Painful deaths, tears, and kids caught in the middle: Full recap of Erin Patterson's murder trial week two
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Hunched over a laundry sink vomiting, Heather Wilkinson could not have imagined the pain that lay ahead, with details of her final days played out in court this week.
The wave of sickness came over her just hours after sharing a lunch and offering prayers for Erin Patterson, the estranged wife of her nephew Simon, after she allegedly claimed to have been diagnosed with cancer, the jury heard.
At that July 2023 lunch, the court heard Mrs Wilkinson, her husband Pastor Ian Wilkinson, her sister Gail Patterson and husband Don had consumed death cap mushrooms served in a beef Wellington at Patterson's Leongatha home.
Three of the four guests died as a result, with only Mr Wilkinson surviving the symptoms.
Patterson is facing three murder charges over their deaths and one count of attempted murder, in front of a jury of 15 people drawn from around the Gippsland region in eastern Victoria, where the trial itself is playing out.
Day after day Patterson has closely looked around the packed courtroom, filled with media, members of the public and the family of those she is accused of killing.
On Tuesday, the jury would have been able to see Patterson firm her gaze on the lone survivor of that fateful lunch.
Mr Wilkinson choked back tears as he told the court of his long and happy life with his wife Heather up until her painful death.
He told the court he led the guests at the fateful lunch as they said prayers for their host.
'I suggested that we pray and I prayed a prayer asking God's blessing on Erin, that she would get the treatment that she needed, that the kids would be okay, that she'd have wisdom in how she told the kids,' Mr Wilkinson told the court.
He and his wife had been excited by Patterson's lunch invitation, and thoroughly enjoyed the beef Wellington that would later cause them such pain, the jury heard.
Before falling ill, Heather described the meal as 'beautiful and delicious' and told friends she had enjoyed a 'lovely lunch', friend Angela Child told the court.
Heather had eaten the whole thing, as had her husband, who she playfully teased for devouring the whole plate, the jury heard.
Don liked it so much he ate much of his wife Gail's portion, the court was told.
The Wilkinsons had just retired for the night when the effects of the death cap mushrooms began to take hold.
'I don't think either of us had fallen asleep, but Heather got up abruptly out of the bed and made her way to the laundry and I could hear her vomiting,' Mr Wilkinson told the court.
In witness testimony that moved from tears to nervous laughter, Mr Wilkinson outlined the effects of the toxins in their bodies.
'I felt all right when Heather initially got up, but it wasn't very long after that that I also felt the need to go and vomit,' he said.
'It continued right through the night. We had vomiting and diarrhoea and, yes, that continued right through the night.'
Mr Wilkinson said he couldn't count how many times he and his wife had vomited that night as their bodies struggled to expel the toxins.
'I didn't go back to bed. We have two toilets in our house. I camped outside the laundry and the toilet connected to the laundry.
'Heather moved through to the bathroom, where there's also a toilet, and the most convenient location for her was in the lounge room near that bathroom,' he said.
When the long night finally ended, the couple learnt Don and Gail Patterson had experienced a similar ordeal to theirs, the court heard.
Simon Patterson told the Wilkinsons that his parents, Don and Gail, were in a very bad way and suggested they get to hospital rather than trying to treat themselves, the jury heard.
'Heather and I said, "No, it's a case of gastro, you know. In a few hours we'll be right",' Mr Wilkinson told the court.
When they were finally convinced to go, the jury heard the couple was told an ambulance wasn't available and they needed to make their own way to hospital.
'I was pretty keen to get to the hospital because I needed to find a toilet again, so I went to the toilet,' Mr Wilkinson said.
The court heard Don Patterson's condition was the worst of the four affected.
Paramedic Cindy Hyde told the court he had vomited twice before even getting into the ambulance.
'Don did vomit before we loaded into the ambulance. He had another vomit in the kitchen into a bucket so he was more symptomatic in that space,' she said.
He had also been to the toilet at least 16 times, she said.
Don's liver was going into meltdown, the jury heard, and despite ultimately undergoing a transplant, he would die.
'Don's wife was so sick that X-rays showed a transplant was not viable,' Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers told the jury.
'Medical professionals determined that Gail was no longer capable of surviving an emergency liver transplant.
'A colonoscopy performed on Heather revealed multiple areas of bowel ischemia or damage and she was too unwell to benefit from surgical intervention.
'Despite maximal treatment, Donald, Gail and Heather continued to deteriorate. After extensive discussion, medical professionals concluded that no other treatments would help and that the illnesses were unsurvivable for Donald, Gail and Heather.'
The jury heard Heather died first, followed by Gail, on August 4 - six days after the lunch.
