Court hears evidence from alleged mushroom cook: Erin Patterson trial day 24 as it happened
Erin Patterson, who is accused of murdering three relatives by serving them a beef Wellington meal that contained death cap mushrooms, is giving evidence. Follow our live updates from the trial.
3.39pm
‘Nothing but the truth’: Seated on an office chair, Erin talks about life in 2023
Erin Patterson has stepped into the witness box to start her evidence.Patterson, 50, is seated on an office chair behind a wooden box where a computer screen and jug of water can be seen.
She’s swearing an affirmation, shaking her head as she declared “nothing but the truth”.
Defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, has started by asking her about her life in July 2023.
Patterson said that in July 2023 her children had just started settling into their new school.
“They started there the second week of July. They had been there for a couple of weeks,” Patterson said.
She said the children appeared to have settled in OK and quickly made friends.
She said her son hadn’t been there long enough to gauge whether he was doing better than at his old school, but the new school appeared to be able to cater to his learning needs.
“The children lived with me full-time, and they could see [their father] Simon whenever they wanted to,” she said.
She said her daughter often spent Saturday afternoons with her father, but her son only saw him at church or the youth group.
Patterson said that at the start of 2023, she had been accepted into a bachelor of midwifery and nursing course at Federation University, but her daughter had some physical needs that required her to be close.
“We had it under control by the middle of 2023, so I was planning to take that placement at the start of 2024,” she said.
3.47pm
‘We mainly just related on logistical things’: The loss of banter in Erin and Simon’s relationship
Erin Patterson can be seen nodding along at her barrister’s questioning, speaking with her hands, and staring at her legal team as she speaks.Patterson said she was involved in the design of her home in Leongatha from the beginning.
She said she first designed it in Microsoft Paint, but was told by those designing the property that her design would never work.
“It modelled quite closely to how I wanted things,” she said.
“I saw it as the final house. Meaning, I wanted it to be a house where the children would grow up, [and] once they moved away from university and work, they would come back and stay for as long as they liked, bring their children.
“And I’d grow old there. That’s what I’d hoped.”
Patterson said that in July 2023, she was “comfortable” financially, which meant she could go to university – she had been accepted into a bachelor’s of nursing and midwifery at Federation University earlier that year but decided to defer it – without having to work a full-time job.
She said she had felt for some months that her relationship with the wider Patterson family, especially her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, had deteriorated. She said her moving to a different town may have played a part.
I’d come to have concerns that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much with the family any more; perhaps I wasn’t being invited to some things,” she said.
Patterson said her relationship with Simon had been “functional” in 2023.
“From the start of the year to July, we mainly just related on logistical things like church, the streaming, the kids, but we didn’t relate on friend things, banter, like we used to. That changed at the start of the year,” she said.
3.54pm
Weight-loss surgery and Patterson’s ‘never-ending battle’ with self-esteem
Erin Patterson is telling the jury how she felt in 2023, the year of the fatal mushroom lunch.Patterson said she had fought a “never-ending battle” of low self-esteem for most of her adult life. In July that year, she had put on weight and could handle exercise less, she said.
“I was planning to have weight-loss surgery. Is it a gastric bypass? I was planning to do that,” she said.
Patterson told the jury that she met Simon at the City of Monash, where they both worked in 2004.
“I was employed by the RSPCA, but as part of that role I was located at the City of Monash offices as an administration officer,” she said.
Patterson said that Simon worked as a traffic engineer at the time. “We had mutual friends, is how I remember it,” she said.
“We would come up against each other at lunch, after work drinks, that sort of thing.”
Patterson said that the group of friends initially mainly met for lunch at work or for after-work drinks.
Sipping water from a paper cup, Patterson said she became friends with Simon around November 2004 before they started dating in July of 2005.
4.05pm
A new boyfriend, new horizons and the religious experience that overwhelmed Erin Patterson
From the witness box, Erin Patterson has begun to tell the story of how she and Simon became a couple, and how she met his family.“In 2005,” she said, “Simon wanted to go camping every weekend ... so he had other friends that he would do that with, and I was included in that.”
Back then, she told the jury, she was an atheist. However, her attitude towards religion changed during December 2004 and into early 2005, when she had conversations with Simon about life and religion.
“I was trying to convert him into being an atheist, but things happened in reverse, and I became a Christian,” Patterson recalled.
She said it was during a trip to Korumburra that she first attended church.
“I remembered being very excited about it because I’d never been to a church service before,” she said.
Before that, Patterson had only ever been to church for a wedding – her sister’s.
She said she remembered a banner up on the wall of the church behind where Ian Wilkinson was preaching that said: “Faith, hope, and love”.
“Ian gave a sermon talking about that,” she said. “Then we had communion, which I was welcome to participate in.”
Patterson recalls having “a spiritual experience”.
“I’d been approaching religion as an intellectual exercise up until that point,” she said. “I had a religious experience there, and it quite overwhelmed me”.
4.11pm
Friendship, camping and church: The year Simon and Erin Patterson got married
Erin Patterson is still talking about the early days of her relationship with former husband Simon, back in July 2005 when they moved from friends to a couple.Back then, she said, she and Simon spent much time camping and talking until they started dating in July 2005.
Even as a couple, she said, they continued camping.
Patterson told the jury that Simon wanted to switch off from work during the weekend and camping was a part of that. Sometimes they would also attend church in Melbourne.
