Australia’s mushroom killer trial

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1:11And a bit like with this story, mine involved a lot of family drama. In my case, it was a story about a murder inside my wife's family. Somebody in my wife's family murdered somebody else in my wife's family. So when I heard this story about the Australian woman who poisoned her in-laws, I was kind of hooked. The thing is, you never know what's going on inside a family unless you're a member of it. But when the doors are blown open, and all of a sudden all these intimate details are suddenly out there in public, it's hard not to be fascinated on the one hand, and on the other hand, a bit ashamed of yourself that you're poking your nose into it all.

1:56For the murder of Heather Wilkinson, I sentence you to life in prison. For the murder of Gail Patterson, I sentence you to life in prison. To recap, in Australia's so-called trial of the century, Erin Patterson, the mushroom murderer, was sentenced last month to 33 years in prison for killing three relatives. Today, the triple killer appeared via video link confirming she plans to appeal her conviction. But it turns out that isn't the end of the story. Because this week, we've learned that there'll be not one, but two appeals in the case. Patterson wants her conviction overturned. Prosecutors are appealing for more jail time.

2:38Prosecutors say that her 33-year sentence is too short. So there could be a second trial on the way. And that would only fuel the voracious appetite for content around this case. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman. And today on The Global Story, how a seemingly ordinary middle-aged woman became a triple murderer and the focus of a true crime industry that won't stop growing.

3:09Hi Katie. Hiya. Thanks for joining us all the way from Australia. Nice to talk about mushrooms again. Katie, how much of your time the last few months has been spent thinking about mushrooms? Ah, gosh. I mean, it's been pretty much most of this year. Katie Watson is the Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Island correspondent for the BBC. The trial started, what, at the end of April. It was a long trial, in fact, so long that I had to even take a holiday in between. And recently, her life has been all about mushrooms, the bad kind. I knew this would be probably the biggest story I would be doing, certainly this year.

3:51If not, let's see for the entire time as Australia correspondent. I'm wondering if we could go right back to the beginning, to the actual day of the poisoning, which was July the 29th, 2023. And if we could start from there, tell us what happened that day. so Erin Patterson who lives in rural Victoria she invited her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson as well as Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian Wilkinson so there were four guests that she invited round to her house she said she wanted to talk to her family about some medical issues she also invited her estranged husband Simon Patterson so the son of Don and Gail and So she invited her estranged husband, the estranged husband's parents, and also his aunt and uncle.

4:45Is that right? That's right. Exactly. But her estranged husband, Simon Passon, decided not to come at the last minute. He initially said yes, and then he sent her a message saying that he felt uncomfortable going, that he could talk about her health issues at any point. and she wrote saying she was disappointed by that. She had spent a lot of time and money preparing a beef wellington and that she hoped that he'd reconsider. Could you give a little bit of context and explain to us what the relationship was like at this point between Erin and her husband? Yeah, so Erin and Simon Patterson were separated and in the trial Simon Patterson explained that they did have a good relationship because of their children, had two children but just before the lunch in the months before it had come under strain because of some financial issues he had put down that he was single on a tax return that had implications for child support and she was miffed by that um and he didn't do anything deliberate he says it was just something that his tax advisor advised him on but that caused problems and so it was, I don't think you could say it was acrimonious, there was definitely a bit more tension than there had been in the past.

6:12Okay, I mean given that this is a family that's obviously going through some ructions, what was the premise for inviting them all at this moment for this lunch? Erin Patterson said she wanted to talk about some health issues. Now, in the trial, Ian Wilkinson said that she had mentioned a cancer. She denies that she had told them that she had a cancer. But certainly during the trial, what was understood was that she led them to believe that she had a serious illness. And that's why she wanted to talk to them and to try and understand how she should tell the children, because she had sent her children to the cinema that day.

6:50They weren't actually present at that lunch. So can you walk us through what actually happens once this family assembles in the house for lunch, please? Yeah, so they drove to Erin Patterson's for about 12.30 and she just moved into a house that she called her forever home, that she had built herself. It's a nice, like, wooden... As in built with her own hands? No, she had designed and it had been built, but she had designed the house. I think that came out in the trial. I think she designed it on Microsoft Paint, actually. That's a good detail. And she was really pleased with it. They hadn't been to it.

