As media reports continue to discuss the verdict of Erin Patterson, who has been found guilty of three charges of murder and one of attempted murder, evidence collected by the prosecution and presented to the jury during the trial has been released publicly for the first time.
The range of evidence has pointed to a host of deceptions in Patterson’s testimony — which we unpack here.
1. The dehydrator
During her first interview with police at Wonthaggi police station on August 5, 2023, Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall asked Patterson if she owns a dehydrator. Her response: “No”.
When pressed to explain why an instruction manual for a dehydrator was found in her home, Patterson explained: “I’ve got manuals for lots of stuff I’ve collected over the years. I’ve had all sorts of appliances and I just keep them all”, before adding “I might’ve had [a dehydrator] years ago.”
But homicide detectives trawled through her bank statement to find that she had recently purchased the kitchen appliance.
During the trial, the jury were shown a still from CCTV footage of the now convicted triple-murderer dumping a dehydrator at Koonwarra waste station just days before the police interview. The dehydrator had traces of poison still in it when she dumped it.
In court, Patterson told the jury that she discarded the dehydrator because she was afraid that people would think she was intentionally responsible for the deaths of Gail Patterson, Don Patterson, Heather Wilkinson and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson.
Patterson also admitted that she lied to the police about never owning a dehydrator, because she feared being investigated from child protection authorities.
Speaking in court, she told the jury she had in fact purchased a food dehydrator in April 2023, because she enjoyed foraging for non-toxic mushrooms near her home and that she’d use it to dry the mushrooms and a range of fruits.
“You can’t keep [the mushrooms] too long in the fridge, so it was one way of sort of preserving them and having them available later on throughout the year,” Patterson told the court.
In cross-examination, Prosecutor Nannette Rogers SC described Patterson’s interest in foraging non-toxic mushrooms as “a story you have made up for this jury”.
“It is a lie you have come up with to try and explain why you put foraged death cap mushrooms in the meal you served on 29 July,” Rogers said, to which Patterson denied.
2. Cancer diagnosis:
During the trial, Patterson revealed that she had never been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Rogers accused Patterson of using a fake cancer diagnosis to compel her guests to the lunch.
Evidence had indicated what Rogers described as Patterson’s “baldfaced lies” about medical tests concerning a lump on her elbow — all of which demonstrated that Patterson had “planted the seed of this [cancer] lie well in advance”.
“We know that this was all a fabrication,” Rogers said. “There was no needle biopsy, there was no lump, and there was no MRI.”
During the trial, Patterson conceded there was never a needle biopsy, but that both sides of her family had a history of ovarian cancer, and she was afraid she also had it.
“I’d been having, for a few months by then, a multitude of symptoms,” Patterson told the jury.
“I felt very fatigued. I had ongoing abdominal pain. I had chronic headaches. I put on a lot of weight in quite a short period of time, and like my feet and my hands seemed to retain a lot of fluid.”
The jury were presented with evidence taken from Patterson’s devices that showed webpage searches about cancer. “She knew how to tell convincing lies … because she had put in the research,” Rogers told the court, adding that the accused never considered having to account for her lie because she intended to murder her lunch guests.
“Her lie would die with them,” Rogers said.
In court, Patterson said that she lied about the cancer because she was embarrassed to reveal to them that she was actually planning to undergo gastric-bypass surgery months later and needed their support.
3. Intention to kill
Patterson told the jury that while she accepts that death cap mushrooms were in the meal consumed by her victims, the mushrooms had been added by accident. She maintained that she loved her in-laws and had no reason to harm them.
Patterson also said that she had added dried mushrooms from a container she believed to have been purchased from an Asian grocer in Melbourne, but that she now accepted that foraged mushrooms may have been in there too.
4. Consumption of poisoned meal
During the trial, several medical witnesses revealed that Patterson did not present the same severity of symptoms of death cap mushroom poisoning as her four lunch guests, despite Patterson herself insisting that she had eaten between a quarter and half of her beef Wellington meal and struggled with diarrhoea later that same day.
Patterson said that after her guests left the lunch, she consumed some orange cake left over from the meal and went to the toilet to vomit.
When questioned whether she was telling the jury she had vomited up her portion of beef Wellington, Patterson said she could not be sure.
“I have no idea what was in the vomit,” she said.
She then told the jury that later that night and into the following day, she began to experience frequent diarrhoea and defecated on the side of the road while driving her children. She also said she wanted to discard dirty tissues into a bin.
When Rogers asked Patterson if she was “making this up as you go along”, Patterson replied “No.”
Later, she would tell Rogers that it was “incorrect” that she had intentionally tried to make it seem like she was suffering from death cap mushroom poisoning because she knew it would look suspicious if she was not sick.
When Rogers suggested that Patterson had not in fact been suffering from death cap mushroom poisoning, Patterson said: “I have no idea.”
“You were not fearful of having an accident,” Rogers put to Patterson, referring to the events of Saturday night, when Patterson had allegedly struggled to not empty her bowels while dropping her son’s friend home — the version of events which Patterson shared with child protection worker Katrina Cripps.
“I suggest that what you told [Katrina Cripps] about sitting down acting like a cork to prevent an accident was untrue,” Rogers said.
Patterson argued that her fear of diarrhoea was not present on Saturday night, and that any apparent inconsistencies in her account was likely a result of her confused state of mind after the lunch.
“I had had a lot of people ask me the same questions over and over, and I felt unwell and anxious … confused and stressed,” Patterson said. “I was doing my best to answer everyone’s questions, but I may have gotten things a little bit wrong along the way.”
Patterson is now waiting for a sentencing hearing, where submissions and arguments from the prosecution and defence will be presented regarding what they propose the sentence should be.
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