Prosecutors have accused Erin Patterson of fabricating a key detail in her defence, telling the Supreme Court of Victoria she lied about buying mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in a bid to cover up the alleged poisoning of her in-laws.
The Crown argues Patterson deliberately misled health authorities, doctors and police by claiming she purchased dried mushrooms from a shop in Melbourne’s southeast, despite being unable to name the store or its location.
"You lied about the source of the death cap mushrooms because you knew you were guilty of deliberately poisoning your four [relatives]," Crown Prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers SC said in court.
"Incorrect," Patterson replied.
Rogers told the court that Patterson had claimed to public health official Sally Ann Atkinson that she bought the mushrooms from a store somewhere in Oakleigh or Glen Waverley – areas she would be familiar with, having worked for the Monash Council. Yet, Patterson has never identified the store.
"The Asian grocer story was a deliberate lie," Rogers alleged.
Patterson insisted she wasn’t sure where the mushrooms came from, but was trying to help.
"I clarified... I think I made it clear at all times that I really wasn't sure, but I was trying to be helpful," she said.
Woman accused of killing three people with poisonous mushrooms in beef Wellington testifies in her defence. (Source: 1News)
She also told the court the mushrooms "smelled funny" when she first bought them, so she transferred them to a Tupperware container and later ran them through a food dehydrator – a detail Rogers suggested was "invented" to make the story sound more plausible.
"You described the packaging in this way because you wanted it to sound like they were not commercially [provided] mushrooms," Rogers said.
"That’s incorrect," Patterson replied.
In a tense back-and-forth, Patterson said she couldn’t remember some of the details, including whether she herself accessed the iNaturalist website where sightings of death cap mushrooms had been logged in the months before the fatal lunch.
"Well, somebody did," she said, "and that somebody could've been me."
She also rejected allegations that she told doctors inconsistent things about where the mushrooms came from. When Rogers suggested she had changed her story about the mushrooms' weight and packaging to different officials, Patterson maintained: "It would have been me trying to clarify, not change."
The prosecution argued the story mattered because it prompted a full-scale investigation by health officials – one they say was needlessly complicated by Patterson's misleading and inconsistent accounts. Patterson's defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC told the jury in opening remarks that these were not calculated lies, but rather actions made in panic and fear, as Patterson worried about being blamed.
'You went to Loch to collect death caps'
Prosecutors pointed to mobile phone data showing Patterson travelled to the town of Loch where death cap mushrooms had previously been spotted just hours before buying a food dehydrator.
Dr Rogers alleged: "You went to Loch to collect death cap mushrooms. Within two hours, you bought a dehydrator."
Patterson replied: "The only part of that that is true is that I bought a dehydrator."
The court also heard further phone tower data allegedly placed Patterson in the Outtrim area on May 22, near a site where a well-known fungi expert had flagged death cap mushrooms on iNaturalist just one day earlier.
Patterson said she didn’t go there deliberately: "I didn’t go to Outtrim, to Neilson St, and I don’t remember going to Outtrim as a destination."
Asked whether she may have passed through, she said: "That is possible, because you can pass through Outtrim on the way to Wonthaggi or Phillip Island."
Rogers also suggested Patterson had "blitzed" dehydrated death cap mushrooms into powder and used it in the beef Wellingtons, comparing the method to how she’d previously hidden powdered mushrooms in her children’s meals.
Patterson rejected that claim, responding simply: "Disagree."
Feeding leftovers to her children
Patterson admitted serving her children leftovers from the same lunch, telling the court: "It was the same lunch, yes." But she insisted the mushrooms had been removed.
When asked why she proceeded with the meal after learning her in-laws were unwell, she said: "I didn’t know or suspect that."
When prosecutors suggested she hesitated to take her children to hospital for assessment after the lunch, Patterson admitted she asked doctors if it was "really necessary" because they had no symptoms.
Rogers said it was not credible that, "if you thought, genuinely, that your children had eaten a potentially fatal poison... you’d be worried or stressed about pulling them out of school."
Patterson replied: "The issue was mushrooms and they had not eaten the mushrooms." When asked if she loved her children, she responded: "I still love them."
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, maintaining the fatal July 2023 lunch was a tragic accident.
The cross-examination of Erin Patterson in her triple murder trial continues.
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