Erin Patterson, the woman accused of murdering three guests with a meal laced with death cap mushrooms, told her trial on Wednesday she may have inadvertently added foraged mushrooms to the lunch because her duxelles tasted \u201ca little bland.\u201d <\/p>\n
On the third day of evidence on Wednesday, Patterson was taken through the events of July, 2023, when she\u2019s accused of deliberately adding lethal death cap mushrooms to a Beef Wellington meal she cooked for four guests, including her parents-in-law, at her house in the small Australian town of Leongatha in rural Victoria. <\/p>\n
Patterson has denied three counts of murder over the death of her in-laws, Don Patterson and Gail Patterson, and Gail\u2019s sister, Heather Wilkinson. She also denies attempting to kill a fourth lunch guest, Heather\u2019s husband, Ian Wilkinson, her local pastor. <\/p>\n
Taking Patterson back to the days before the lunch, defense lawyer Colin Mandy SC asked where she\u2019d bought the ingredients. Patterson said all ingredients came from Woolworths, a major Australian supermarket. <\/p>\n
Patterson said she found the recipe in a cookbook, which she followed with \u201csome deviations.\u201d For example, she said she couldn\u2019t find a beef tenderloin log, so she bought twin packs of individual steaks. The recipe had called for mustard, which she didn\u2019t use, nor did she use prosciutto because Don \u201cdoesn\u2019t eat pork,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
On the Saturday morning of the lunch, she said she fried garlic and shallots and chopped up the store-bought mushrooms in a food processor. She cooked the sauteed mixture, known as a duxelles, for perhaps 45 minutes so it was dry and didn\u2019t make the pastry soggy, she said. <\/p>\n
Patterson told the court she tasted the mixture, and as it was \u201ca little bland,\u201d she added dried mushrooms that she\u2019d previously stored in a plastic container in the pantry. <\/p>\n
Asked by Mandy what she believed to be in the plastic container in the pantry: \u201cI believed it was just the mushrooms that I bought in Melbourne,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cAnd now, what do you think might have been in that tub?\u201d Mandy asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,\u201d she said, her voice breaking. <\/p>\n
Patterson told the court that Ian and Heather Wilkinson ate all of their meal. Don finished what Gail hadn\u2019t eaten. Patterson only ate about a quarter or third of her Beef Wellington, because she was talking a lot and eating slowly, she said. <\/p>\n
After lunch, they cleaned up and sat down to eat an orange cake that Gail had brought. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had a piece of cake, and then another piece of cake, and then another,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cHow many pieces of cake did you have?\u201d Mandy asked. \u201cAll of it,\u201d Patterson replied. She said that amounted to around two-thirds of the original cake. <\/p>\n
\u201cI felt over full, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again,\u201d she said. Patterson has previously told the court that she had battled bulimia for much of her life and was self-conscious about her weight. <\/p>\n
Patterson said she felt nauseous after the lunch, and later that evening, took medication for diarrhea. The next day she skipped Sunday mass due to the same symptoms and still had diarrhea later that day. <\/p>\n
That night, she said, she removed the pastry and mushrooms from the leftover Beef Wellington and put the meat in the microwave for the children to eat for dinner. <\/p>\n
The next day, Monday, she thought she might need fluids so went to the hospital, where a doctor told her that she may have been exposed to death cap mushrooms. Patterson said she was \u201cshocked and confused.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Earlier Wednesday, Patterson told the court she hadn\u2019t seen websites that purported to show the location of death cap mushrooms near her house. <\/p>\n
She said she was aware of death cap mushrooms and had searched online to find out if they grew in the area. She said she found that they didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n
Patterson also told her trial on Wednesday that she foraged for mushrooms at the Korumburra Botanical Gardens in May 2023, and may have picked some mushrooms near oak trees. The court has previously heard that death cap mushrooms grow near oak trees. <\/p>\n
Patterson said she would dehydrate any mushrooms she didn\u2019t want to use immediately and store them in plastic containers in the pantry. She said that around that time she also bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne. Because they had a pungent smell, she said she put them in a plastic container in the pantry. <\/p>\n
Mandy asked: \u201cDo you have a memory of putting wild mushrooms that you dehydrated in May or June of 2023 into a container which already contained other dried mushrooms?\u201d <\/p>\n
Patterson replied: \u201cYes, I did do that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Later in proceedings, Patterson recalled a conversation she had with her husband, Simon, as his parents were gravely ill in hospital. She said she mentioned she had dried mushrooms in a dehydrator. \u201cHe said to me, \u2018Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?\u2019\u201d she told her trial. <\/p>\n
She said his comment caused her to do \u201ca lot of thinking about a lot of things.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt got me thinking about all the times that I\u2019d used (the dehydrator), and how I had dried foraged mushrooms in it weeks earlier, and I was starting to think, what if they\u2019d gone in the container with the Chinese mushrooms? Maybe, maybe that had happened.\u201d <\/p>\n
Patterson said she became \u201creally scared,\u201d and by the time she returned home from the health center, she was \u201cfrantic.\u201d She felt \u201cresponsible\u201d because she\u2019d made the meal, and served it, and \u201cpeople got sick,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
On August 2, Patterson said she dropped her children at school, then took the dehydrator to the trash dump. She said child protection officers were due to visit her house that afternoon, and she was \u201cscared\u201d about having a conversation about the meal and the dehydrator. \u201cI was scared that they would blame me for it\u2026. for making everyone sick,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was scared they\u2019d remove the children,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Asked whether she had come to the realization that death cap mushrooms may have been in the meal, Patterson said, \u201cNo.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said she thought there might be evidence of \u201cany foraged mushrooms\u201d in the dehydrator. <\/p>\n
Patterson also told the court she was responsible for three factory resets of her phone. Her son did the first. She said she knew there were images of mushrooms and the dehydrator in her Google photos. \u201cI just panicked and didn\u2019t want them to see them,\u201d she said. Asked who she was talking about, she said: \u201cThe detectives.\u201d <\/p>\n
Patterson\u2019s evidence will continue Thursday. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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