7:33She had just done the garden. She even had a walk-in pantry. And that came up in the trial. There was a lot of discussion about the pantry, apparently. Why? It was big. So Gail, Patterson and Heather Wilkinson were quite, I think they were quite envious of. They thought it was really nice. But that in the trial, what also came up was Erin Patterson kind of resistance to them going in that she felt a bit awkward and Ian Wilkinson couldn't really work out why. Was she known particularly as a cook, somebody you like to entertain? No. So they'd never been invited. And Simon Patterson said that it wasn't that she entertained that much.

8:09And in fact, during the trial, I think a lot of people couldn't quite understand. She did a beef wellington, which is quite a complicated dish for somebody who doesn't cook very much. But not only that, she did individual beef wellingtons and she did six. Could you explain to us, Katie, what a beef wellington is, please, for those who are not familiar? Yeah, so a typical beef wellington would be a large piece of beef, a long piece of beef wrapped in pastry. But there's chopped up mushrooms on the top under the pastry. But yeah, I don't I don't want to get bogged down in this, but I would like to know, are mushrooms integral to a beef wellington?

8:45Or is that an optional twist? Well, I mean, if you're a Beef Wellington purist, probably yes. I think that's kind of what makes it, is it not? In this case, unfortunately, yes. Well, absolutely, yes.

8:59So they're all sitting round the table. What happens at the meal itself? Well, so when Erin Patterson was preparing, it was either Gail or Heather, I think, offered to help plate up. and she said, no, it's fine, I can do it. And they sat down and at that point, people didn't suspect anything. In fact, some of the feedback was that it was actually really delicious and I think Don Patterson had two portions, or certainly finished off perhaps Gail's.

9:36Can you just walk us through what actually happens after the lunch? so all four guests go home and then they start feeling poorly don and gail patterson were both ill simon patterson her estranged husband erin's estranged husband got wind of this was checking on his parents called his aunt and uncle to check how they were and they were ill and encouraged them to go to hospital. So all four of them went to hospital. What are their actual symptoms? What are they exhibiting in terms of symptoms at this stage? So vomiting, diarrhoea, yeah, extreme vomiting at this point. Gaunt and grey, I think, was the wording that was used in court.

10:27So they were in hospital. The doctors, of course, were talking.

10:34Now, what we didn't know at the trial, but we now know, was that in connection with her estranged husband, Simon Patterson had been concerned that she had perhaps tried to poison him in the past. In fact, he did. He even went to the doctor several occasions over the year or two running up to this lunch that he then had become quite ill. In fact, he'd even been hospitalized and nearly died. So he was told by the doctor to write down to see whether there was a correlation between having gone to Aaron Patterson's and being ill. But only when he saw what's happening to his parents and his aunt and uncle did he then think, oh my goodness, this might have happened.

11:17But then when his relatives were in hospital, his GP spoke to the hospital and I think all the dots were connected and one of the doctors clocked very early on that this was possibly what happened and the person responsible was Erin Patterson. OK, so at this point, the doctors know that they have to look out for possible signs of poisoning. Where is Erin at this moment in time? Well, so she feigned a bit of gastro and said she'd felt a bit off, went to hospital, but of course the doctors were thinking, you know, you might be also falling ill, like, what happened? What did you eat? initially it was all a bit of a goodness, what on earth has been going on and then they said, did you give your children anything?

12:06And she said, I gave them leftovers of course then alarm bells rang because they were like, well your children could be affected and they need to come in and she actually checked herself out against medical wishes and then at that point there were doctors kind of trying to find where she was because they couldn't understand why on earth she would be walking out of hospital And at that point, one of the doctors called the police to try and find her.

12:42And in court, she said she'd had to go back and sort some things out for her children. But their point was, what is more important than making sure that you and your children are alive? So there were five people that ate a meal on Saturday and two of them were in contention. And obviously at this point her relatives were becoming very ill. I mean, we're talking within less than a week, three of them had died. So it went downhill very quickly. I mean, it's a terrible, terrible death. That's something that the judge had made very clear, that it's a slow and painful death, dying by death cat mushroom poisoning.

