Photos of deadly meal revealed as killer learns fate
Source: Victoria Supreme Court
Photos of the leftovers from Erin Patterson’s deadly beef Wellington lunch and other exhibits that helped convict the mushroom cook have been made public for the first time.
Hours after a jury declared Patterson guilty on Monday, the Supreme Court in Victoria released dozens of pieces of evidence.
The exhibits included photos showing remnants of beef Wellington leftovers as they were tested by toxicologists after police found them inside a bin at Patterson’s home.
Beef Wellington leftovers, recovered from Erin Patterson’s bin. Photo: Victoria Supreme Court/AAP
Videos were released, including CCTV of a bizarre nine-second stop at a BP service station toilet, which Patterson claims was needed to dispose of diarrhoea-soiled tissues.
Patterson told the jury she had earlier pulled over while driving to relieve her diarrhoea in bushland, on the day of the poison lunch.
She said she used tissues to clean herself and disposed of them in a poo bag at the BP Caldermeade.
Erin Patterson at the BP Caldermeade. Photo: Victoria Supreme Court
She then browses the shop shelves and buys a sandwich and lollies before returning to her car, which is parked outside the doors.
Another video shows Patterson discharging herself from Leongatha Hospital minutes after she had arrived and speaking to hospital staff at the entrance.
Images of Patterson at Leongatha Hospital, after she took herself there, revealed a pink phone police say they never recovered.
Prosecutors said this was Patterson’s primary phone in 2023 and claimed she had used it to find death cap mushrooms online.
Mushrooms dehydrating on scales in Erin Patterson’s home. Photo: Victoria Supreme Court
Photos of yellow mushrooms on scales were released, along with footage of Patterson getting rid of a food dehydrator at Koonwarra tip.
The Sunbeam dehydrator, which she bought three months before the lunch, was found to contain death cap mushroom toxins.
The dehydrator found at the tip, after being dumped by Patterson. Photo: Victoria Supreme Court
The jury’s guilty verdicts came seven days after it was sent away to deliberate and 11 weeks into the trial in Morwell, regional Victoria.
Patterson did not react and stared at a jury as the foreperson delivered her fate on Monday.
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“Guilty,” the jury foreperson repeated four times to each count: First to Ian Wilkinson’s attempted murder, then his wife Heather’s murder, followed by the murders of Gail and Don Patterson.
Patterson at Leongatha Hospital, and her ‘pink phone’ on the table. Photo: Victoria Supreme Court
After a trial that gripped the world and spanned almost three months, the 50-year-old mother is now a convicted killer.
The families of the murder victims, who died in hospital days after eating lunch at Patterson’s Leongatha home on July 29, 2023, were absent for the verdicts, as was sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson.
‘Large sentence’ awaits Patterson
There was a shout of “murderer” as Patterson was driven out of the court precinct to prison in Melbourne on Monday night.
Brianna Chesser, a clinical forensic psychologist and criminal lawyer, said she was not surprised by the outcome.
She argued Patterson’s testimony across eight days on the witness stand, as well as circumstantial evidence, likely proved critical to convincing the jury beyond reasonable doubt.
“Whenever you have any lies in a trial it is quite a difficult thing to overcome from a defence perspective,” the associate professor in criminology and justice at RMIT University said.
“What came out regarding the mushrooms was almost insurmountable.
“When you’ve got particular searches on your phone and a dehydrator that you had and didn’t have, it really speaks to the unusualness of the circumstances.”
Patterson has spent her first night as a convicted killer. Photo: AAP
The story had captivated the world because of the method, as well as the now-convicted murderer being a woman when the vast majority of homicides were perpetrated by men, Chesser said.
Patterson faces a sentence of life in prison for the three murders and one attempted murder. She is expected to return to court for a pre-sentence hearing later in 2025.
Options for appeal were usually restricted to points of law, a “massive” error in fact or new evidence, Chesser said.
“It’s going to be quite a large sentence,” she said.
“We’ve heard during the cross-examination and examination in chief that there are some mental health concerns for Ms Patterson.
“That may well act a mitigating factor in any sort of sentence.
“We’re also dealing with someone who’s a middle-aged woman who has never offended before in their life and we’ve got four of the most serious crimes in Victoria being committed.”
Homicide Squad Detective Dean Thomas said the families had asked for privacy.
“It’s very important that we remember … that three people have died and we’ve had a person that nearly died and was seriously injured as a result, and that has led to these charges,” he said outside court.
“I ask that we acknowledge those people and not forget them.”
Patterson’s supporter Ali Rose Prior said she was “saddened” by the verdicts.
“I didn’t have any expectations; it’s the justice system and it has to be what it is,” she said.
She confirmed Patterson had told her “see you soon” and she would visit her in prison.
