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Witnesses testify at the trial of Erin Patterson, as the Crown tries to prove she intentionally killed three family members by poisoning them at a lunch in 2023. By Lucie Morris-Marr.

The trial of mushroom cook Erin Patterson

Erin Patterson in Melbourne last month.

Credit: AAP Image / James Ross

It’s an accepted fact that Gippsland’s golden ash and maple trees are making their autumn transition, from vibrant greens to yellow-tinged orange and crimson reds.

Within court four of Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court in Morwell it’s also an accepted fact that three of the region’s residents died from death cap mushroom poisoning after being served beef Wellington at a family lunch.

In the matter of The King v Erin Patterson, the debate rests not on if it happened but on whether the poisoning was done on purpose and with an intent to kill or injure. The trial is expected to be lengthy, starting in one Victorian season and likely concluding in another.

The accused mother of two, Erin Patterson, has already sat in the dock for nearly two weeks, charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, all of which she denies.

It’s the details that were missing from the Crown prosecutor’s opening speech that are now slowly giving the jury a comprehensive insight into the panic and suffering involved in the hours and days after the meal was cooked by the accused on Saturday, July 29, 2023.

One by one, witnesses have added new information to the chronology of events surrounding the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, the parents of Erin’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, and of his aunt, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

It was the testimony of the surviving lunch guest – Baptist pastor and Heather’s widower Ian William Wilkinson – that laid out the extreme symptoms perhaps few live to recount in the first person.

“We had vomiting and diarrhoea and, yes, that continued right through the night,” the now 71-year-old told the court about his experience after the lunch. The father of four first thought it was “just gastro, and we’d be right”.

Ian and his wife each camped at the door of a bathroom until they were taken by Simon Patterson to Leongatha Hospital, at his insistence, the next morning. His own parents had already been admitted to the smaller Korumburra Hospital with similar symptoms.

The initial treatment was intravenous fluids and anti-nausea medications. Wilkinson slept that first night in hospital. As he recalls, “We were pretty washed out.” The next morning – Monday, July 31 – panic ensued.

“We were abruptly woken up by a group of nurses who literally ran us down the corridor in our beds to the urgent care area,” Wilkinson said.

A senior doctor, Chris Webster, was waiting for them in urgent care and explained he’d had communication from Dandenong Hospital, where the Pattersons had been transferred the previous evening, that the diagnosis was “suspected mushroom poisoning”.

Don Patterson, who had consumed his own portion of beef Wellington and also half of his wife’s, was so unwell he had been placed in intensive care before midnight. His wife was about to follow.

“He was very frank,” Wilkinson said of the conversation with Dr Webster. “He said it’s an extremely serious situation. He said there is time-critical treatment available and he was very concerned that we be transported quickly to Dandenong.”

Before the couple were taken in separate ambulances, Ian Wilkinson said he became aware staff at the hospital were looking for Erin Patterson.

“They weren’t talking to me. I was just overhearing their conversation. They were wondering where she was.”

Erin had presented at hospital earlier that morning, Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, previously explained to the jury, telling staff she’d had diarrhoea over the weekend. Checks revealed she had a high heart rate and high blood pressure, but she insisted on leaving, against medical advice, saying she had to deal with her animals and children at home.

She later returned, but Dr Webster had been so concerned she was missing that he’d asked police to conduct a welfare check at her home, where officers retrieved samples of the lunch from an outdoor bin.

Simon Patterson’s brother, Matthew, told the court that later that day he had asked Erin by phone where she’d sourced the mushrooms for the beef Wellington. He said she told him she “bought fresh mushrooms from Woolies” and the dried mushrooms from a Chinese grocer or supermarket in the Oakleigh area of Melbourne.

At that point, however, the main focus was on the rapidly deteriorating health of the hospitalised lunch guests. The final thing Ian Wilkinson remembered at Dandenong Hospital before being sedated and intubated was being given a “charcoal substance” to drink.

The two couples were soon transferred to the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg and placed in intensive care, under the treatment of the Liver Transplant Unit and toxicology specialists.

As is the common nature of death cap consumption, the jury has been told, the poisoning can start with gastro-like symptoms but can then lead to an internal build-up of fluid, internal bleeding and potentially fatal tissue damage to the kidneys and liver.

Heather Wilkinson, who had told friends the lunch was “delicious”, was the first to die on August 4, 2023. Gail Patterson died later the same day.

Despite Don Patterson receiving a liver transplant, he died the following day, exactly a week after the lunch.

All three officially died of multiple organ failure resulting from altered liver function, due to “amanita mushroom poisoning”.

In the meantime, the court heard this week, Ian Wilkinson continued to be treated in intensive care, followed by several weeks on a ward. He finally went to a rehabilitation centre and then home.

Erin Patterson, now 50, and her two children, who she said consumed some leftovers but not the mushrooms, had returned to her newly built home in Leongatha after being discharged from Monash Medical Centre.

While the cause of the deaths has not been disputed by the defence, details of what exactly unfolded before, during and after the lunch have.

In Ian Wilkinson’s evidence, he told how Erin served the guests individually wrapped beef Wellington on “large grey plates”, while Erin’s own plate was “smaller” and “rusty … orange” in colour.

Colin Mandy, SC, Erin’s defence barrister, pressed the pastor on this point, saying he may have been mistaken and that the crockery could have been a “mismatch” of plates, which the pastor firmly denied.

What was said by Erin during the lunch has also been keenly questioned by her defence barrister. The jury had already been told by Crown prosecutor Rogers that it is alleged Erin “lied” when she told the lunch guests she’d been diagnosed with cancer and wanted advice on how to tell her two children.

Erin’s barrister suggested his client had actually told the guests she was still in the early stages of diagnosis and wasn’t yet certain it was cancer.

One guest who was supposed to have a seat at the lunch table but declined the invitation the day before was Simon Patterson, who separated from Erin in 2015.

He was the Crown’s first witness in the initial days of the trial and told of how the estranged pair had had a civilised relationship for many years, including taking family holidays together.

The civil engineer described Erin as “highly intelligent” and “witty” when they first began dating, however angry texts read to the court revealed the couple, who had two children together, had clashed over financial matters about a year before the fatal lunch.

Erin, whose personal wealth meant she’d lent two of Simon’s siblings $400,000 each during the marriage, had discovered Simon had not paid his half of the school fees and instead had switched a $40 monthly child support payment.

Three online friends of the accused, who met Erin through a “Keli Lane true crime Facebook group”, informed the jury that she shared in the group details of her sometimes strained relationship with her “controlling” estranged husband.

The Facebook friends also said they knew Erin “loved mushrooms” and revealed she’d shared pictures of a new dehydrator, purchased locally in April 2023. She also told them she had been struggling to find an appropriate cut of meat to cook beef Wellington in the days before the lunch.

According to the Crown, Erin had travelled to two nearby areas in Gippsland shortly after a member of the public posted pictures of suspected death cap mushrooms on the website iNaturalist.org.

It was also alleged Erin had been using two phones in the weeks before the lunch, and a dehydrator with her fingerprints and remains of death cap mushrooms had been found at a local tip.

Erin’s barrister argues his client “panicked” when her guests started to become severely unwell and the poisoning had been a “terrible mistake”.

“The intention to kill or cause anyone any harm is very much in dispute.”

Towards the end of this week the jury heard a recorded police interview with the Crown’s youngest witness – the younger of Erin’s two children, who cannot be named.

Their diminutive voice told the officer Erin had said she was holding the family lunch to talk about “adult things” and witnessed her preparing “some kind of meat” in the kitchen.

The trial continues.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 10, 2025 as "Mushroom cloud".

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