch, but instead went to the movies.

Her son and daughter later ate part of the leftover beef Wellington, but the mushrooms had been scraped off the dish before it was served. Neither child became ill.

But Patterson says she fell ill with intestinal problems on July 31 – two days after eating the lunch herself – and was admitted to the hospital in Leongatha before an ambulance transferred her to a hospital in Melbourne. During her hospital stay, Patterson said she was given a treatment to protect her from liver damage.

Patterson’s lunch guests had been taken to the local hospital on July 30 after what they thought was a bad bout of gastro worsened overnight. They, too, were eventually taken to hospital in Dandenong before being transferred to the Austin Hospital, Victoria’s premier toxicology hospital.

The statement says that when her four guests were hospitalised, Patterson told the Department of Health where she had purchased the dried mushrooms and confirmed that samples recovered from the Asian grocery store in containers with handwritten labels were the same as the type she had purchased months before.

The department declined to comment on Patterson’s version of events as the matter was part of a police investigation.

In the statement, Patterson said the poisoning of her lunch guests and the intense speculation generated by the case had seriously affected her mental health and wellbeing.

When The Age visited Leongatha last week, residents expressed shock and disbelief at the news of the poisonings.

Most described Patterson, a stay-at-home mother, as a reserved person who kept to herself and did not become closely involved in the community.

Other parents said Patterson wasn’t one to get involved with school chatter and would often avoid talking to other parents when she picked up her children from school.

“I’ve never spoken to anyone who didn’t like her, she was just really reserved,” said an acquaintance of Patterson, who spoke to The Age anonymously.

“She just didn’t go out of your way to talk to anyone or socialise with anyone or interact with anyone. She was just a very private person that kept to herself.”

Patterson took over the editorship of the local newsletter, The Burra Flyer, from her in-laws in 2018, but stepped down two years later.

Patterson and her estranged husband, Simon, had an acrimonious relationship, and had been living in separate homes for several years before formally separating in 2021.

The acquaintance said Patterson moved several times since the relationship started to deteriorate, after amassing a small portfolio of properties in town.

From a modest single-storey brick home down an unsealed country road to her dream weatherboard home surrounded by grazing paddocks in Leongatha, Patterson bought and sold at least six properties in Gippsland and Melbourne since 2014.

A spokeswoman for the family declined to comment.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.