Erin Patterson allegedly spent time in an area with death cap mushrooms growing in it before the fatal lunch.
Erin Patterson allegedly spent time in an area with death cap mushrooms growing in it before the fatal lunch.
Erin Patterson allegedly visited an area near her home one day after a retired pharmacist found death cap mushrooms there, a triple-murder trial has been told.
Erin Patterson allegedly spent time in an area identified to have death cap mushrooms growing in it, more than three months before three people fatally ingested the poisonous ingredient while eating lunch at her home, a jury has been told.
The poisonous mushrooms were located 28km from Patterson’s home by a retired pharmacist, who shared the finding online, the triple murder trial in Australia was told on Monday.
Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of three of her husband’s relatives and attempting to murder a fourth in the country Victorian town of Leongatha.
Prosecutors allege the mother-of-two deliberately spiked a lunch at her home on July 29, 2023, with death cap mushrooms, while her defence has argued that it was an unintentional tragic accident.
On Monday, retired pharmacist and former Victorian Poisons Information Centre specialist Christine McKenzie gave evidence that she located death cap mushrooms near the township of Loch, about 28km northwest of Leongatha, on April 18, 2023.
Prosecutors allege Patterson’s phone records indicate she “travelled to and remained in the Loch area at around 10am” on April 28, before returning to Leongatha.
Also on May 22, it’s alleged her records indicate she again visited Loch and Outtrim, where the jury was told a sighting of death caps was posted on iNaturalist a day earlier.
Erin Patterson and her estranged husband Simon Patterson. Photo / NewsWire
McKenzie told the jury she was visiting her daughter and posted the sighting on iNaturalist, a citizen science website used to record species, under the name “Chrismck”.
“We’d been for a walk … my husband and I took our grandson for a walk with the dog,” she said.
She told the court that she observed death cap mushrooms under oak trees at the Loch Recreation Reserve and removed the sporing bodies.
“Initially, the ones I saw first were under a single oak tree,” McKenzie said.
“We had a dog poo bag with us, so I removed all the death cap mushrooms I could find.”
Asked by prosecutor Jane Warren if there was a “risk” the mushrooms could regrow, McKenzie replied “absolutely”.
“More could come up over the subsequent days, weeks,” she said.
Quizzed on if she saw any regrowth, she said she was only visiting Loch for the day.
Under cross-examination by Patterson’s barrister Sophie Stafford, McKenzie agreed she regularly looked out for death cap mushrooms when walking at the reserve.
“I often suspected there would be death cap mushrooms under the oak tree,” she said.
McKenzie told the jury that she worked for the Victorian Poisons Information Centre for 17 years and developed an algorithm to decide what calls about mushrooms should be escalated to a mycologist to be identified.
“We couldn’t ask every single call about fungi to be identified, there could be hundreds,” she said.
She told the court that she developed a special interest in fungi and undertook further study.
“I became fascinated about how few fungi had been identified in Australia and I find them just personally beautiful,” she said.
Don and Gail Patterson died within a day of each other in early August 2023. Photo / NewsWire
Digital Forensic Sciences Australia’s Dr Matthew Sorrell, an expert in telecommunications systems, told the jury he’d given evidence in more than 400 criminal cases.
Sorrell began giving the jury an overview of how telco company records can track mobile phones through their mobile data usage and connection to cell towers.
“In country areas, there are typically 1-2 base stations that cover a local town,” he said.
“There will also be base stations designed to provide wide area coverage.”
He said mobile phone service will operate through “greediness”, with a phone flicking to different cell towers depending on which provides a better service.
Jurors in the trial were shown a map that depicts cell towers in the Gippsland area at Korumburra, Loch South, Arawata, Kardella and Holmes Hill.
Prosecutors allege Patterson intended to kill the lunch guests attending her home after inviting them with the “false claim” of discussing a cancer diagnosis.
“It is the prosecution case that the accused deliberately poisoned, with murderous intent, each … after inviting them for lunch on the pretence that she’d been diagnosed with cancer and needed advice about how to break it to the children,” Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, said at the start of the trial.
Her husband Simon Patterson’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, died in hospital in the weeks after the gathering.
Wilkinson’s husband, Korumburra Baptist Church pastor Ian Wilkinson, fell gravely ill but recovered.
Defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, told the jury that Patterson did not dispute that the four lunch guests consumed deadly death cap mushrooms at her Leongatha home.