Despite Don's condition, he held out for another day, before dying at 11.30pm from multiple organ failure secondary to altered liver function.
In opening the trial, Dr Rogers said all four guests had been poisoned by Patterson, who allegedly plated her meal on a different coloured plate to them.
'All four were each clinically diagnosed by treating doctors with amanita mushroom poisoning, caused by consuming poisonous mushrooms,' Dr Rogers told the jury.
By the end of the trial, the jury will hear expert evidence about how that toxin killed Patterson's guests.
'His evidence is, essentially, that the body's DNA is halted by these toxins, so the toxins just keep on recirculating within the body, so the person gets sicker and sicker,' Dr Rogers told the jury as the trial got underway.
Prosecutors have made no argument to the jury why Patterson is alleged to have murdered her in-laws.
'You might be wondering, now, why would the accused do this? What is the motive? You might still be wondering this at the end of this trial,' Dr Rogers told the jury.
'Motive is not something that has to be proven by the prosecution. You do not have to be satisfied what the motive was or even that there was one.
'The prosecution will not be suggesting that there was a particular motive to do what she did.
'What you will have to focus on, focus your attention on, is whether you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the accused committed the charges on the indictment, not why she may have done so.'
What the jury has heard is Patterson's relationship with her estranged husband Simon had been frosty leading into the lunch.
On Friday, the jury watched a video interview of Patterson's son, then 14, describe to police his observations of their relationship in the months before the lunch.
'It's just all very negative, dad does a lot of things to hurt mum, like mess around with school,' he said in the video.
'Mum didn't put his name on the billing for the school (dad wanted to be involved in what activities the kids did at school and receive reports etc).
'Dad wouldn't talk to mum about that, he would just call the school.'
The teenager also told police in the video played in court that during the 12 months he and his sister stayed with their mum full-time, his father was trying to get them to stay with him.
'He kept trying to get me and sister to come back (and live with him) and I didn't want to, he never did anything with us over the weekends,' he said.
The jury was also told Simon Patterson had been invited to the deadly lunch, but pulled out the night before.
'In 2022, Simon first noticed a sustained change in his relationship with the accused,' Dr Rogers told the court.
'On one occasion when Simon was dropping the children home, the accused expressed concern to Simon over the fact that he'd listed himself as "separated" on his tax return.
'Simon offered to amend his tax return but the accused said instead that she would need to seek child support from him.
'He was accepting of that. However, their communication from that point started to decline. Issues arose concerning the payment of child support, including whether Simon should make additional payments outside of child support for expenses such as school fees.'
Simon was the first witness to give evidence in the trial, taking an affirmation to tell the whole truth about what had transpired leading up to the lunch.
The jury was shown numerous text message exchanges between the couple, who had separated years earlier.
As tension increased between the couple, the jury heard Patterson had gone to Simon's parents asking for help.
In a message from Simon to Patterson, he confronted her about that meeting.
'Mum and dad told me you asked them over,' he wrote.
'I understand there are two main issues. 1: How (our son) is going. 2: Finances for our kids.'
Simon suggested getting in a mediator to help the couple communicate better, the jury heard.
He told the court Patterson had become 'extremely aggressive'.
'Erin's and my communication about it wasn't working. From my point of view Erin was being extremely aggressive, so I thought a mediator would help us communicate about it,' he said.
In offering a brief defence, Patterson's barrister Colin Mandy, SC suggested his client had no reason at all to murder her in-laws.
'I am not permitted to argue with what the prosecutor has outlined to you because this isn't the time for argument ... the law is we can't have an argument now,' he told the jury.
Mr Mandy said many of the facts of the case are not disputed.
'That four people became very sick because of the lunch that they ate at Erin Patterson's house is not an issue in this case,' he told the jury.
'And it seems that the reason for the illnesses, the cause of those illnesses, was death cap mushrooms.
'That is not an issue in this trial and that means that Erin Patterson does not dispute that the medical testing, the scientific testing, shows that it was death cap mushrooms that caused these tragic deaths.'
What is in dispute was Patterson's 'intentions', Mr Mandy said.
'The defence case is that Erin Patterson did not deliberately serve poisoned food to her guests at that lunch on 29 July 2023.
'She didn't do it deliberately, she didn't do it intentionally. The defence case is that she didn't intend to cause anyone any harm on that day.
'The defence case is that what happened was a tragedy and a terrible accident.'
Mr Mandy described his client as 'a devoted mother' and was 'caring and kind and attentive to her children'.
'She was comfortable financially. She was kind to the wider Patterson family, including being generous with her money,' he said.
He told the jury Patterson had not pretended to be sick after the lunch.
