Why was 'mushroom poisoner' so reluctant to let her lunch guests into the pantry before they ate beef wellington that killed them?
The very last thing Ian Wilkinson remembers is being given a 'charcoal substance' to drink shortly after being rushed by ambulance to Dandenong Hospital in Melbourne on the morning of Monday July 31, 2023.
After that, everything went dark. And when the 71-year-old Baptist pastor woke up, several weeks later, it was to terrible news: his beloved wife Heather, her sister Gail and brother-in-law Don were all dead.
By this point, Ian and his family were at the centre of an international media circus. To blame were the highly unusual circumstances in which they had all ended up in hospital.
Specifically: the group, who were best friends as well as close relatives, had fallen ill after eating a beef wellington made using highly toxic death cap mushrooms.
It had been served by Erin Patterson, estranged wife of Gail and Don's son Simon, during a lunch on Saturday, July 29, at her home on the outskirts of Leongatha, a dairy-farming town in Victoria.
This week, the events of that fateful day took both Ian Wilkinson and that international media circus to Court Four at Latrobe Valley Magistrates in Morwell, just over half an hour's drive away.
Erin's circumstances have now changed significantly. She is no longer the generous host who warmly welcomed guests to the expansive property she and Simon's two children called home.
Instead, she stood grimly in the dock, flanked by two burly police officers.
It was the sixth day of the 50-year-old housewife's trial for the murders of Don, Gail and Heather, plus the attempted murder of Ian, whom she was seeing face-to-face for the very first time since that eventful lunch.
Wearing a dark blue gilet, spectacles and a small crucifix on his lapel, the preacher walked to the stand and glanced briefly in Erin's direction. Asked whether he wanted to swear an oath or take an affirmation, he declared: 'I will swear an oath to the Almighty God.'
His ensuing evidence, at which I enjoyed a ringside seat, lasted the best part of a day. And it provided some of the most electrifying and potentially consequential moments of this already gripping trial. A sweet-sounding, grey-haired man, who seems in remarkably fine shape given the awful nature of his ordeal, Wilkinson told the jury in forensic detail how the lunch and its aftermath had unfolded.
We saw him examine eerie photos of the dinner table where Heather, his beloved wife of more than 40 years, had eaten her last meal. And we watched him slowly and deliberately use a court-issued touchscreen to pinpoint the exact places where each guest had sat.
The small upstairs courtroom hung on his every word as he recalled exactly how the deadly dish, which was accompanied by 'mashed potatoes and green beans', was served. At times, the whole thing was vaguely surreal. Even while recounting how Heather had fallen suddenly and terribly ill, rushing to the bathroom of their home at around 10.30 that night where she began 'vomiting into the laundry trough', Ian peppered his testimony with nervous laughter.
It wasn't until he was excused, after several hours on the stand, that the toll of proceedings became apparent. Ian's hands visibly shook as he was handed a glass of water by a relative, while other family members offered consoling hugs.
Erin, for her part, remained almost entirely poker-faced throughout. Despite pleading not guilty to all four charges, she has already admitted that death cap mushrooms were indeed used in the beef wellington that was fed to her guests.
The prosecution, led by a bespectacled veteran barrister named Nanette Rogers, insists the poisoning was deliberate.
Erin's defence argues, however, that this was all a big accident.
It claims the poisonous fungi were added to the dish – in which a fillet of beef is covered in blended mushroom puree, then encased in puff pastry – only because Erin had picked them by mistake during a foraging expedition.
Against this disputed backdrop, Ian offered a gripping account of the lunch in question, to which estranged husband Simon had been invited but withdrew at the last minute. Some of his most intriguing evidence involved Patterson's behaviour after welcoming her four remaining guests, who had rarely visited the property.
Ian told the jury that she had seemed hugely reluctant to allow them to see parts of the house where lunch had been prepared. 'Heather was very interested in pantries at that time because we'd just built one at home,' he recalled. 'Heather was calling out to me, 'Come and look at the pantry'.'
However, he said: 'I'd noticed Erin was very reluctant about the visit to the pantry and had not yet started following [Heather and Gail] there, so I thought maybe the pantry's a mess and I won't add to the embarrassment by joining.'
Another potentially crucial moment in Ian's testimony revolved around the serving of the main course, which he said involved 'discussion about plating up' between the female guests.
