Original subtitles

In our line of work, we see everything.

But this just takes the cake.

Poisonous mushrooms have killed three people.

After eating the wild fungi...

The cook, the diners and one giant mystery.

Four people go to a lunch in a quiet country town.

The meal was beef Wellington.

Within a week, three people are dead.

There was no murder weapon.

Instead, it was a food millions of us eat every single day.

Mushrooms. I had to do a double take.

This isn't an accident. You've got an odd character...

Police say you're a suspect.

Do you have anything to say about that?

Yes, I say I didn't do anything, I loved them.

Murder by stealth.

The first time in Australia's history

death cap mushrooms have been the murder weapon.

And then you've got the ex-husband

saying that he had suffered from the same mystery illness.

It was just...

Beggars belief.

The poisoner who sat back and watched these people die.

These victims were targeted. The big question is why?

This would have to go down

as the most infamous beef Wellington in history.

South Gippsland is known as being a place of untouched natural beauty

with magnificent wonder.

We're about 100km from Melbourne.

Small towns and villages, hamlets.

I'm Nathan Hursey,

councillor for South Gippsland Shire Council,

representing this area here,

and also the deputy mayor of South Gippsland Shire.

So we have Korumburra, where we are now,

and ten minutes down the road is Leongatha.

It's the sort of place where a lot of people

leave their keys in their car.

A lot of people leave their houses unlocked.

Of course, it's easy to know your neighbour

and to know people around the area.

So, nothing much happens in this quiet country town.

And then this deadly lunch.

Well, a tight-knit Victoria community

has been rocked to its core this week

after three residents died from suspected mushroom poisoning.

A fourth person, Reverend Ian Wilkinson,

is right now fighting for life in hospital.

With the death of Gail, Don and Heather and also with, you know,

the very difficult situation that Ian found himself in, in hospital.

It's been very personal for a lot of people.

A lot of people know the families involved in this situation,

particularly around Korumburra, where Don and Gail were teachers

and where Heather participated at the community house.

And I would say that there was a real sense of protection

for one another.

You know, a real sense of looking out for each other

in what continues to be a very difficult time

for many people in the community.

On the 29th of July 2023,

Erin Patterson invited five people to her home.

She invited five people over to lunch.

Her ex-husband Simon Patterson...

..her ex in-laws Don and Gail Patterson,

as well as Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson,

and also Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson,

who's actually the local Baptist pastor

at the church here in Korumburra.

Erin has two children with Simon, her former husband,

and on that day of the lunch,

they had both gone out to the movies.

On that Saturday, Simon, Erin's husband,

who was estranged from her, cancelled.

So there were four there, not five.

Erin Patterson served a beef Wellington.

The most famous beef Wellington pie to ever go down in history.

And it's a labour of love.

Beef Wellingtons are not easy to make.

Following day, all four of them presented themselves

to the local hospital with suspected food poisoning.

Gail and her sister Heather died on the same day in the same hospital.

The next day, Don died,

despite getting a liver transplant to save his life.

Poisonous mushrooms have killed three people,

and tonight a man is in hospital fighting for life,

after eating the wild fungi at a lunch with friends

in regional Victoria.

And then the fourth person, Pastor Ian Wilkinson.

He was in a coma and critically unwell,

and it was touch and go whether he would survive.

Reverend Ian Wilkinson, a local pastor

at the Korumburra Baptist Church, fighting for life.

After weeks in hospital, Ian was eventually discharged,

which is miraculous when you think about someone that age

to be able to come out the other end of that.

It was... It was really, really unexpected.

So, it was eventually established that these four people

had ingested death cap mushrooms as the poison.

Erin Patterson said that she bought the suspected mushrooms

from an Asian grocer and a supermarket.

She says that she also ate the same meal

that she served her four guests.

She said that her children were also served the meal the next day,

but because they didn't like mushrooms,

she scraped it off the dish.

Erin's house was completely besieged

by both national and international media

in the days after the poisonings.

It was like a circus had descended on Leongatha.

