3.42pm
‘Disagree’: Beef Wellington guests not told about cancer diagnosis, court told
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Erin Patterson has denied telling her lunch guests on July 29, 2023, that she had a cancer diagnosis.
The jury is being shown a message sent by Patterson to her mother-in-law, Gail Patterson, on July 7, 2023, that read:
The court heard that nine days after that, the accused mother-of-two invited Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson to her home in Leongatha for lunch.
Asked by senior Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers about why she suggested they might talk more about it in person, Patterson responded she hadn’t decided to have lunch on July 29, 2023, at that point.
3.51pm
Language surrounding cancer talk at lunch scrutinised
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Resuming her cross-examination, senior Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers pressed Erin Patterson on the details of what she communicated to her lunch guests about her health.
Rogers referred Patterson to part of her evidence yesterday, where she said she had misled her lunch guests to believe that she might need medical treatment after disclosing she had experienced health issues that led her to believe she had ovarian cancer.
“I can’t remember the exact words I used, as to whether I said I had or I might need to ... but I was trying to communicate that there might be some treatment coming up, but I really can’t give you any precision about the words I used,” Patterson said.
Patterson agreed that she had wanted her lunch guests to believe that she would be needing treatment for cancer. However, she disagreed that she had told the group that she had a cancer diagnosis.
It was rare for Erin Patterson to host guests; having four people over for a meal was not an ordinary, casual event for the mother of two.
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