'The defence case is that 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,' Mr Mandy said.
'And the defence case is that she was unwell because she'd eaten some of the meal.'
On Wednesday, the jury heard from a series of medical witnesses who treated Patterson two days after the lunch.
Doctor Chris Webster told the court she had turned up at the local hospital complaining about gastro-like symptoms.
Dr Webster said he quickly identified Patterson as the chef of the lunch that had crippled four others.
'I asked her where she got the mushrooms and she said, "Woolworths",' he said.
The doctor later said he became aware Erin had left hospital, the jury heard.
'Erin had discharged herself against advice,' he said.
'I was surprised, well, I had just informed [her] she had just been exposed to a deadly death cap mushroom and I thought hospital would be a better place to be.'
Patterson was in and out of the hospital in just five minutes, telling staff she was not prepared to be admitted and needed to check on her children and animals.
The jury was shown CCTV of Patterson discharging herself against medical advice.
Dressed in a red top and white pants, Patterson was seen pressing the door button and attempting to leave before signing a declaration saying she was discharging herself against medical advice.
On-call doctor Veronica Foote was seen touching Patterson's arm as she tried to convince her not to leave.
The jury heard Dr Webster phoned Patterson three times asking her to come back, threatening to call the police if she didn't, which he later did.
Those police officers would later retrieve what was left of the lunch from Patterson's bin, the court heard.
When Patterson eventually returned 45 minutes later, she revealed her kids had also eaten some of the lunch leftovers, the jury was told.
'I stressed the importance of getting them to hospital,' Dr Webster said.
‘Erin was reluctant to inform the children and I said it was important, she was concerned they were going to be frightened.
'I said, "They can be scared and alive, or dead".'
The jury heard Dr Foote conducted an examination on Erin and every key food poison indicator and health test was in the 'normal range'.
That was except for Patterson's heart rate which 'settled over time', the jury was told.
'Stress and anxiety can make your heart rate go up,' Dr Foote told the court.
On Thursday, the jury watched Patterson's daughter, then 9, give evidence via a pre-recorded video interview taken just weeks after the lunch.
The young girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said her mother had been sick the day following the lunch.
'She just needed to go to the toilet a lot and felt sick in the guts,' she said in the video played in court.
'She said that she had diarrhoea and her tummy was sore.'
The daughter said her mother went to the toilet 'about ten times'.
The video showed her say that the next day, they played Monopoly and ate mashed potatoes, steak and beans for dinner but did not have gravy.
In the video played to the court, the police officer also asked Patterson's daughter about the plates they had at home.
'They're just round plates,' she said.
'There's a black and green one, some white ones.'
The daughter said in the video that her mother had 'the same as us' for dinner that night but Patterson 'wasn’t that hungry, so didn't eat that much' due to feeling unwell.
She said her mother continued to go to the toilet then the daughter said she herself went to bed after dinner.
Her brother too remembered their mother complaining about being sick the day after the lunch.
She continued to complain about being ill for most of the day.
‘She said she was feeling a little dizzy at that point and she had diarrhoea,' the boy said.
Earlier, Leongatha Hospital nurse Cindy Munro told the court Patterson didn't look overly sick to her when she presented back there the second time.
'She didn’t look unwell like Heather and Ian. Ian was so unwell he could barely lift his head off the pillow,' she told the jury.
'Erin was sitting up in the trolley and she didn't look unwell to me.'
On Wednesday, Don's other son, Matthew Patterson, told the jury he had called Patterson on direction from toxicology doctors at Dandenong Hospital to ask her where she had sourced the mushrooms.
Patterson also told him they had come from the local Woolworths and a Chinese grocer, the jury heard.
'The defence case is that she panicked because she was overwhelmed by the fact that these four people had become so ill because of the food that she'd served to them,' Mr Mandy said in opening the case.
'Three people died because of the food that Erin Patterson served that day.
'It is not an issue that very early on there was intense public health scrutiny, police scrutiny, media scrutiny.
'So when you're considering that evidence, the evidence of her behaviour after the lunch, you'll need to think about these questions.'
Throughout the course of the week, Patterson has come face-to-face with the children of the people she is accused of murdering.
The daughters of the couples each wept when they described the last moments of their parents' lives.
When the jury eventually retires to consider its verdict, the members will again be told to put any emotion or sympathy they have out of their minds.
'Keep an open mind. No prejudice or sympathy, please, towards either the accused or any of the prosecution witnesses or indeed any of the four lunch guests,' Dr Rogers told the jury at the trial's opening.
'Your role is to be impartial and to make a decision at the end on the evidence that you have heard and seen in this trial.'
The trial will continue on Tuesday.