'Both Heather and Gail were offering to help plate up the food,' he recalled. 'The offer was rejected and Erin plated all of the food.'
Erin Patterson had previously been accused of the attempted murder of her ex-husband Simon Patterson (pictured). Giving evidence prior, Simon had stated that the couple, who married in 2007, had initially remained on extremely friendly terms after separating in 2015
Then came the issue of the plates themselves. Having insisted on presiding over the serving of the main course, in which each guest was given an individual beef wellington which looked 'very much like a pasty', Ian said that Erin took an odd decision to serve them on colour-coded plates. 'There were four, large grey dinner plates and one smaller plate, a different colour,' he said. 'It was an orangey tan sort of colour.' Gail and Heather then each carried two grey plates to the table, Ian added, while Patterson carried the distinct colourful one to her place.
The coloured plates also seem to have been noted by Heather. After arriving at Leongatha Hospital, a local facility they were taken to the morning after the meal, Ian says they began to discuss what food might be the culprit.
'I recall... Heather reminding me that there were different coloured plates,' Ian told the jury. 'I think she just plainly said there were different-coloured plates in a conversation, wondering why we were ill. She just noticed the difference in the colours between the plate Erin was using and our plates.' The question of whether Erin might have put different food on those different-coloured plates is now at the centre of the murder allegations.
Prosecutor Rogers has alleged that Erin's dish was subtly different from others served, because it did not contain any death cap mushrooms. The orange plate was therefore used to help her identify the 'safe' dish.
In the days after the meal, the Crown argues that Erin then faked symptoms of food poisoning in an effort to escape suspicion and convince the authorities that she, too, had eaten the deadly meal.
Erin for her part argues that there was no such fakery involved, suggesting she used mismatched plates because that's what happened to be in her kitchen cupboard.
Or to quote her defence counsel Colin Mandy: 'She was not feigning illness, she wasn't pretending to be sick. The defence case is that she was sick too, just not as sick.'
Another crucial topic on which Ian testified involves events that happened over dessert, which consisted of an orange cake and a 'fruit platter' that had been prepared by Heather.
When issuing the invitation to the lunch, Erin had told guests she wanted to discuss a 'medical issue'. She duly informed her guests that she had been diagnosed with what Ian called a 'very serious' and 'life-threatening' cancer.
'I didn't quite catch what she said but I thought it was... ovarian or cervical cancer,' he said. 'She was anxious about telling the kids. She was asking our advice about that.'
The guests consoled her and advised that it was 'best' for her to be honest with the children, Ian recalled, saying he then led a prayer 'asking God's blessing on Erin, that she would get the treatment she needed'. It later emerged that Erin had never been diagnosed with cancer and was in fact perfectly healthy.
The prosecution claims that she faked the diagnosis in order to 'ensure and explain why her children would not be present at the lunch'.
In her defence, Erin's team have conceded that she has indeed 'never been diagnosed with cancer' but says this is an irrelevance.
During cross-examination, Mr Mandy sought to suggest that she didn't lie. He put it to Ian that Erin might have instead said she 'suspected' she might have the disease, rather than stating that she'd received an official diagnosis.
The pastor stuck to his guns however, saying: 'It wasn't an impression. She plainly said she had some sort of cancer. She went on to speak about the scan and that this was a serious situation, a situation that made her afraid for the future of her kids.'
Discussion of the illness was cut short by the arrival of Erin's teenage son and a friend, the court was told. At this point, the lunch party ended, with Ian rushing off to attend a 3pm meeting about the following day's service in nearby Korumburra Baptist Church, where he'd served as minister for more than two decades.
It was a service Ian Wilkinson would never get to deliver. He and Heather fell ill the following night, with vomiting and severe diarrhoea, and were taken to hospital by Simon the next morning.
During the first 24 hours, their conditions appeared to improve. But a variety of medical witnesses have explained that this was in fact a false dawn: like many victims of mushroom poisoning, they began to suffer multiple organ failure in the ensuing days. By the following weekend, Heather, 66, had died, along with Gail and Don, who were both 70. Ian was in a coma.
Listening to the evidence was clearly deeply harrowing for Ian's relatives, several of whom have been attending court every day, breaking down in tears on several occasions. At times, this reporter has felt like an intruder at a family wake.