Patterson had pleaded not guilty and claimed not to have intentionally poisoned her lunch guests.
She took to the witness box for eight days and claimed she had eaten the same meal but threw up the remnants soon after.
She admitted she may have accidentally included foraged mushrooms in the meal, despite lying about this to police when she was first interviewed.
Prosecutors laid out an extensive circumstantial case to prove the poisoning was deliberate.
This included evidence from Wilkinson, who said Patterson had served individual beef Wellingtons to her guests on different plates to her own.
The prosecution accused Patterson of telling lies to cover up the murders, including to doctors, nurses and toxicologists while they were trying to identify why her lunch guests were sick and save their lives at hospital.
After hearing nine weeks of evidence from more than 50 witnesses, a jury of 14 was whittled down to 12.
The courtroom fell silent as the foreperson read out four guilty verdicts.
Justice Christopher Beale thanked the jury for its service and gave members dispensation from serving on another jury for 15 years.
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“You’ve been an exceptional jury,” he said.
Patterson was driven to prison in Melbourne from Morwell on Monday night.
Key trial moments
1. Erin Patterson gives evidence and admits foraging
After weeks of prosecution evidence, she was announced as the defence’s only witness in her murder trial.
She took to the witness box for eight days, including several under gruelling cross-examination by crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. She admitted beginning mushroom foraging during Victoria’s first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
“They tasted good and I didn’t get sick,” she told the jury, about preparing and eating wild fungi for the first time. Patterson said she loved her former in-laws and they were her only living family.
She also claimed she’d thrown up remnants on the meal after eating it as she suffered from bulimia, and admitted to lying about owning a dehydrator and foraging to police.
2. Sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson enters the witness box
The only lunch guest to survive eating Patterson’s poisoned beef Wellington, Wilkinson was one of the first witnesses called during week two of the trial.
Wilkinson, Simon Patterson’s uncle and pastor at Korumburra Baptist Church, locked eyes with the woman who tried to kill him as he sat in the witness box and gave emotional evidence about losing his wife Heather.
He said Patterson had served him, Heather, and Don and Gail Patterson on grey dinner plates that differed from her own plate.
Wilkinson laughed as he recalled banter at the dinner table over how Don Patterson ate his portion and half of his wife’s.
3. Estranged husband Simon Patterson is called as witness
Patterson was the first witness called by prosecutors. He discussed the former couple’s up-and-down relationship in the years before their permanent separation in 2015.
He gave evidence for three days, saying he did not attend the fatal lunch, although he was invited, because he felt “too uncomfortable”.
Patterson became emotional as he recalled seeing his father and mother dying in their hospital beds.
“Dad was substantially worse than mum, he was really struggling … He wasn’t right inside. He was feeling pain,” he said, between tears.
4. Medical experts explain how Patterson’s lunch guests fell ill, but she did not
Doctors, nurses and toxicologists detailed how the four lunch guests’ conditions deteriorated over several days after they went to hospital with diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pain, and medical staff tried to save their lives.
Initially, doctors and victims had assumed all had gastro, but it soon became clear they had consumed death cap mushrooms.
Patterson, on the other hand, took herself to hospital two days after the meal and quickly discharged herself.
She returned and then was taken to a Melbourne hospital but was found to not have been poisoned.
5. Computer devices reveal death cap mushroom searches
Searches of computers, tablets and mobile phones seized from Patterson’s home revealed she had navigated to science website iNaturalist in May 2022 and looked at a death cap mushroom sighting post for Moorabbin, in Melbourne.
6. Patterson’s angry messages over child support
A child support issue between Simon and Erin Patterson started to involve his parents, Don and Gail, towards the end of 2022 – about six months before the toxic meal.
Messages sent by Patterson to her Facebook friends revealed she called Simon a “deadbeat” and said she wanted nothing to do with her parents-in-law.
“This family, I swear to f—ing god,” another message said.
Prosecutors said this showed how her relationship with the Patterson family had begun deteriorating.
7. Mobile phone tower pings after online death cap sightings
Patterson’s phone had pinged at mobile towers in the Gippsland towns of Outtrim and Loch after posts on iNaturalist about death cap mushroom sightings in those areas.
Her defence argued this evidence was unreliable, but prosecutors said it showed she had gone to these areas to pick the deadly fungi.
8. Patterson’s missing mobile phone
Several mobile phones were seized from Patterson’s home except one, Phone A. Prosecutors told the jury they had never recovered it.
Its sim card was swapped during a police search of her Leongatha home on August 5, 2023.
Another phone, known during the trial as Phone B, was factory reset on the day police were at her home and again while sitting in a locker at Victoria Police’s homicide HQ.
-with AAP