13:24What are the doctors thinking at this point? I mean, it sounds like they suspect poisoning, but what are they able to do? Well, so one of the doctors said that he asked her, where did you get the mushrooms? And she said, I got them from Woolworths, which is a local supermarket chain, and an Asian grocer's in Melbourne. And he has since said, at that point, I knew she'd done it. Because this doctor knew that these were death cat mushrooms in particular or just that it was so unlikely that any poisonous mushrooms would be in a supermarket? I mean, I think the latter, right? Because the thing is, these are mushrooms that would have been foraged.

14:06She denied that she'd ever foraged initially. So what happened was, was that the police then went on a chase around all of these grocers in this particular area that she mentioned because she couldn't remember which grocers she had gone to. We're talking like in the week, the week after lunch. I mean, she told a lot of lies. What do investigators turn up when they then start looking into her? So they looked at her phone, looked through her house. They found a manual for a dehydrator. And they asked her, do you own a dehydrator? So a dehydrator, again, this is something I didn't really know about.

14:47So mushrooms don't have a long shelf life. But if you dried them out, then you've got dried mushrooms for as long as you fancy. And they asked whether she'd owned a dehydrator. She said no. And she's got lots of manuals just because she's got lots of manuals. But what then came out was that there was some CCTV capturing her, dumping the dehydrator at local tip as her relatives lay dying in hospital. So she got rid of evidence instead of admitting that she did own a dehydrator. so what is assumed is that she went on to a site an art called iNaturalist which is like a system science website where people who love nature and different you know interesting species post up where they saw it you know and they often put a location there was one sighting in a place called lock, which is not far from where she lives.

15:43And it was a woman who used to work at, I think, the poisons department at Victoria. Then there was another sighting from a mycologist, so a mushroom expert, who had been with some friends in rural Victoria, not far from any of these places that I'm mentioning. And he had spotted some death cut mushrooms. Now, Erin Patterson's phone, within a significant period of time connected to the antennas, the masts around this area. So the implication being was that she basically went after those two sightings of death cat mushrooms. So she probably went to get them, sliced them up, dried them and stored them, possibly in the pantry, which is why she wasn't particularly happy about people going to the pantry.

16:31We will not know. We've come back to the pantry again. And we actually know that she dehydrated mushrooms because she was on a couple of true crime Facebook groups. And in the trial, we saw pictures that she sent to her Facebook group of the dehydrator with mushrooms on it. Yes. I mean, one of the things that I struggle, as you tell me this story, to compute is the disparity between, on the one hand, somebody who is very into true crime, you mentioned, and has apparently thought this through in some detail and yet, on the other hand, has not thought about the phone tower location data, which is anyone who knows true crime knows that that's the thing that triangulates your position.

17:19Yeah, I mean, you talk about not thinking through the mast. I would say that was the less obvious one. I mean, inviting four people to lunch and feeding them mushrooms is going to implicate her pretty quickly.

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18:46So I just want to understand, at what point do the press latch onto this story? Very quickly. It's a tragedy what's happened. Can you tell us about the meal that you cooked? So there was an interview she did in the days afterwards where she's standing at her car porch. Can you tell us a bit more about the lunch? What I can tell you is that I just can't fathom what has happened. I just can't fathom what has happened. And one of the reporters even says. Police say you're a suspect. Do you have anything to say about that? Yes, I say I didn't do anything. I love them. And she cries. And it's a weird cry.

19:33It doesn't look massively convincing. I think, you know, at that point people were wondering. But, I mean, it took until November for her to be arrested. For good evening, the world's eyes are about to turn to the Latrobe Valley town of Morwell as accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson's murder trial begins. The trial actually took place in a town called Morwell, which is a small town, an industrial town that feels pretty forgotten. It was the Beef Wellington Lodge that's become an international obsession. There's a big crowd in this one sleepy town. The circus, the Mushroom Circus has come to town.

20:12It's a town that was overrun by journalists. Documentary makers, podcasters, even novelists have joined journalists from across the country and the world. Obviously, every single Australian outlet covered it. We were there, BBC, a couple of British papers came. There were news agencies. A lot of journalists actually just relocated for the trial. Accommodation here and also in neighbouring towns is pretty much booked up for the next couple of weeks as this case gets underway. So, you know, there were two coffee shops that every single journalist would go to before heading into court every day. How many extra coffees are you getting ready to go?

