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Mandy asks Patterson about her reasons for hosting the fateful lunch on 29 July 2023.
Patterson says her kids had enjoyed seeing their grandparents when she hosted them for lunch in June and wanted to do it again. Earlier, she said she invited them to her Leongatha home in June because she had become worried about “some distance” between her and the Patterson family.
She says at the June lunch, Gail remarked that Heather would like to see her garden.
“Heather and Ian had been really good to me over the years. I wanted to have some more connection to them,” she says.
Patterson recalls asking Gail and Heather to come to lunch at church.
“They said they’ve love to,” Patterson says as her voice trembles.
Mandy asks why Patterson decided to cook a beef wellington dish.
Patterson says she made a shepherd’s pie when Don and Gail came to her place in June. She says they liked it but it “didn’t seem special enough”.
She says her mother had made beef wellington when she was a child.
“It was in my recipe book. RecipeTin Eats. I think that’s where I found it initially,” she says
She says in the lead-up to the lunch, she bought the “majority” of ingredients from Woolworths in Leongatha. She says she also bought some ingredients at the IGA and Aldi.
Mandy asks if she followed the recipe for beef wellington in the Recipe TinEats cookbook.
She replies “roughly” but says she made some “deviations”.
She said she could not buy a single beef tenderloin so bought individual eye-fillet steaks
Patterson agrees text messages about medical appointments 'were lies'
Mandy takes the jury to messages from June 2023 between Patterson and her mother-in-law Gail.
In the messages, Gail asked Patterson about a medical appointment. Patterson later replied and said she had a needle biopsy conducted.
Patterson says:
I must have told them I was having a medical appointment that day.
I think I just said I was having a problem or a lump on my arm checked out.
Mandy asks if Patterson had a lump on her arm.
“I thought I did at one point,” she replies.
He asks if she had been to a medical appointment.
“No,” replies Patterson.
“Had you had a needle biopsy of the lump?” asks Mandy.
“No,” says Patterson.
Mandy:
Were those lies?
Patterson:
Yes.
He asks why she said that.
She says a few weeks prior she had pain in her arm and thought there was a lump. She says Don and Gail had shown a lot of care in response.
“Which felt really nice,” she says.
The issue started to resolve and I felt a bit embarrassed I had made such a big deal about it. I didn’t want their care of me to stop so I just kept it going.
I shouldn’t have done it.
Mandy asks Patterson if at some stage she began aware of poisonous mushrooms growing in Gippsland.
“I did,” says Patterson.
She says she also found out there were mushrooms growing on her property that were “probably toxic to dogs”. She says these included inocybe.
She says found out about toxic mushroom species in Gippsland that “shouldn’t be eaten”.
Asked about death caps, Patterson says:
I became aware of death caps quite early in this period.
She says she looked up to see if they grew in south Gippsland and found out “they didn’t”.
Mandy takes his client to previous evidence about the search history found on a computer seized at her house. It showed a webpage on death cap mushrooms sightings had been visited in May 2022.
“Was that you conducting that search?” Mandy says.
I don’t specifically remember doing that day but it’s possible it was me.
It’s possible that’s part of the process I went through to see if they grew in Gippsland.
Mandy asks: “Did you ever forage for mushrooms in Loch?”
“No,” says Patterson.
Mandy asks: “Did you ever forage for mushrooms in Outtrim?”
“No,” replies Patterson.
Patterson says she did not see the posts reporting sightings of death cap mushrooms from mycologist Thomas May in Outtrim and retired pharmacist Christine McKenzie in Loch.
Patterson says she did not.
Patterson has placed her glasses on as she looks at the photos on the screen in front of her in the witness box.
Mandy asks his client about the photo showing mushrooms on pages of newspapers.
“That was on the bench in my kitchen,” she says.
Patterson says it was taken at her home in Korumburra.
In another photo showing mushrooms laid on a newspaper. Patterson says the person in the background is her daughter.
A reminder that a suppression order prevents either of the Patterson children from being named.
Mandy takes Patterson to her prior evidence that from early 2020 she became interested in wild mushrooms.
He shows the court images from an SD card police seized from Patterson’s home in Leongatha.
Some images show mushrooms laid out on pages of a newspaper. Others are closeup shots of mushrooms in the wild.
Mandy asks Patterson if these are images she took.
“Yes, I did,” she says.
Patterson says she took these photos “early in 2020” during the first Covid lockdown.
The jury is also shown stills of videos. Two people are captured in some of the stills. Patterson says they are her children, as her voice begins to crack.
“We were on the rail trail. I believe that was coming out of the Leongatha trailhead,” Patterson says.
The jury have entered the courtroom in Morwell.
Patterson, dressed in a grey jumper, has returned to the witness box to give evidence for a third day.
Defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC is questioning his client.
While we wait for today’s proceedings to get under way, here’s a reminder of what the jury heard on Tuesday:
1. Erin Patterson said she accepted the beef wellington she served her lunch guests on 29 July 2023 contained death cap mushrooms.
2. Patterson said she developed an interest in wild mushrooms during Covid walks in early 2020 when she noticed them in the Korumburra Botanic Gardens.
3. The accused said she wished she had never messaged her online friends in a private Facebook group chat “this family I swear to fucking god” in relation to her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson. She told the court she felt “ashamed” for saying it.
4. Patterson told the court she had not been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She said she was worried about potentially having ovarian cancer and described her history of consulting Google to research her symptoms.
5. Patterson detailed her daughter’s health history, including being diagnosed with an ovarian mass as a baby in 2014. She says from her daughter’s birth, when she cried a lot, she believed something was wrong but doctors told her she was an overly anxious mother. Patterson said she eventually lost faith in the medical system.
Good morning
Welcome to day 26 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.
Patterson, who began testifying on Monday, is expected to continue giving evidence this morning.
We’re expecting the trial to resume from 10.30am once the jurors enter the courtroom in Morwell.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha, in regional Victoria, on 29 July 2023.
She is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and her estranged husband’s aunt, Heather Wilkinson. The attempted murder charge relates to Heather’s husband, Ian.
She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests with “murderous intent”, but her lawyers say the poisoning was a tragic accident.