Erin, can you tell us what happened on Saturday?

On Saturday? It was devastating. It's a tragedy, what's happened

Police say you're a suspect.

Do you have anything to say about that?

Yes, I say I didn't do anything. I loved them.

People were fascinated by this case.

How on earth could four people go to lunch

and three of them be wiped out, just like that?

What did you cook them? Did you eat the same meal, Erin?

On 2 November, 2023,

detectives attended Erin Patterson's house

and arrested her and took her in for interviewing.

Good evening. Erin Patterson, the woman at the centre

of the mushroom poisoning mystery,

has been arrested in a dramatic early morning raid

on her Leongatha home.

She was then charged with the murders

of Gail and Don Patterson, and with Heather Wilkinson,

and the attempted murder

of Heather's husband Ian, who survived,

and the attempted murder of Erin's estranged husband Simon.

And I remember vividly thinking,

there's no way that somebody would do this deliberately.

There's no way that this could be a case of murder.

Three people were killed,

which makes this a triple homicide event.

If a fourth person had died, if Ian Wilkinson had died,

then that would be what's called a mass murder event.

In my view, this was an intended mass murder event.

This particular crime is solvable through the victimologies.

That is the backgrounds of these four victims.

My name is Kris Illingsworth.

I'm an FBI-trained criminal profiler and a former police detective.

And what we find when you look at these people's backgrounds

is that Don Patterson was a high school teacher.

His wife, Gail, was also a high school teacher.

Her sister, Heather Wilkinson, she was a high school teacher.

These people were all used to having positions of authority

in their careers, their vocations,

and they're used to standing there

and presenting their points of view and opinions

to, or even at, a group of people.

They're positions of local authority, influence and power.

I think what we didn't realise at the start was just how loved

Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson were

to the Korumburra communities where they lived.

DIRECTOR: Just the tight shots, so got to be in front of your nose.

My name is Sam Cucchiara, and I'm a news reporter

on an Australian nightly current affairs programme

called A Current Affair.

I think that's the great tragedy of this story.

Beyond the headlines, there are three people who lost their lives.

There's a family who is grieving,

and there is a community which will never be the same again.

And then on top of that, you have the fourth victim

who is the pastor at the Korumburra Baptist Church.

Pastor Ian Wilkinson.

Now, by virtue of being the pastor for the local church,

he literally speaks to the flock from the pulpit.

Erin Patterson, by comparison, seems to have had a very quiet voice

to no voice in the community.

She married into that voice.

Then when he separates from her,

she's really suddenly out on her own and not part of this group any more.

So she very much, I think, becomes the loner, the outsider,

the one who's not part of the flock.

And many locals described Erin in that way.

They told me that Erin was very isolated.

She was a bit of a recluse.

She didn't mix with the townspeople, but that's how she liked it.

I think that that's what's captured everyone's attention

is trying to understand, who is Erin Patterson?

DIRECTOR: And just sort of settle yourself in the chair

so you're feeling comfortable.

My name is Tita Smith, and I'm a journalist for Daily Mail Australia.

We know that she was an air traffic controller.

We know that she was educated.

She ran her own book shop.

So she has so much money in her family line

that she's inherited from her mother.

She had multiple investment properties.

She was living very comfortably.

They have a beautiful house on acreage in Leongatha.

Erin Patterson hosted the lunch at her home in Leongatha.

Around 15 minutes drive away is the small town of Korumburra.

It's even smaller than Leongatha.

It's a very religious town, and that's where the victims lived.

A lot of people we spoke to in town

mentioned the victims' close involvement

with the local Baptist church.

So we have to look at, why now for these murders?

Why did this happen now?

What we normally see with homicides is that there's a triggering event

when it's pre-planned and targeted.

But it does appear that that is a very strong consistency

across all of these victims, this church connection.

So if Erin perceived...

..that she'd been slighted

or wronged in some way by these people,

either individually or collectively by all of them,

then a grievance may have formed, an emotional grievance.

And from that grievance...

