'This family, swear to f--king god': what we learned from Erin Patterson

Ms Patterson was questioned by her lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, at Latrobe Valley Court in Morwell, Gippsland, as the murder trial entered its sixth week.

She is facing three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder after hosting a fatal beef Wellington lunch for her parents-in-law and her husbands's aunt and uncle in July 2023.

Don and Gail Patterson, her estranged husband Simon Patterson's parents, both died in the days after the lunch from death cap mushroom poisoning.

Heather Wilkinson, Simon's aunt, also died from death cap mushrooms while her husband, Ian Wilkinson, survived.

Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has always maintained her innocence.

Ms Patterson started dating Simon in July 2005 after meeting through mutual friends at Monash City Council in 2004.

They were engaged in early 2007, and Ms Patterson said her in-laws, Don and Gail, were the first to know.

The couple were married at Korumburra Anglican Church in June 2007, with Ian and Heather Wilkinson's son walking Ms Patterson down the aisle while her parents were holidaying in Russia.

She said they chose to hold the wedding at the Anglican church rather than Mr Wilkinson's Korumburra Baptist Church so that the aunt and uncle could "relax as guests rather than having jobs for the day".

It wasn't long before the newlyweds set off on an adventure around Australia and Africa, using money that Ms Patterson received as an inheritance from her late grandmother's estate.

The pair bought a Nissan Patrol and "just hit the open road", she told the court.

They "meandered" through outback Australia before reaching Perth in September 2007. The couple then flew to Africa, visiting South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

The Pattersons returned to Perth and settled down to start a family, but Simon was keen to continue the road trip shortly after their first child was born.

This trip, along Western Australia's Gibb River Road towards Queensland, would end in their first period of separation.

Ms Patterson said she left her husband and their baby in Queensland and flew back to Perth, while Simon drove back to Western Australia over the course of a week.

They remained separated for "two or three months" but reconciled by January 2010, she told the court.

The 50-year-old said that Don and Gail Patterson had emotionally supported her through many difficult moments in her life.

She told the court that her in-laws had come to Perth to visit the couple shortly after the birth of their first child in January 2009.

"I remember being really relieved that Gail was there, I was out of my depth with the baby and she was supportive and gentle," Ms Patterson said.

But the relationship became more complex as Ms Patterson and her husband permanently separated, with the in-laws occasionally acting as mediators in their disputes.

But Ms Patterson said Don and Gail "never changed" towards her.

"They just continued to love me," she said.

Ms Patterson said she had felt "left out" of family celebrations when she wasn't invited to Gail Patterson's 70^th birthday lunch in 2022.

Don Patterson later called and invited her, apologising for the oversight, she said.

Ms Patterson and Simon ultimately could not make the relationship work, but attempted to remain civil for the children's benefit.

"I didn't want to be separated, but I felt there was no choice," Ms Patteron told the court.

"Our primary problem was, if we had a disagreement or any kind of conflict, we didn't seem to be able to talk about it in a way where either or us felt heard or understood," she said.

"We just felt hurt, and we didn't really know how to do that well."

Ms Patterson said the topic of child support first arose in October 2022 as she was preparing her tax return paperwork.

She learnt that Simon had listed himself as single on his tax return but had not given her sufficient warning about the change to their relationship status to submit family tax benefit paperwork.

Disputes over child support payments "increased in heat" from then onwards, she said.

Ms Patterson said she was "hurt" when Simon said he would not contribute to their child's surgery and anesthesiology bills after he had been "explicitly instructed" not to by the Department of Human Services.

While Ms Patterson butted heads with her estranged husband over child support payments, she said she would vent to her friends in a social media group chat.

She said the group was a "cheer squad" while she was going through relationship issues.

Don and Gail had attempted to mediate child support disputes between the couple but had ultimately suggested that they pray together.

This suggestion prompted Ms Patterson to post a message to the group chat saying, "This family, I swear to f--king god".

But she told the court that she "regrets" sending the message.

"I was really frustrated with Simon, but it wasn't Don and Gail's fault, it wasn't the family's fault, it wasn't even entirely Simon's fault - I played a part too," she said.

Ms Patterson identified as an atheist when she met Simon, but converted to the church after having a "spiritual experience" at Mr Wilkinson's Korumburra church.

She told the court that she remains a Christian.

The court was told that Ms Patterson briefly owned a second-hand bookshop in Pemberton in Western Australia in 2011.

"I spent months travelling around south-west and Western Australia collecting books to sell there," she said.

She said she collected books at fairs, libraries and estate sales "for quite a while" before buying 30 to 35 bookshelves from Ikea.

Ms Patterson told the court that she had been accepted into nursing school at the start of 2023 but had decided to defer for a year, to start in 2024.

She wanted to ensure she had enough time to care for her two children before starting the Bachelor of Nursing and Midwifery at Federation University.

But money wasn't an issue. She said she was "comfortable financially" and could afford to go to university and without having a full-time job "at the same time".

Ms Patterson told the court that she struggled with binge eating and purging throughout her adult life, and said she had "never had a healthy relationship with food".

"I tried every diet under the sun," she said.

She said the battle with self-esteem and disordered eating started as a child when she was regularly weighed by her mother.

She told the court that she had secretly binged and purged around two to three times per week in the lead up to the fatal lunch and had planned to undergo gastric bypass surgery.

"I've been [binging and purging] since my 20s... It could be daily, but also weekly or monthly. It varied in intensity."

She said nobody knew about it, but that "everybody knows now".

Ms Patterson detailed a number of interactions she had with medical professionals that, she said, caused her to "lose faith" in the medical system.

She told the court that she and Simon had discharged themselves from the hospital when their first child was born in Perth, after a traumatic birth involving an emergency Caesarean section.

She explained that her two children had struggled to receive medical attention for health issues later in life.

Ms Patterson told the court that she had presented for medical care with her daughter a number of times after an ovarian growth was discovered.

She also said her son had developed knock knees, but that she struggled to get attention from medical professionals.

She admitted that she had never been diagnosed with cancer, but that she had a suspicion she was unwell after experiencing "a multitude of symptoms".

"I'd been having, for a few months, a multitude of symptoms. I felt very fatigued, I had ongoing abdominal pain, chronic headaches, and I put on a lot of weight in a short period of time," she told the court.

"What sent me over the edge to go to the doctor was that my wedding ring wouldn't fit, so I got it resized, and then my hand outgrew it again," she said.

She told the court that she had believed she may have an autoimmune disease, such as lupus or multiple sclerosis, after referring to "doctor Google".

"I think I wasted a lot of time, not just my time, but medical people's time through all my doctor Googling," she said.

"It's hard to justify it, but with the benefit of hindsight, I lost so much faith in [medicine and medical professionals].

"But every headache is not a brain tumour," she said.

Mr Mandy asked Ms Patterson about the beef Wellington lunch that killed her in-laws on July 29.

"Do you accept that there must have been death cap mushrooms in it?" the barrister said.

"Yes, I do," Ms Patterson said.

She told the court the vast majority of mushrooms for the dish "came from the local Woolworths in Leongatha, and there were some from the grocer in Melbourne".

She said the mushrooms bought at the Asian grocer in Melbourne "smelled pungent" and she stored them in a Tupperware container.

Ms Patterson told the court that she had bought a dehydrator to experiment with dried mushrooms.

She foraged for mushrooms at the Korumburra Botanic Gardens, a nearby rail trail and her property, and would bring her kids on foraging trips to get them out of the house during COVID-19 lockdowns.

She also experimented with dehydrating button mushrooms bought at the local supermarket.

Ms Patterson's testimony will continue on June 4.

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