“We started attending a Bible study with Simon’s cousin Dave and his girlfriend and two friends of Simon’s from school,” she said, adding that the group was the best part of the following 18 months.
Patterson said they got engaged and then married in 2007. She said the first people Simon told about the engagement were his parents, Don and Gail, who were living in Korumburra at the time.
Some members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families can be seen staring at the floor and straight ahead in court, while a smaller number are watching Erin Patterson speak.
A dozen of them are here, seated across two rows of the court on the side opposite the witness box.
Erin Patterson is still seated, fiddling with her fingers as she answers questions from her barrister.
4.23pm
From country vows to the open road: Simon and Erin Patterson’s post-wedding adventures
A little later, in 2006, Patterson tells the jury, she moved to a hamlet not far from Korumburra.There, she says, Don and Gail Patterson would invite her to a meal almost monthly. Simon was living in Melbourne at the time.
In June 2007, she and Simon wed at the Korumburra Anglican Church. They invited Ian and Heather Wilkinson to the wedding and wanted them to relax as guests.
At the time, Erin said, her parents were on a train for a holiday in Russia, so Dave Wilkinson, Simon’s cousin, walked her down the aisle.
Her new in-laws, Don and Gail, hired a huge marquee and put on a buffet for the wedding guests.
Erin Patterson said her new husband lived in a unit in Clayton or Oakleigh, owned by Don and Gail Patterson, so she moved in briefly after the wedding.
The couple had a brief honeymoon in Olinda, but what they really wanted to do was drive around Australia. She said they sold everything and “hit the open road”.
Patterson told the jury they started by visiting Sydney, where Simon had a few friends.
Later, the pair travelled to Perth. She said they also went to South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia before returning to Perth at the end of the year to settle there.
“Simon was pretty keen to keep travelling, and I was pretty keen to stop for a while and put down roots,” she said.
4.32pm
The ‘traumatic birth’ of Erin and Simon Patterson’s first child
Shortly after the couple rented a home near the beach about 40 minutes south of Perth, Patterson applied to go to university and became pregnant.Their first child was born in January 2009 in a traumatic birth.
Crying, Patterson described to the jury the distressing birth of her son.
“It went for a very long time, and they tried to get him out with forceps, and he wouldn’t come out,” she recalls. “He started to go into distress, and they lost his heartbeat, so they performed an emergency cesarean.”
She said doctors were happy for the baby to be discharged to be with Simon, but wanted Patterson to stay in hospital.
“I was really upset. I said ‘I don’t want to stay here by myself,’” she told the court.
“Simon said: ‘You can just do it; let’s just leave.’”
So Patterson did – she said she discharged herself against medical advice and went home to be with her husband and baby.
4.41pm
‘I felt really out of my depth’: Having struggled after childbirth, Patterson recalls the comfort of a visit from her mother-in-law
Erin Patterson, crying, told the jury about the birth of her first child and is now describing life in Perth soon after that.Back then, the couple and their newborn were living in a small unit in the inner city, so when Simon’s parents, Gail and Don Patterson, visited shortly after the birth, they stayed in an Airbnb.
“I remember being really relieved that Gail was there, because I felt really out of my depth,” Erin said.
Gail Patterson helped her daughter-in-law settle the baby after a feed, and tried to interpret his cries with her. She was, Erin recalls, supportive, gentle and patient.
“She gave me good advice about just relaxing and enjoying it; you don’t have to stick to this timetable, this schedule, just relax and enjoy your baby,” she said.
After Don and Gail left, Erin said, they continued living in the Perth flat.
“Simon was pretty keen for us to resume the trip where we left off before we stopped to have [the baby],” she said.
In April, the couple put their belongings in a storage unit and decided to continue travelling the northern part of Australia without any time constraints, other than meeting relatives on Gibb River Road, in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.
“One of Simon’s friends also joined us, and we took a couple of weeks for the Gibb River Road,” she said.
4.45pm
‘I wanted to sleep in a real bed’: The Pattersons’ cross-country journey with a baby on board
Erin Patterson said that she, Simon and the baby continued towards Alice Springs, before heading over to Tennant Creek and the Queensland coast, eventually ending up in Cairns and Townsville around November 2009.“It had been a good holiday, but I’d had enough. I wanted to sleep in a real bed,” she said.
Patterson said it was getting harder to camp with the baby. She said they used to joke that they didn’t remember his eye colour because he slept a lot, but by November 2009, he was crawling and standing, and it was getting tricky.
“I flew back to Perth, and Simon followed with [the baby],” she said.
Patterson said it took about a week for them to get back to Perth. She said she had rented a cottage for her and the baby to live in, while Simon stayed in a caravan nearby.
Patterson said they lived separately for about three months. The separation was over at the start of 2010.
During their time in WA, Patterson said, they had a lot of visitors, including Don, Gail and other family members.
4.51pm
‘We would just feel hurt’: Patterson on the struggle of separation
Holding back tears, Erin Patterson told the jury about what came next for the young couple – parenting their son during their separations.Patterson said that despite periods of separation between 2009 and 2015 due to struggles in their relationship, it was important for them to co-operate in the care of the children.
“That was our priority,” she said.
Patterson said the conflicts in their relationship stemmed from communication issues.
“We just couldn’t communicate well when we disagreed about something,” she said.
“We would just feel hurt and not know how to resolve it.”