..it appears that she has then spent some time

thinking about that grievance and how to seek retribution for it.

So using a meal like beef Wellington has a number of advantages

if you want to use death cap mushrooms.

Firstly, the recipe calls for mushrooms.

Quite a lot of them.

The mushrooms are cooked up into a paste.

They're used with shallots and other herbs and spices,

and that's called a duxelle.

So, the beef itself is cooked,

and the duxelle paste is spread on top of the meat,

and also with a spread of pate as well.

You don't see the mushrooms because they're finely chopped up.

They're in a paste.

But not only that,

all of that is then wrapped into a pillowcase of pastry.

So these people may not have even known

that they were consuming mushrooms

as part of an ingredient for this beef Wellington recipe.

We wanted to find out where these deadly mushrooms grow.

DIRECTOR: Just get yourself comfortable. Yeah.

My name is Ashley Hansen, and I'm a crime journalist,

and I've been looking into exactly what happened that day in Leongatha.

So, we found a local foraging expert

who could show us where they pop up in the local area.

The season in South Gippsland here for mushroom foraging

that's usually most consistent is autumn.

I'm Scott Rae.

I'm a beef, sheep and timber farmer in South Gippsland in Victoria.

I'm a retired chef

and forager of all sorts of food throughout the area.

Mushroom foraging in the region

generally involves walking around other paddocks.

If you're looking for field mushrooms,

or walking through areas of pine forest where I do all my foraging.

I look for three types of mushroom - a saffron milk cap,

which is an orange-coloured pine mushroom,

and some more yellowy-coloured ones,

which are Slippery Jacks and Slippery Jills,

which are a traditional pine mushroom.

So the pine mushrooms that we find here

are the same as the ones that come out of Europe.

It's really one of those things,

you have to be very sure about what you're actually looking

to put on the plate and put in your mouth.

But I have seen dozens of different mushrooms

I just can't identify.

We found recent stories in the local papers

and local TV news stories

about how you could identify death cap mushrooms.

Death cap mushrooms are large

with a pale yellow-green to olive brown cap.

These were obviously intended as safety messages to visitors

and locals in the Gippsland region.

And there was a lot of commentary online,

and I came across a comment from someone who had spoken

about how they knew for a fact that Erin was known within the family

to be a mushroom forager.

So I tracked them down and spoke to them directly,

and they said that Erin would have known exactly what she was picking.

And so the family,

having four people be poisoned at lunch...

to them, given what they knew about her,

it was extremely suspicious.

During the early days of the case, when the story was first breaking,

there was a lot of speculation in terms of the nature of the lunch.

We learnt that the lunch was held as a form of reconciliation

to be had between Erin and Simon,

due to their marriage having recently separated.

Given that Simon came from a very religious background -

his family were very religious,

his uncle was a pastor at the local church -

it was said to us that in order for the former couple to reconcile,

they had to have a church reconciliation.

Once those people first ingested those first few mouthfuls,

there was no turning back.

They were doomed.

And she sat down at that same dinner table

and watched these people have those mouthfuls.

That first mouthful of food with that beef Wellington,

she knew that they were being poisoned.

And every mouthful thereafter, she knew that they were now

on the journey to dying a violent death.

In those moments when she was watching them consume that meal...

..she was all powerful in that moment.

She had power over their lives.

She held the power of life over death for these people.

So, if you can imagine her sitting there watching these people eat,

how powerful she must have felt.

Here she was, finally...

..being listened to, but in a different kind of way.

And she not only had the power to kill them

but the power to save them.

And she chose to kill them.

So that would make her all powerful.

Erin Patterson's story

about how the mushrooms have come to be in the meal

is definitely going to be a major part of this case.

So according to Erin Patterson,

she used a number of fresh mushrooms purchased locally and ran out.

So then she used what she says she had purchased some months earlier

from some kind of a Chinese supplier supermarket-type place.

She says this was a packet of dried mushrooms,

and that from these mushrooms,

the death cap mushrooms must have come.

