A woman who has been accused of killing her ex-husband’s family with poisonous death cap mushrooms ate from a different coloured plate, a court hears.
Erin Patterson is charged with three counts of murder after her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson died in hospital in July 2023.
She has also been accused of attempting to murder Heather’s husband Ian, who was the only one to have survived the meal.
They were suspected of eating poisonous mushrooms after eating a beef wellington meal cooked by Patterson at her home in Leongatha, Victoria.
The prosecution said there were four large grey dinner plates on the table – but Patterson ate from the smaller one.
After becoming unwell, Heather spoke to Simon to tell him Patterson had eaten from a ‘noticeably different’ plate.
‘Does Erin have a shortage of crockery? I have been wondering about it since yesterday,’ Heather said, according to the prosecutor.
Their symptoms were described as being consistent with poisoning by death cap mushrooms, which is a dull green fungus known scientifically as Amanita phalloides and can cause serious organ failure within 24 to 48 hours.
After the meal the group then ‘bantered’ over how much of the meal they had eaten, before Patterson told them she had cancer, and was looking for advice on telling her children.
Patterson’s ex-husband Simon Patterson had also been invited to the lunch but did not attend.
But prosecutors announced in the Supreme Court they have dropped the attempted murder charge relating to him.
In 2022, he suffered a mystery illness and nearly died after being served a meal by Patterson, from whom he had split ‘amicably’ several years earlier.
In a Facebook post seen by The Herald Sun, he wrote: ‘I collapsed at home, then was in an induced coma for 16 days through which I had three emergency operations mainly on my small intestine, plus an additional planned operation.
‘My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live.’
Justice Beale said: ‘The accused served individual beef wellingtons to her lunch guests. Three of whom subsequently died from death cap poisoning.’
In a statement after the deaths, she insisted she ate the last remaining portion herself and ended up in hospital on July 31 with bad stomach pains and diarrhoea which required a saline drip and ‘liver protective drug’.
Her two children, whom she shares with Simon, skipped out on the meal to go to the cinema.
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