Erin, for her part, sat virtually motionless in the dock, betraying little emotion, even as the terrible fallout from her lunch was spelled out in graphic detail.
We have seen her upset just twice in this trial so far: when police interviews with the two children she has with Simon, who are now 17 and 11, were played to the court, she dabbed her eyes with a tissue and seemed close to tears.
It is, of course, for the jury to decide whether this was the natural reaction of a woman who is traumatised at being falsely accused, or the behaviour of a murderous narcissist who is incapable of feeling proper empathy or remorse.
Elsewhere this week, further insight into Erin's state-of-mind was provided by three witnesses she'd met online. The middle-aged women had become acquainted as members of a 'true crime' Facebook group concerning Keli Lane, an Australian woman convicted of murdering her newborn child in the 1990s. Erin appears to have been an enthusiastic contributor.
Smaller private chatgroups formed during lockdown, in which the members would discuss politics, the British royals, current affairs and their personal lives, sometimes via messages and on other occasions via group video calls.
It was here that Erin seemingly began to share intimate details about the state of her marriage, repeatedly portraying estranged husband Simon to her online chums as sinister and manipulative.
As Christine Hunt, who gave evidence via video link, put it: 'He was very controlling. She used the term 'coercive' at times. And also that his family were very demanding and that she was really challenged by their demands and particularly around the kids attending a faith-based education.'
Two other witnesses, Daniela Barklay and Jenny Hay, told the court that Erin had often described herself as an atheist, saying that this was causing serious tensions with Simon's extended family.
'I feel like sometimes she felt as though he put the church before her and her family,' said Barklay.
'She being an atheist and Simon being from a very strong Baptist background, she found that very challenging, is what she shared with us,' added Hunt. 'She found that challenging and in particular the decisions around things like divorce, separation, how the kids should be educated and brought up. She found all that very controlling.'
Erin's comments to her online friends shed significant light on her attitude to her spouse in the years leading up to the lunch. And, intriguingly, they seem entirely at odds with what the court has heard about her behaviour with real-life acquaintances at the time.
During three days of evidence earlier in the case, Simon has stated that the couple, who married in 2007, remained on extremely friendly terms after separating in 2015. It wasn't until November 2022 that tensions arose after Erin found that Simon had changed his relationship status from 'married' to 'separated' on a tax return, depriving her of some financial benefits.
The months leading up to the July lunch had seen them squabble over money and school fees, though by the standards of estranged spouses, the ill-feeling seemed minor.
Daily Mail Australia is running a podcast covering all the details throughout the trial
Erin had told friends during this period that she had become fascinated with a food dehydrator she had bought from a local hardware store in late April.
This device played a crucial role in the poisoning, since death cap mushrooms do not grow in Victoria during July. Instead, it was put to the court that Erin had picked the deadly fungi in April then preserved them with the machine.
After her lunch guests fell ill, she initially denied owning the dehydrator, saying she'd got dried mushrooms from an Asian supermarket.
But after police obtained footage of her disposing of the device at a rubbish tip (and found Erin's fingerprints and traces of death cap mushroom), she confessed that the appliance had belonged to her.
The defence now accepts Erin's initial claims were untrue and says she lied because she 'panicked'.
It blames this reaction on an alleged conversation in hospital, the Monday after the lunch, in which Erin says Simon mentioned the device and asked: 'Is that what you used to poison them?'
However, giving evidence earlier this week, Simon vigorously denied making such a remark.
Whatever the truth, her Facebook friends revealed that she'd posted endless messages about the machine in their chats, with screenshots of two of Erin's posts shown to the jury. Given what would ensue, they now make for grisly reading.
'So, fun fact, the dehydrator reduces mushroom mass by 90 per cent,' read one. 'Do you think Woolies [supermarket Woolworths] would mind if I brought the dehydrator into their vegetable section and dry things before I buy them?'
Another went: 'I've been hiding powdered mushrooms in everything. Mixed it into chocolate brownies yesterday, the kids had no idea.'
Then, in an utterly chilling moment, the court was shown three photos of the dehydrator that Erin had sent to her chums. In one, dozens of sliced mushrooms could be seen, neatly laid on the trays.
In about five weeks, the jury must, of course, decide whether those images depict a harmless scene captured by an enthusiastic amateur chef, or gruesome mementos of the run-up to a carefully planned murder. Until then, this utterly compelling case continues.
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