We went and interviewed all of the Asian grocers within that area

and none could identify the packaging.

She said that it was a very clear packaging, non-descript,

and none of the mushrooms that were being sold in that...

in those stores had the same packaging.

No-one else in Australia got sick at that time

with death cap mushroom poisoning.

It was only her.

And on top of that, there has been no product recall

for mushrooms of any kind in Australia.

And that was one of the peculiar things from the get-go

was there were no health warnings saying

"do not buy any mushrooms from the supermarket".

I think that we have to say that they were all being targeted.

If you've knowingly laced something that you know that you're serving

to a group of people,

Simon couldn't have been the only target.

On the question of whether Simon was the intended target,

the fact that she's gone ahead with it

suggests that not just Simon but all four were the intended targets.

So it's a bit bizarre to understand what is going on

in that mentality that has made her go,

"OK. I wanted Simon to be here.

"He's not here, but I might still go ahead with this plan anyway."

I definitely think in this case

that the big question is why has she done this?

What's her motivation and what would she have gained from doing it?

And if it's accepted that there was a grievance,

and she sought payback and retribution for that grievance,

then the element of righteousness,

righteous retribution, comes into this.

The beauty, if you could call it, of the death cap mushrooms

is the time delay.

If you want to kill that way,

because six to eight hours, nothing happens.

So if you can get those people to leave your house

and be somewhere else, you can effectively wipe your hands of that

and at least, on the surface, look like you had nothing to do with it.

And particularly if you present yourself as well

as being a bit sick,

and say that you ingested some as well,

you know, you might get away with that.

You don't want these people to be dead around your dinner table.

You want them to have sufficient time

to leave your house and to go to their own homes,

where, because of the symptoms,

they will proceed to vomit and have dreadful diarrhoea

and this violent gastro attack.

And you don't want four dead bodies in your own home.

It's a plan that actually has its own built-in body disposal phase.

She doesn't have to dispose of four dead bodies.

They just have to leave the premises and go home.

And the disposal part,

which is always a component of murder...

..is taken care of automatically.

We wanted to find out

what death cap mushroom poisoning is like.

We found a man who'd mistaken death cap mushrooms for edible ones

but miraculously survived.

His story is pretty harrowing.

My name is Simon Claringbold,

and I'm here because I survived death cap mushroom poisoning.

It was summer, and it had been raining a lot.

So the garden...

the garden was really growing and needed a lot of work.

And I came across a clump of mushrooms

growing on my property in my back yard, and I thought,

"Hey, I'm going to have a spaghetti bolognese this evening,

"and I'm going to put these mushrooms

"as part of the topping."

My wife actually cooked the meal.

Thankfully, my wife doesn't like mushrooms and nor do my children.

So I was the only one that ate them.

The insidious thing is, nothing happens.

You feel perfectly fine.

You feel perfectly fine for about 24 hours.

So in that 24 hours, your body has digested the toxins,

and it's entered your bloodstream,

and the toxins start attacking your liver.

And your liver's like the chemical brain of your body.

So, liver is about producing proteins and enzymes,

but it's basically keeping

all that chemical balance of your body in check.

So, the liver is basically taken out of the equation.

And it becomes worse and worse.

So, your liver is basically poisoned and ceases to function.

You can't survive with a chronically poisoned liver.

The next afternoon, I started feeling a bit queasy,

like maybe I've eaten something suspect

and went to bed a bit early,

and then woke up violently ill at about eight o'clock.

Vomiting and diarrhoea.

So, I was air ambulanced to Sydney,

and I'm into Royal Prince Alfred, into the liver ward.

So, I was sharing the ward with really sick people,

and there I was, wondering how long I was going to last,

and I was on the liver donor list.

They saw the only treatment was a liver transplant.

My wife and my mother were with me,

and that was when I recorded my last message

to my young children that I wouldn't be with them...

..and to help look after each other and their mother in my absence.

So it was like, really... I really thought that this was it.

On about the ninth day, I started blacking out,

so I can remember my vision closing in

and everything getting really black.

