Erin Patterson, pictured in August 2023, was convicted last month of poisoning her estranged husband’s family members with death cap mushrooms.
Marta Pascual Juanola/The Age via Getty Images
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Marta Pascual Juanola/The Age via Getty Images
Erin Patterson was convicted last month of killing her in-laws with a meal laced with toxic mushrooms. But freshly unsealed evidence reveals new details about the Australian woman’s case, including her estranged husband’s allegations that she poisoned his food on multiple occasions before that fateful lunch.
Patterson, a 50-year-old mother of two, was found guilty last month of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in connection to a home-cooked meal she served her husband’s parents, aunt and uncle in July 2023.
All four of her guests were later hospitalized with gastrointestinal symptoms, and three of them eventually died of altered liver function and multiple organ failure due to Amanita (death cap) mushroom poisoning. Death cap mushrooms are among the most poisonous in the world, and had been spotted growing near where Patterson lived in Leongatha, a small town about 85 miles from Melbourne.
Patterson denied deliberately putting death cap mushrooms in the beef Wellington she served and maintained that she had no reason to hurt her husband’s relatives, though she admitted to lying about things like foraging for mushrooms and owning a food dehydrator.
A jury convicted her after a nine-week trial packed with dramatic revelations and testimony from some 50 witnesses including Patterson herself as well as her estranged husband Simon, who had been invited to the lunch but pulled out the night before.
What the jury didn’t hear, however, was that Simon Patterson — and prosecutors — believe that his wife also poisoned him on several occasions in 2021 and 2022.
That’s according to evidence that was not admitted during the trial. It was unsealed after Justice Christopher Beale lifted a gag order on Friday.
In court transcripts obtained by NPR, Simon described getting sick enough to be hospitalized from eating food Erin had prepared for him, including pasta bolognese, chicken korma curry and a vegetable wrap. His personal doctor also testified about what he called the “three near-death experiences,” one of which resulted in Simon falling into a coma and needing to have part of his bowel surgically removed.
While doctors couldn’t determine the exact cause of those episodes, Simon testified in October 2024 that he had become suspicious of Erin well before she invited him and his relatives to lunch. In fact, he said he declined explicitly “because I thought there’d be a risk that she’d poison me if I attended.”
Erin Patterson denies deliberately poisoning Simon, and originally pleaded not guilty to an additional three counts of attempted murder in connection with those incidents. She was due to fight them in a second trial, after a judge ruled they should be split up. But prosecutors dropped those charges — without explanation — just before her trial began in April.
Simon alluded to those since-dropped charges in the early days of her trial, at a moment when the jury wasn’t in the room. He said from the witness box that he was “half-thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about,” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
“The legal process has been very difficult,” he said. “Especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that — or non-evidence now, I guess I have a lot to grieve and am grieving a lot about all this stuff here, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
Simon Patterson, pictured leaving Erin Patterson’s trial in May, says he believes she also poisoned his food on multiple occasions.
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What is the new evidence?
Simon and Erin separated in 2015 after eight years of marriage and multiple splits and reconciliations. Both testified that they remained on largely amicable terms, co-parenting their two children and even going on vacations together.
Last October, when asked by Erin’s lawyer whether he agreed that there was “nothing untoward” about their relationship at the time of the alleged poisonings, Simon replied: “Um. If you mean by untoward anything that would indicate that she’d try and kill me, then that’s correct.”
The first alleged incident happened in November 2021, before Erin and Simon were due to take a hiking trip without the kids. She brought a Tupperware of penne bolognese over to his house while he was packing, and he ate it later that night. He testified that the next morning, as their trip began, he started experiencing worsening vomiting and diarrhea and eventually opted to go to the hospital.
“I think I felt … worse inside myself, not a specific body part,” Simon recalled. “I don’t know whether that’s the fear of the extended symptoms, or whether that was a physical thing, or both, but I … felt like I was going downhill.”
