(Picture: Nine)
A woman accused of murdering her ex-husband’s family by poisoning their lunch with death cup mushrooms searched the deadly ingredient online before their deaths, a court has heard.
Erin Patterson is charged with three counts of murder after her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson died in hospital in July 2023.
She has also been accused of attempting to murder Heather’s husband Ian, who was the only one to have survived the meal.
They were suspected of eating poisonous mushrooms after eating a beef wellington meal cooked by Patterson at her home in Leongatha, Victoria.
Cybercrime officer Shamen Fox-Henry said he found references to the mushrooms on Patterson’s device.
When asked if she had searched them online, she said she had ‘no specific memory’ but admitted: ‘Does look like somebody did that yes.
‘I don’t remember doing it, it’s possible it was me… I didn’t use Internet Explorer or Bing but I accept maybe I did this time, I’m not sure.’
But she added she wanted to know if death caps ‘grew in South Gippsland’.
Another online post was also found in May 2022 on iNaturalist, which Patterson says she ‘does not know’ if she looked it up.
The victim’s symptoms were described as being consistent with poisoning by death cap mushrooms, which is a dull green fungus known scientifically as Amanita phalloides and can cause serious organ failure within 24 to 48 hours.
Patterson’s ex-husband Simon Patterson had also been invited to the lunch but did not attend.
She admitted it was ‘unusual’ to have them all over for dinner, but she ‘wanted it to be special’.
After preparing the meal, she has also been accused of dumping the dehydrator used to prepare the mushrooms in a forest.
Patterson argued after she was told her guests were being treated for poisoning at hospital, she ‘just got really scared’ and got rid of the dehydrator.
She said: ‘I had a good relationship with them. I said they always treated me like a daughter, not like a daughter in-law, they treated me like their own daughter.’
Erin’s ex-husband Simon was questioned in court about her behaviour as his parents were dying in hospital.
Simon denied that Erin had asked about the health of his parents during a phone call, which he said he thought ‘that would be something that she’d be interested in asking about.’
He said he thought at the time that it is ‘odd.’
The trial continues.
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