The only surviving guest ofthe beef wellington lunchat Erin Patterson’s house has told her triple murder trial he was happy and excited about being invited for the meal.
Ian Wilkinson, the pastor at the Korumburra Baptist church, is the sixth witness in the supreme court trial at the Latrobe Valley law courts in Morwell.
Wilkinson told the court on Tuesday that Patterson was at a church service when she invited his wife Heather to lunch less than a fortnight before the meal in July, 2023.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to the beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering or attempting to murder the relatives of her estranged husband, Simon Patterson.
She is accused of murdering Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.
Wilkinson said that his relationship with Patterson “was friendly, amicable, [but] it didn’t have much depth”.
“I think we were more like acquaintances, we didn’t see a great deal of each other,” he said.
His wife’s relationship was “very similar”, he said.
“Heather would have seen Erin more than me, talked to her more than me, but we didn’t consider that the relationship was close.”
When asked by Jane Warren, for the prosecution, to describe Patterson, Wilkinson said she “just seemed like a normal person to me”.
“As I say, when we met, things were friendly. We never had arguments or disputes.
“She just seemed like an ordinary person, I don’t know how to describe it.”
Wilkinson said that he and Simon had discussed relationship issues the estranged couple were having, but he never discussed these with Patterson.
Wilkinson had never been for a meal at Patterson’s house, nor been inside any house she lived in, he said, and no reason was given for the invitation.
But he said he and Heather were “very happy to be invited”.
“It seemed like maybe our relationship with Erin was going to improve,” he said.
The Pattersons collected the Wilkinsons about 30 minutes before they were due at Pattersons, Wilkinson told the court.
Heather noticed when they arrived at Patterson’s house that Simon’s car wasn’t there, and one of his parents confirmed he would not be attending lunch.
Wilkinson said Patterson met them outside, and they continued into the open plan kitchen, dining, and living room of the newly-built house.
Heather and Gail went to inspect the pantry, but Wilkinson felt Patterson was reluctant for them to see it, so he stayed speaking with Don near the dining table.
He said they went outside soon after, before heading back inside for lunch.
Patterson was asked by Heather and Gail if she needed help plating up, but she said she didn’t, Wilkinson said.
He noticed that there were four large grey plates, and a smaller plate that was “orangey, tan” colour.
Each plate had a beef wellington, which he said look like a pastie, green beans and mashed potato.
He sat at the head of the table, with Don next to Gail, to his right, and Erin opposite Don, to his left.
After lunch, Wilkinson said, Patterson “announced that she had cancer”.
“She said that she was very concerned, because she believed it was very serious, life threatening, she was anxious about telling the kids, she was asking our advice about that, should I tell the kids or should I not tell the kids about this threat.
“At that moment, I thought, ‘this is the reason’ we’ve been invited to the lunch.”
The conversation ended when someone noticed one of Patterson’s children and a friend were returning home.
Wilkinson noticed they had not prayed for Patterson, so he suggested they did so.
He asked “God’s blessing on Erin, that she would get the treatment that she needed, that the kids would be ok, that she would have wisdom about how she told the kids”, Wilkinson told the court.
Later that evening, Wilkinson said, Heather left bed to vomit. He felt alright at this point, but vomited for the first time soon after.
He was taken to hospital by Simon the following morning, and the morning after that was “abruptly woken up” and told there were fears he and Heather were suffering mushroom poisoning.
Ambulances arrived during this conversation, and the Wilkinsons were taken to Dandenong hospital. Wilkinson was given a charcoal substance to drink, and agreed he had “no memory” from this point regarding his treatment.
The court heard he was sedated and intubated, taken to the Austin hospital, and was treated in the intensive care unit there until 21 August 2023, before he was moved to a ward, discharged to a rehabilitation ward, and then eventually discharged home about a month later.
Another witness, the owner and manager of the business where Patterson bought a food dehydrator, also gave evidence briefly on Tuesday.
An invoice shown to the court detailed that Patterson bought the Sunbeam Food Lab Electronic Dehydrator for $229 on 28 April, 2023.
The trial continues.