Brisbane, Australia
CNN
–
Erin Patterson, a woman accused of killing three guests in a meal of death cap mushrooms, told her trial Wednesday that she may have inadvertently added foraging mushrooms to lunch because her Dusel tasted “small pale”;
On the third day of evidence on Wednesday, Patterson was filmed throughout the July 2023 event. She was accused of intentionally adding fatal death cap mushrooms to a wellington meal of beef cooked for four guests, including her in-laws, at a small town home in Leongatha in rural Victoria.
Patterson denied the three murders of her step-laws, Don Patterson and Gale Patterson, and Gale’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. She also denied trying to kill her local pastor, Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, to kill a guest for the fourth time.
Back at Patterson before lunch, defense attorney Colin Mandy SC asked where he bought the ingredients. Patterson said all the ingredients came from Woolworths, Australia’s leading supermarket.
Patterson said he found the recipe in a cookbook. For example, she said she couldn’t find a beef tenderloin log, so she bought a twin pack of individual steaks. The recipe called for mustard, but she didn’t use it and she said Don didn’t use prosciutto because he “don’t eat pork.”
On a Saturday morning for lunch, she said she fried garlic and shallots and chopped store-bought mushrooms in a food processor. She cooked the sauteed mixture, probably known as daxel, for 45 minutes, so it was dry and didn’t let the pastries get soaked, she said.
Patterson told the court that she had tasted the mixture, and because she was “a little bland” she added dried mushrooms that she had previously stored in a plastic container in the pantry.
Mandy asked what she believed was in a plastic container in the pantry: “I believed it was just a mushroom I bought in Melbourne,” Patterson said. “And now, what do you think was in that tub?” Mandy asked.
“I think now I could have had something forged there too,” she said, her voice is broken.
Patterson told the court that Ian and Heather Wilkinson had all their meals. Don finished what Gale hadn’t eaten. Patterson only ate about a quarter or a third of the beef Wellington.
After lunch they cleaned and sat down to eat the orange cake Gale had brought.
“I had a cake, then another cake, then another cake,” Patterson said. “How many cakes did you have?” Mandy asked. “Everything,” replied Patterson. She said it reached about two-thirds of the original cake.
“I was full so I went to the bathroom and got it back again,” she said. Patterson previously told the court that she had been battling bulimia for most of her life and was self-conscious about her weight.
Patterson said he felt nauseous after lunch and took diarrhea medication later that night. The next day she skipped Sunday Mass due to the same symptoms, but still had diarrhea later that day.
That night, she said, she removed pastries and mushrooms from the remaining beef Wellington and put the meat in the microwave for the kids to eat for dinner.
The next day, Monday, she thought she needed liquids so she went to the hospital. There, the doctor told her that she could have been exposed to the death cap mushroom. Patterson said she was “shocked and confused.” “I didn’t know how the mushrooms were during my meal,” she said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Patterson told the court he had never seen a website claiming to show the location of the death hat near her home.
She said she knew Death Cap Mushrooms and searched online to see if they had grown in the area. She said she realized they weren’t.
Patterson also told her trial Wednesday that she may have forged mushrooms at the Kolumbula Botanical Garden in May 2023 and chose mushrooms near the oak tree. The court previously heard that death hat trees grow near oak trees.
Patterson said he would dehydrate the mushrooms he didn’t want to use right away and store them in plastic containers in his pantry. She said at the time she also bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in Melbourne. They smelled irritating and she said she put it in a plastic container in the pantry.
Mandy asked: “Do you remember putting wild mushrooms that were dehydrated in May or June 2023 in containers already containing other dried mushrooms?”
Patterson replied: “Yes, I did that.”
Later in the proceedings, Patterson recalls a conversation with her husband, Simon, as their parents were seriously ill in the hospital. She said she said she had dehydrator-dried mushrooms. “He told me.
She told her that his comments “we’re thinking a lot about a lot.”
“It made me think about all the time I used the (dehydrator) and I was beginning to think about how I dried mushrooms a few weeks ago.
Patterson also told the court he was responsible for three factory resets on the phone. Her son did the first. She said she knows there are images of mushrooms and dehydrators in Google photos. “I just panicked and didn’t want them to see them,” she said. Asked who she was talking about, she said: “Detective.”
Patterson’s evidence continues.
