It was a simple country lunch that turned into a family tragedy after three people died – and another was left fighting for his life – following a meal of beef Wellington, potatoes and green beans that was allegedly laced with death cap mushrooms.
What has become known as the mushroom trial has begun in the Victorian town of Morwell.
Erin Patterson, 50, has been charged with murdering her former in-laws, Donald and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. She’s also been charged with attempting to murder Heather’s husband, pastor Ian Wilkinson. Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Erin Pearson, crime and justice reporter for The Age, tells Samantha Selinger-Morris, host of The Morning Edition podcast, what the court was told about why Erin Patterson served the poisoned meal – and why Erin didn’t want her children, who ate leftovers, to be seen by doctors.
Listen to the conversation by clicking the player above or read on for an edited extract of the episode.
Samantha Selinger-Morris: Erin Patterson told doctors that her children had eaten leftovers from the meal, but that she’d scraped the mushrooms off. The doctors wanted her children attended to. What was her response to that?
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Erin Pearson: The jury were told that she was a little bit hesitant in that regard, that she was worried that if she went and picked them up from school and brought them to hospital, it would stress them out. She didn’t believe that they consumed any of these mushrooms, which, at that time, [it] was still being worked out whether they were, in fact, death cap mushrooms. It’s something that took a little bit of time to figure out as everybody was being treated. But, yeah, at the time, she wasn’t really keen for children to be seen, but eventually, they were all taken to hospital.
The prosecution case, though, is that … she knew that her children weren’t sick and that she’d only, I guess, included all of them in her plan to commit murder. This is something that the defence rejected in their opening addresses … She maintains her innocence. The defence case is this was all a tragic accident. She never, ever intended to harm anybody.
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