Erin Patterson has told a court she believes she unintentionally added foraged mushrooms to her beef wellington mix while trying to improve its “bland” flavour, and lied to her lunch guests about having cancer because she was embarrassed about upcoming weight loss surgery.
In her third day in the witness box, Patterson also admitted lying on multiple occasions to her mother-in-law about medical appointments, in part because she wanted her to keep showing her care.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murderand one charge of attempted murder relating to poisoning four in-laws with beef wellington served for lunch at her house in Leongatha on 29 July 2023.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering her estranged husband Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.
Lawyers for Patterson say the death cap mushroom poisoning was a tragic and terrible accident.
Under questioning from her lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, on Wednesday, Patterson said she made multiple changes to the RecipeTin Eats recipe she was following to prepare the beef wellington.
It was a dish she had never made, but she wanted to try something special for her guests, she said.
The changes were mostly due to her not being able to source a larger “log” of steak as specified in the recipe, and having to instead buy individual steaks.
This meant she required more mushrooms for a duxelles, and more pastry, Patterson said.
She said that on the morning of the lunch she started cooking down the mushrooms, as she needed to remove almost all water from them in order to stop the pastry in the dish becoming soggy.
But after cooking them for about 45 minutes she tasted the mixture, and found it to be bland.
She went to her pantry to source dried mushrooms from a container that she believed only had mushrooms in it that she’d bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne several months earlier.
“At that time to your knowledge what was in the tupperware container,” Mandy asked.
“At that time just mushrooms … from Melbourne,” Patterson responded.
“And now what do you think?” Mandy asked.
“Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”
After this answer, Patterson took a long pause, and appeared to become emotional, before dabbing her eyes and cheeks with a tissue.
She also said shelied to her guests about needing upcoming cancer treatment, after having a previous scare for ovarian cancer, as she was too “embarrassed” to tell them about plans for weight loss surgery.
“Not proud of this, but I led them to believe I might be needing some treatment … in regards to [ovarian cancer] in the coming weeks and months,” she said.
“They all showed a lot of compassion about that … Ian said, why don’t we pray for Erin, and so that’s what we did.
“I did lie to them.”
When asked by Mandy “why didn’t you tell them the truth about what you were intending”, she responded: “I was ashamed of the fact that I didn’t have control over my body or what I ate. I was ashamed of that, I felt embarrassed.
“I didn’t want to tell anybody, but I shouldn’t have lied to them.”
Thesole surviving lunch guest, Ian Wilkinson, who was in court on Wednesday, watched on impassively.
Patterson told the court on Tuesday she accepted death cap mushrooms were in the beef wellington she prepared.
Earlier on Wednesday, she was taken to a series of photos she said she had taken in 2020 of mushrooms she had foraged.
She was also shown a series of messages previously read to the court about an exchange with Gail regarding medical tests and a biopsy for a lump on her elbow.
Patterson said she had previously had elbow pain, and “thought” she had a lump, and when she told the Gail and Don about this they had shown her care.
Although the pain eased, she decided to say the ailment persisted.
She admitted lying to Gail about an appointment, a needle biopsy, and an MRI.
“Why did you tell those lies?” Mandy asked.
“So some weeks prior, I had been having an issue with my elbow with pain … and I’d told Don and Gail about that,” Patterson responded.
“They had shown quite a lot of care about that, which felt really nice.
“The issues started to resolve … I didn’t want their care of me to stop, so I just kept it going.”
Later, Patterson admitted another “misleading statement” about getting test results regarding the elbow back.
She said she made that statement as she hoped it could become a way of solving “logistical” issues that could arise with her children when she had upcoming gastric bypass surgery, which she did not want to tell anyone about.
“Something I’d been thinking about in the background and doing some preparation for was I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do something once and for all about my weight and my poor eating habits, so I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery.
“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I had done, I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought letting them believe I had something that required serious treatment … [would] help me with logistics around the kids, and I wouldn’t have to tell them.”
Patterson said she had a pre-appointment regarding the surgery scheduled for September 2023.
Patterson also told the court there was no assigned plates or seats, and that she did not own grey plates. Ian Wilkinsonpreviously told the court that lunch guests were served on grey plates, while Patterson served herself on a smaller, coloured plate.
Her evidence continues.
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