Mushroom murderer tried to kill husband with pasta, cookies and curry, court was told

The Australian woman was last month found guilty of murdering three relatives - and attempting to kill another - with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington.

The 50-year-old was originally charged with three counts of attempted murder against her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but these charges were dropped without explanation on the eve of her trial.

The details of the allegations, which Patterson denied, were suppressed to protect the proceedings, but can now be made public for the first time.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch on 29 July 2023: Patterson's former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather's husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.

In lengthy pre-trial hearings last year, Mr Patterson had detailed what he suspected was a years-long campaign to kill him with tainted food - including one episode which had left him so ill he spent weeks in a coma and his family was twice told to say their goodbyes.

Camping trips and packed lunches

In a quiet moment during the early days of Patterson's trial, her estranged husband choked up as he explained his sorrow to a near empty courtroom.

Mr Patterson's parents and his aunt had been killed, and his uncle almost died too, after eating the toxic meal prepared by his wife. He had narrowly avoided the same fate, pulling out of the lunch gathering the day before.

"I have a lot to grieve," he said to the judge, sitting in the witness box as the jury prepared to return from a break.

"The legal process has been very difficult... especially the way it's progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that - or non-evidence now, I guess."

"I'm sitting here, half thinking about the things I'm not allowed to talk about and… I don't actually understand why. It seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is."

What he wasn't allowed to talk about – the elephant in the room throughout the trial – was his claim that Patterson had been trying to poison him long before the fatal lunch that destroyed his family on 29 July 2023.

Mr Patterson gave evidence during pre-trial hearings, which are a standard part of the court process and allow judges to determine what evidence is admissible - or allowed to be presented to a jury.

As the charges relating to Mr Patterson were dropped, his evidence on the matter was excluded from the raft of information presented at the nine-week trial this year.

But he had explained that, as far as he knows, it all began with a Tupperware container of Bolognese penne in November 2021.

Mr Patterson and his wife had separated in 2015 – though they still aren't divorced – and he thought they remained on amicable terms.

Under questioning from Patterson's lawyer, Mr Patterson confirmed he had noticed "nothing untoward" in their relationship at that point: "If by 'nothing untoward', you mean anything that would make me think she would try and kill me, correct."

But after eating that meal, he began suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, and spent a night in hospital.

"I had the idea I got sick from Erin's food. I did not give it too much thought," he said in his police statement, according to The Age newspaper.

Months later, in May 2022, he fell ill again after eating a chicken korma curry prepared by Patterson on a camping trip in the rugged mountains and alpine scruff of Victoria's High Country region.

"While Erin was preparing food I was getting the fire going so I didn't watch her prepare it," he told the court.

Within days, he was in a coma in a Melbourne hospital, and a large part of his bowel was surgically removed in a bid to save his life.

"My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live," he said in a 2022 Facebook post, reported by The South Gippsland Sentinel Times two years ago.

In September 2022, while visiting a stunning, isolated stretch of Victorian coastline, he would become desperately unwell again after eating a vegetable wrap.

At first, he felt nausea and diarrhoea coming on, the court heard, before his symptoms escalated. He started slurring his speech, gradually lost control of his muscles, and began "fitting".

"By the end of the journey [to hospital], all I could move was my neck, my tongue and lips," he told the court.

The food diary and chapel meeting

A family friend who was a doctor, Christopher Ford, suggested Mr Patterson start a food diary so they could try to figure out what was making him so sick.

"I couldn't understand why these things kept on happening to him in such a way that he had essentially three near-death experiences," Dr Ford told the court.

Mr Patterson returned to see him in February 2023, five months before the fatal lunch, revealing he'd come to believe his estranged wife was responsible.

He told Dr Ford about a batch of cookies supposedly baked by his daughter, which he feared were treats tainted – possibly with antifreeze chemicals - by his wife, who had called repeatedly to check whether he had eaten any.

The court would hear investigators never figured out what Patterson had allegedly been feeding him, though they suspected rat poison may have been used on at least one occasion, and had found a file on Patterson's computer with information about the toxin.

After this discovery, Mr Patterson changed his medical power of attorney, removing his wife, and quietly told a handful of family members of his fears.

Family tree showing Erin Patterson, her estranged husband Simon Patterson, their two children, Simon's father Don Patterson, Simon's mother Gail Patterson, Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, and Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson. 

Erin Patterson separated from her husband Simon in 2015

The court heard that his father Don Patterson responded diplomatically, but his sister Anna Terrington told the pre-trial hearings she had believed her brother, and was anxious when she learned about the lunch Patterson had planned.

Ms Terrington called her parents the night before to warn them.

"Dad said, 'No, we'll be ok'," she said.

Five days later, she gathered in a Melbourne hospital chapel alongside her brother and other worried relatives. Down the hall, deteriorating in their beds, were Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

Ruth Dubois, the Wilkinsons' daughter, told the pre-trial hearings Simon Patterson had assembled the group to tell them he suspected his previous grave illnesses were the work of his wife.

"[He said] he had stopped eating food than Erin had prepared, because he suspected Erin had been messing with it," she said.

"He was really sorry that he hadn't told our family before this… but he thought he was the only person she was targeting, and that they'd be safe."

Bizarre evidence

It was also revealed that Patterson had visited a local tip the afternoon of the lunch at her house, though it is unknown what, if anything, she disposed of there.

The jury heard that she had travelled to the same dump days after the lunch to get rid of a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, but the judge ruled they couldn't be told about the first visit.

Other bizarre evidence which was ultimately left out of the trial included a 2020 post to a poisons help forum on Facebook, in which Patterson claimed her cat had eaten some mushrooms under a tree and had vomited, alongside pictures of fungi.

Patterson had never owned a cat, prosecutors said, arguing the post was evidence of a long-standing interest in the poisonous properties of mushrooms.

On Friday, Justice Christopher Beale set down a sentencing hearing for 25 August, where those connected to the case will have the opportunity to give victim impact statements.

-BBC