Erin Patterson tells triple murder trial she discovered wild mushroom foraging during Covid lockdowns
Erin Patterson, the Australian woman accused of murdering three relatives with a poisoned beef wellington, told the court on Tuesday that she developed an interest in wild mushrooms while walking with her children during the Covid lockdowns.
Ms Patterson, 50, is charged with deliberately serving death cap mushrooms to her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and Heather’s husband Ian during a 2023 lunch at her home in the township of Leongatha in Victoria. Ian Wilkinson was the only guest to survive.
She first really noticed mushrooms growing in the Korumburra Botanic Gardens and later began identifying and testing wild mushrooms near her house. Ms Patterson said mushrooms also grew on her former property in Korumburra, where she had moved in 2017 or 2018.
Said spent months learning to identify edible species such as field and horse mushrooms, testing small amounts herself after frying them in butter.
“The first time I noticed them I remember because the dog was eating some and I picked all the mushrooms that I could see because I wanted to try to figure out what they were to see if that might be a problem for him,” she said.
“The first Covid lockdown, when you’re allowed outside for an hour a day, I would force the children to go out and get away from their devices for an hour.”
The first time she spotted wild mushrooms “would have been the end of March, early April”, she recalled.
She came to discover that it was “hard to figure out what a mushroom is, except some obvious examples”.
Ms Patterson came across Facebook groups for mushroom lovers where people shared what they found and talked about identifying them. “I scrolled a lot of them,” she said.
She, however, also admitted that mushroom identification was difficult, especially with potentially toxic types like inocybe.
Taking the stand for the second day on Tuesday, Ms Patterson told the court she always enjoyed eating mushrooms. “They taste good and are very healthy,” she said. “I’d buy all the different types that Woolies would sell.”
In addition to foraging, she frequently bought dried mushrooms from Asian grocers in the suburbs of Mount Waverley and Oakleigh, using them in curries, pasta and soups, saying they offered more flavour than fresh ones.
She eventually grew confident that the mushrooms growing in the paddocks of her three-acre Korumburra property were field and horse varieties, so she cut off a piece, fried it in butter, and ate it. “They tasted good, and I didn’t get sick,” she said. “Sometimes I would put them in meals we all ate.”
She said there was something about exotic mushrooms that tasted “more interesting” and that they had more flavour.