At that point, I couldn't sit up any longer.

The doctors laid me down, and my vision started to black out.

No peripheral vision,

and the room was getting really dark.

I was convinced I was going to die. That was it.

The miraculous thing about a liver

is it has got an incredible ability to regenerate.

At the time, the indicators were so steep

that I was going to be dead in three days

and needed a liver transplant to survive.

And then in the three days of planning,

the indicators sort of took that less steep trend.

And so the three days became four days, then five days.

I definitely was a near-death... near-death experience.

I wouldn't want anyone else to go through that experience.

So the Leongatha people that were poisoned,

they died not knowing why they died.

They didn't know that they'd been poisoned

and were getting weaker and weaker and weaker, just as I was,

until their vision started to fail, and they lost consciousness.

And that was the end.

And the poisoner never basically gave any indication

of what had poisoned them.

So they basically sat back

and watched these people suffer for weeks

before three out of four of them died.

That's heartless.

The food dehydrator will be the absolute centre of this case,

the most critical piece of evidence at trial.

We know now that Erin Patterson,

in the days following this lethal lunch,

she went to a local tip to throw out this food dehydrator.

Erin admitted she lied to police in a statement.

And in that statement, she says

that while at the hospital where her sick relatives were,

she was with her former husband Simon, and Simon asked her,

"Is that what you used to poison my parents?"

So Erin says she then panicked,

and she went to throw the food dehydrator out.

So, straight away there are going to be alarm bells ringing

in the minds of homicide detectives who'll be questioning,

"Why has this lady lied to us? And what has she got to hide?"

The food dehydrator is central,

and what they will be doing is they'll be looking at the spores

to see if they can find any death cap spores.

And based on Erin's accounts,

she's completely denied ever putting anything

that was put into that meal through the food dehydrator.

It's also suggestive of a guilty mind.

So, you have the action of disposing of evidence.

So, another benefit to disposing of that accessory to the murder

is to create a psychological distance

between that part of the murder and herself.

So, one of the things I noticed with the media coverage of Erin

on her own property after this story first broke,

was that there were a lot of media people there.

And once the media is asked to leave someone's property,

they have to leave.

Devastating. And I'm grieving too.

And she, from what I saw, she was not telling them to leave.

So it suggests that she may have wanted the media there

to see her reaction to it,

which would be part of the alibi as well.

"How do I cover up this murder?

"Well, I'm also terribly upset by what's happened."

I was sent to Leongatha where this happened.

When I arrived, there were photographers,

TV reporters, newspaper reporters.

Erin had gone out for a little bit. She arrived back home.

I didn't think that she'd talk to me.

We marched up the driveway, myself and my camera crew,

and I approached Erin as she emerged from her car,

and to my utter surprise, she began talking.

Erin, can you tell us what happened on Saturday?

What happened on Saturday was devastating.

It's a tragedy, what's happened.

Can you tell us about the meal that you cooked?

I barely asked her a question.

She went on this monologue.

I'm so...

..devastated by what's happened, by the loss of... Don.

Don is still in hospital.

The loss of Ian and Heather and Gail,

who were some of the best people that I've ever met.

Gail was like...

Take your time.

Gail was the mum that I didn't have

because my mum passed away four years ago,

and Gail's never been anything but good and kind to me.

And Ian and Heather were some of the best people I've ever met.

They never did anything wrong to me,

and I'm so devastated about what's happened.

I remember being taken aback a little by what Erin was saying.

She kept repeating that she was devastated,

and to me, it appeared as though

perhaps she may have rehearsed those lines.

What I can tell you...

..is that I just can't fathom what has happened.

I just can't fathom what has happened.

That Ian and Heather have lost their lives,

and Gail has lost her life,

and Don is still in hospital, and I pray...

I pray that he pulls through because my children love him.

And you must be pretty shaken up by this as well.

I'm devastated.

I love them, and I can't believe that this has happened.

And I'm so sorry that they have lost their lives.

How are you...? I just can't believe it.

