Erin Patterson murder trial day 28 as it happened: Prosecutor suggests accused mushroom cook didn’t love her in-laws, questions her about lunch invitation to estranged husband

• Erin Patterson returned to the witness box for a fifth day to be cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC.
• Asked about evidence given by her son that her interactions with estranged husband Simon were “very negative”, Patterson described the relationship as being “strained”.
• Patterson denied telling Simon that she wanted to discuss “important medical news” when she invited him to the lunch. “That wasn’t the purpose of the lunch or the purpose of the invitation,” she told the jury.
• Rogers suggested that Patterson prepared a poisoned beef Wellington for Simon in case he turned up at the lunch. “No, that’s not true,” Patterson replied.
• Patterson said that she realised after the lunch that foraged mushrooms could have ended up in the beef Wellington, but she told no one.
• Patterson said of her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson: “They did love me and I did love them.”
• In her police interview, the court heard, Patterson told officers she invited the Pattersons and Wilkinsons to the lunch as she had no other family. “They are the only support I’ve got,” Patterson told police at the time. “Nothing [Simon’s] ever done to me will change the fact they are good, decent people.”
• “I suggest you didn’t love them”, said the prosecutor, who suggested Patterson had public and private faces when it came to her relationship with her in-laws. Patterson said this was not true.
• Patterson cried in the witness box as she explained why she invited Ian and Heather Wilkinson to the lunch. “Ian had been my pastor for years and years. I would see and speak with Ian and Heather a lot after church and I really liked them. And I wanted to have a stronger relationship with them,” Patterson said.

Read a recap of the day in full here.

Court has adjourned for today, and will resume on Tuesday due to the public holiday on Monday.

Here are some photographs taken today outside the court in Morwell by our award-winning photographer Jason South.

Here’s some of the exchange between prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, and Erin Patterson in court today, during questioning over the accused woman’s relationship with her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson:

Rogers: I suggest that you didn’t love them.

Patterson: That’s not true.

Rogers: I suggest you were angry they had taken Simon’s side.

Patterson: That’s not true.

Rogers: And that feeling towards them continued.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: In fact you had two faces, a public face, one appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail as shown to people like [family members] Simon, Anna, Tanya, Matt, Ruth, Professor [Rhonda] Stuart and police.

Patterson: Are you asking me to agree if I had two faces?

Rogers: Did you agree you had a public face of appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail?

Patterson: I had a good relationship with Don and Gail.

Rogers: I suggest your private face is the one you’ve shown in your Facebook use.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: How you truly felt about Don and Gail is how you expressed it in your Facebook messages.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: That is how you really felt about Simon Patterson, as expressed to your Facebook friends.

Patterson: Incorrect.

Rogers: And that you did not regard him as being a decent human being at its core.

Patterson: Actually, I still believe that.”

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, has now taken Erin Patterson to part of her evidence-in-chief where the accused described realising there was a possibility dried foraged mushrooms could have ended up in a container with shop-bought Asian mushrooms that she used in the beef Wellington.

Patterson agreed she had that realisation after estranged husband Simon Patterson asked her on August 1, 2023 at Monash Medical Centre if she had used the dehydrator to poison his parents.

Here is part of today’s the exchange between the prosecutor and the accused:

Rogers: You told this jury that it was some time on August 1, 2023, after this conversation where Simon had asked you, ‘Did you use a dehydrator to poison my parents?’ that you realised the foraged mushrooms could have [ended up in the meal].

Patterson: That might have been a possibility, yes.

Rogers: Surely if you had loved them you would have immediately notified the medical authorities about there being a possibility that the foraged mushrooms would have gone in a container with the Chinese mushrooms.

Patterson: Well, I didn’t.

Rogers: No, you didn’t.

Patterson: I had been told that people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning so that was already happening.

Rogers: You did not feel the need to tell any medical authorities about the possibility that the dried foraged mushrooms, on your evidence that you found, had gone into the container with the dried mushrooms [from an Asian grocer]?

Patterson: That’s right. I did not tell anybody.

Rogers: In your evidence you never once told a medical professional that foraged mushrooms were involved or might have been involved.

Patterson: Correct.

Rogers: And you never told anyone else about that matter, for example [Department of Health manager] Sally Ann Atkinson?

Patterson: Correct.

Rogers: So this realisation, I suggest, this was days before anyone had died.

Patterson: It was.

Rogers: Even after you were discharged from hospital that day you did not tell a single person that this may have been foraged mushrooms used in the meal. Instead the next day, you got up, you drove your children to school ... came home and then you got rid of the dehydrator.

Patterson: Correct.”