He said he was treated with fluids and anti-nausea medication and released the next morning. Things continued between him and Erin as normal, and a few weeks later she invited him over for what he described as a family taste test: She was making chicken curry and wanted to test out various levels of spiciness.
Simon didn’t get sick from that meal. But he said Erin made the same curry on a camping trip they took a few weeks later, in May 2022. He said he assumed she was making each their preferred level of spiciness but didn’t watch her prepare the meal because he was tending to the fire. He started exhibiting GI symptoms a few hours later and went straight to the hospital.
Simon was discharged and went back to his house, but called Erin a few days later because he needed help getting to the bathroom — and the next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital. It turns out he had been in a coma and had “a number of surgeries” including getting part of his bowel removed, he said.
Simon said he learned doctors had told Erin — who as his wife had the power to make his medical decisions — he would die without surgery, and even with it, death was “likely.” He was discharged after 24 days in the hospital, and doctors told him they had done a lot of tests but couldn’t determine the cause of his illness.
In September 2022, the Pattersons went for a walk to catch up. Simon said Erin brought him a pre-made veggie wrap and that she ate the same ingredients “minus the pita bread wrap itself.” He said he began to feel sick pretty quickly on their walk, and they drove to his parents’ house, where they called him an ambulance as he continued vomiting.
“Pretty soon in the ambulance journey I realized that I was starting to slur my words and then gradually as the journey went on, I lost more and more muscle function and by the end of the journey, all I could move was my neck, my tongue and lips, and I could see, so presumably my eyelids as well, I guess,” Simon later testified.
A routine stool sample he had provided that morning — before eating the wrap — indicated no obvious bacteria or inflammation in his intestines, leaving doctors again stumped as to what could have happened.
According to court documents, an intensive care specialist who reviewed Simon’s medical files in 2024 said the cause of symptoms was likely acute as opposed to chronic, and that the first two incidents were likely due to a “toxic or an infective cause.”
He could not identify what those substances could have been, but said Simon’s liver damage during the second illness was not consistent with typical mushroom poisoning.
Erin Patterson’s house in Leongatha, Australia, where she served the July 2023 lunch that resulted in the hospitalizations of all four of her guests and the eventual deaths of three of them.
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Who did Simon tell?
Simon’s personal doctor suggested he write down everything that happened before each of the times he got sick, telling the judge, “It didn’t fit into any of my medical models that would account for all three of those things.”
Simon said he realized the one commonality was that Erin had prepared the food every time. After that, Simon said he changed his advance directive to remove Erin’s decision-making authority, and quietly shared his suspicions with his doctor and some relatives, including his father.
His sister Anna-Marie Terrington testified that she had known about Simon’s fears since 2022 and called their dad before the lunch to caution him. She said he waved her off, saying something like “No, we’ll be OK.” Their parents, Donald and Gail Patterson, were among the lunch guests who died.
Another relative, Ruth Dubois — whose mother, Heather Wilkinson, died from the lunch and whose father, Ian Wilkinson, was the sole survivor — testified that Simon got some of his family members together in a hospital chapel in August 2023, as their parents’ conditions deteriorated.
“He wanted to tell us that he had suspected that his own illnesses had been a deliberate act, that he had stopped eating food that Erin had prepared, because he suspected that she might have been messing with it,” she said, “and that he was really sorry that he hadn’t told … our parents before this, but he thought that he was the only person that she was targeting and that they’d be safe.”
What happens next?
Erin Patterson faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on each of the three murder charges she’s been convicted of already, plus up to 25 years for the count of attempted murder.
Beale, the judge, has set her two-day sentencing hearing to begin on Aug. 25, the ABC reports. People involved in the case will be able to make victim impact statements, with prosecutor Jane Warren telling Beale on Friday to expect “a lot” of them.
Patterson’s lawyers have said they will appeal her convictions, according to the Associated Press. Under Australian law, they have until 28 days after her sentencing to formally do so.