I just can't believe it.

When it got towards the end of our interview,

I began asking Erin some questions.

That's when she abruptly ended the interview.

Police say you're a suspect.

Do you have anything to say about that?

Yes, I say I didn't do anything.

I loved them, and I'm devastated that they're gone.

And I hope with every fibre of my being that Don pulls through.

That's... Where did the mushrooms come from?

Were they picked by you or where did they come from, Erin?

Can you tell us?

What meal did you cook them?

'She didn't want to engage in any of those questions.'

She walked away and she shut the door in my face.

She was quite emotional throughout this entire interview.

Or she appeared to be quite emotional.

And of course, we know now that the police case is

that that was all fake,

that Erin wasn't really crying any tears.

She's wiping the tears away - the tears that you can't actually see.

How are you...? I just can't believe it.

I just can't believe it.

And her version, which doesn't quite add up...

At one point, she even says,

"Ian and Heather were some of the best people I ever met."

The loss of Ian and Heather and Gail,

who were some of the best people that I've ever met.

And I thought this was a bit unusual because these are in-laws.

She hasn't just met them.

She's known them for many, many years.

She doesn't say they were THE best people she's ever met or ever known.

They were just SOME of the best.

And the use of the word "met"

also is suggestive of distance in their relationships.

And so from the get-go, as a journalist,

you're trying to keep an open mind about what's going on.

But all of the... It just keeps getting weirder and weirder,

and this weird, really bizarre interview.

But by that stage, I think everyone's interest is peaking.

Just because no-one can really...

No-one really knows what to think of this.

This interview where her emotions just seemed a bit off.

And Ian and Heather were some of the best people I've ever met.

They never did anything wrong to me,

and I'm so devastated about what's happened.

And then it was the next day

that someone had found a post on Facebook

written by Simon 12 months before,

documenting this bizarre mystery stomach illness.

JOURNALIST READS:

And all of a sudden...

..it just seems completely nuts.

This is Melbourne's 9 News.

I remember the moment when we were sitting in the newsroom,

and news came in finally about the charges that Erin was facing.

The world watching as the mother of two appeared in the dock

for the first time, charged with killing three other family members.

And of course, we knew that there would be three

that related to the murders.

We knew that there would be the one that related

to attempted murder charge related to Ian.

But we were just gobsmacked to learn

that there were additional attempted murder charges against Simon.

Explosive court documents have revealed

Erin Patterson allegedly tried to murder her estranged husband

by feeding him poisoned meals years before the mushroom tragedy.

Obviously, we knew about the incident a year earlier

where he was allegedly poisoned with a mystery stomach illness.

But then we hear about these other times

and these time frames that no-one had been reporting about,

that she's alleged to have poisoned him.

Police allege Erin attempted to murder him on three other occasions.

It's alleged a 48-year-old Korumburra man became ill

following meals on these dates.

We don't know for sure if mushrooms were used in that case.

It's only listed as poison,

but if it was mushrooms that she's used in that case,

and then she's used mushrooms in the beef Wellington,

and it suggests some familiarity with using them.

So, she's used them before with Simon.

You've got four people poisoned,

and then you've got the ex-husband saying

that he had suffered from the same mystery illness.

You've got mushrooms. It was just...

EXHALES

It's been incredible seeing the media circus around this case,

the sheer number of journalists, podcasters, true crime writers

all descending on this very, very tiny town of Morwell,

not far from Erin Patterson's home.

There's been a bit of a whirlwind.

Every week goes very quickly down here.

We've started early in the morning

with today's show at 5:30 in the morning,

and then we're, you know, doing a cross for news at 6:00.

REPORTER: From 5am, the public lined up outside

for a spot inside the court that has captivated a nation.

My name is Amber Johnston.

I'm the court reporter for 9 News in Melbourne,

and I've been covering

Erin Patterson's mushroom murder trial now for nine weeks.

All these strangers fighting over seats

just to catch a glimpse of her.

I've never seen anything like it before.