21:04Don't. Don't ask, right? I can't even count. Can't give up.

21:11It was quite a small court. It's not usually that you get such a big case in Morwell. So there were only spaces for about, I think, eight journalists every day, and there was a ballot. And then there was an overflow room. And so the rest of the journalists sat there. There are, I think, at least five podcasts here in Australia. And they started very early on. There were at least three, I think, that were daily. I've never had people so interested in this case. Or any story I've done, this has got the most interest. I mean, I want to understand what actually happened in the trial from beginning to end.

21:46You know, what was the story that unfolded in front of you? Yeah. So, I mean, Erin Patterson sat in the dock all throughout. So she was there flanked by two officers every day. Everyone was like, is Erin Patterson going to be giving evidence? And, you know, I was talking to lots of lawyers. Most people said, oh, no, that's never recommended. Like you would never put yourself through giving evidence because the only way it can go is badly. But then I spoke to one lawyer here in New South Wales, just a chat who said, nowadays, people expect it because of the American system of people of seeing so much televised.

22:21If you don't speak, then you look more guilty. So anyway, this is all kind of us talking kind of will she, won't she? And she did. I thought Erin Patterson's lawyer was excellent at just sowing that seed of doubt. You'd hear the prosecution and then you'd think, gosh, she's clearly, like, surely she's not going to get off. Like, there's so much evidence against her. And then you'd hear her barrister and you'd think, gosh, that's true. Like, gosh, yeah, maybe she didn't. You know, like, that's exactly what the jury's doing, right? They're going through all of this material thinking, gosh, did she do this?

22:55Did she do that? She didn't show that much emotion. When she was accused of, not loving her family. She did break a little bit, but she almost came across quite rude. In what way? Just almost a little bit fed up with all the prosecution quizzing her. But being shirty on the stand doesn't really endear you to a jury, I guess. So what is her defence? What's the story that she tells about what actually happened? So their line was, it was just a really terrible accident. She did not mean to do it. Her defence did find evidence of her foraging and he basically said that she lied, yes, consistently, but those were the actions of a woman who was scared.

23:39Scared that she realised that she was responsible for the deaths of her relatives and panicked. And I asked the jury to consider what would you do if you realised that you were responsible for the deaths of people that you loved. It's not, you know, impossible to think that you also might panic too. And what are the prosecutions saying is her motive here? So they said at the beginning that there didn't need to be a motive to convict her of murder. And that, I think, is the biggest question mark and probably why there's been so much intrigue about this case. And actually, what's interesting is because what came out in court was how she felt that Simon Patterson was a bit controlling, that he gaslit her.

24:18She was pretty critical of him. I think she called him deadbeat at one point. You know, you're trying to understand what kind of relationship they have. Was it something that she could walk away from? I think that was the biggest intrigue because it's probably a family that many people can relate to. Like, of course, everybody has their family troubles. But at the same time, there was no clear motive as to why she would have done what she did. Well, I guess I'm just curious the fact that, you know, she comes from an ecosystem of true crime and yet herself has turned into true crime fodder. I just wonder what you make of that.

24:55I mean, I wonder whether she's sat there thinking, goodness, I was so interested in these issues and now I'm the subject of it. But you know what? There's a real kind of story to that, whether Erin Patterson aimed to do that, I don't know. You wonder, she certainly made a name in the most terrible of circumstances. I guess the difficulty in true crime, as always, is when people obsess about the murderer, they almost always forget about the victims and who they are. What can you tell us about the victims in this case? So Ian Wilkinson was the only survivor. He said outside court after the sentencing that it's one of the distressing shortcomings of a society that so much attention is showered on those who do evil and so little on those who do good.

25:45And he called for kindness and asked people to be kind, which I thought was a really powerful statement because their family has been ripped apart by this. And I think that is the problem, right? That this has become such a big story. And it's a crazy story and it's a ridiculous story, but it's also a tragic story. And it's awful because that family, the Wilkinson and the Passan family have lost so many people, you know, that they loved, these grandparents who were so important to their grandchildren's lives. And I think that's what's so sad.