Every cafe plastered on every specials board

is every mushroom dish you could possibly imagine.

And you have to think, like, this is a triple murder trial.

It's a small country courtroom.

There's only seats for around 35 people inside the courtroom.

They're all packed together. A handful of seats for the media.

There's Erin Patterson at the back of the courtroom.

I saw Erin on the very first day of the trial.

I walked into the courtroom and got a seat at the very back,

only about a metre or two away from Erin Patterson.

She looked at me, she held eye contact for some time,

and then the jury walked in,

and Erin Patterson was fixated on the jury.

She was watching them extremely closely

as they were brought into the courtroom.

She didn't lose her gaze as the judge was explaining to them

what this case was and the elements of murder

that they would be deliberating on.

AMBER: These are strangers from all sorts of different walks of life,

and it really is a good cross-section of society,

the people who've been picked to be on the jury.

They all need to settle on the same verdict.

There are some huge characters in the courtroom.

So, on the bar table you have on the right hand side,

Dr Nanette Rogers SC for the prosecution.

She is this incredibly intelligent woman

who just always looks like she's on the go.

She's got the crown case riding on her shoulders.

The pressure she must be under.

Then on the other side of the bar table,

you have Colin Mandy SC,

one of the best defence barristers in the state.

He's very cool, calm, collected.

And then in the middle, anchoring it all,

we have the judge Justice Christopher Beale.

And he is a very serious man

who runs his courtroom like a tight ship.

One of the biggest shocks of this trial

came on day one, when we heard from the police that,

according to their case, the reason that Erin Patterson

wanted to invite her estranged husband's family over for lunch

was to announce that she had cancer.

REPORTER READS:

We heard from a number of different medical experts

who have gone through all the records,

and on the registry there is nothing to say that Erin Patterson

was ever diagnosed with cancer.

Things that Erin Patterson did in the aftermath of this lunch

really raised eyebrows among homicide detectives.

We heard at the trial that Erin Patterson had multiple phones.

She was swapping SIM cards in those devices

as the police were raiding her home.

She factory reset her phones multiple times,

including after police had actually taken possession

of some of those devices.

She lied about having a food dehydrator.

So, when police first asked her if she owned a food dehydrator,

she said no, but then has later conceded

that she did in fact have a food dehydrator

and admitted that she would often dehydrate wild mushrooms.

Which takes us to the next lie.

She told our homicide detectives that she was not a forager

and had never foraged for mushrooms.

But now in the trial, a whole lot of her evidence has been, you know,

her habit for foraging mushrooms and her love for mushrooms,

and that it was something that she picked up during COVID times.

REPORTER: Officers allegedly discovered her phone had pinged

in areas in regional Victoria

that were linked to death cap mushroom sightings

reported on the iNaturalist website.

It was really lie after lie after lie

that the prosecution had been picking apart.

I'm devastated.

I love them, and I can't believe that this has happened.

And I'm so sorry.

And the prosecution has called Erin Patterson two-faced.

And that was part of their argument

that, to the world, she presents as this woman who loved her in-laws.

But then her true self behind closed doors was

what she presented to her friends on Facebook.

And a lot of those messages were read out loud to the courtroom,

and that was quite an uncomfortable experience.

REPORTER READS:

Here's this woman who has been pleading her innocence,

telling the jury that she loved her in-laws,

then all of a sudden beamed up on the screens.

She's calling Simon a deadbeat dad.

She's calling Don and Gail Patterson,

her in-laws, a lost cause.

She called their communication style "weasel words".

It was quite damning and critical of the Patterson family.

And how do you defend that?

These things would make anybody look guilty.

And that's what the police seized on.

They said this was the act of a murderer

looking to cover up their crimes.

In regards to Erin's mood in the courtroom,

it has just changed so much.

You have to remember, this is a really intelligent, smart woman.

That's what her estranged husband described her as.

And at times, like, you can see her sat there with a notepad,

and she's furiously taking notes, listening to all the evidence,

and she's very engaged in the proceedings.

But then there have been other times

where she just looks absolutely defeated.

When we were watching the interviews,

the police interviews with her children,

she was incredibly emotional.

REPORTER READS:

They were just tears pouring down her face as she was listening

to her children's voices.

Anyone with a heart would sit there and understand that,

regardless of what's happened,

this is a woman who clearly loves her children.

I can only imagine how incredibly stressful it is

to be sitting in the dock with two guards beside you

in your own triple murder trial, with the world watching on.

The courtroom... The courtroom was packed

with the family of Simon Patterson,

the sole survivor, Ian Wilkinson.

Every day, I think we see Ian Wilkinson walk into court,

and he hasn't missed a single day.

You're reminded that he was actually seriously sick

and he's lost his wife and a couple of relatives as well.

Here's this pastor who preaches about forgiveness,

and now he has found himself in this situation

where he is having to confront a woman who killed his wife,

tried to kill him.

And yeah, I've often wondered what is going on inside his mind.

REPORTER: Erin Patterson, an accused triple murderer

who sat silent listening for five weeks,

today giving her side of the story.

It shocked the world

when Erin Patterson decided to take to the stand

in her own triple murder trial.

And that moment when she got out of the dock

and walked through the courtroom, walked past us

and hopped into the witness box... it was surreal.

And I mean, you're just on the edge of your seat wanting to...

What is she going to say? What...?

How is she going to explain all of these lies?

'The evidence I shall give will be the truth,

'the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.'

Her defence has said that after the lunch,

when everyone was falling gravely ill in hospital,

she had a moment with her estranged husband Simon in hospital,

where the children left the room.

'He said to me,

' "Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?"

'I said, "Of course not." '

And Erin Patterson said it was at that point she started to panic.

She knew that child protection were involved.

She was worried that she was going to lose her children.

She was worried that she was going to be blamed

for this terrible thing that has happened.

And in that moment, her brain went to cover-up mode.

But then, yeah, Simon claims

that this conversation never happened at all.

So is this just another one of her lies?

..he stressed.

Her defence team have basically conceded.

Yes. OK. She's a liar. She's made some mistakes.

She's made some terrible mistakes.

But if you're a liar, does that make you a killer?

And that's a question that's been put to the jury.

Erin Patterson's defence has been really smart in poking holes

in the prosecution's case, which is really circumstantial.

They really don't have solid evidence

that she murdered anybody.

They don't have any intention to kill.

And the prosecution told the jury

that they don't need to prove a motive.

The prosecution in this case, at the very beginning of the trial,

told the jury,

"We just need to prove beyond reasonable doubt

"that she killed her in-laws.

"You don't need to know the whys, so put that out of your brain.

"It's unnecessary."

But it's this... I've walked the tightrope of...

If I was on that jury,

do you need to know the why in order to prove guilt?

Because that's what I'm looking for.

Why would this woman who seemingly loved her family

and loved her in-laws, why would she turn and kill them?

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that jury room,

as they're deliberating

and weighing up all of the aspects of this case.

At the surface, what seems like a relatively simple case

is actually extremely complicated.

It must be so difficult to be on that jury.

One of the biggest trials that we've ever seen,

and such a bizarre set of circumstances,

such a bizarre set of arguments that have been presented to them.

Nothing in this story made sense from the beginning.

You can't have death cap mushrooms just magically appear

into a beef Wellington without someone putting them there.

I almost imagine it like a puzzle.

There's all these little pieces, there's all these little lies,

there's all these red flags.

And when you start putting the pieces of the puzzle together,

what picture does that paint?

What on earth has happened here?

It's up to the jury. Do they believe Erin Patterson?

Do they believe that she panicked and told those lies in a panic?

Either she is this cold and calculated killer

who completely decimated an entire family who she claimed to love,

or she's this innocent woman who has found herself in this tragic mess.

Did she really think that this was the perfect murder

that she was going to get away with?

She let them eat that meal, knowing that they were going to die

in a very cold and calculated way.

What a cruel, evil thing to do.