Moment husband confronted mushroom cook over toxic meal

Mushroom cook Erin Patterson says she became scared and frantic after her estranged husband accused her of purposely serving up a toxic beef Wellington lunch as her in-laws were fighting for life.

"Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?" she recalls Simon Patterson's confrontation.

The 50-year-old has given evidence for a third day in her Supreme Court trial in regional Victoria.

She has pleaded not guilty to three murders and one attempted murder over the July 2023 lunch allegedly laced with death cap mushrooms she served to Don and Gail Patterson, 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66.

All three died in hospital days after eating the meals, while Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson was the sole surviving lunch guest.

Patterson maintains the poisonings were not deliberate.

She was admitted to Monash Medical Centre with her children days after experiencing stomach cramps and diarrhoea and after doctors found traces of death cap mushrooms in her very ill lunch guests.

Patterson had fed her kids leftovers the day after the lunch, but with the mushroom filling scraped off.

She recalled on Wednesday how Simon confronted her in hospital, asking if she had deliberately poisoned his parents.

"I said, 'of course not'," Patterson told the court.

Her estranged husband's comment caused her to think about how she had used the dehydrator to dry foraged mushrooms weeks earlier.

"I started to think, 'what if they had gotten in there, in the container with the dried Chinese mushrooms'," she said.

"Simon was of the mind that this was intentional and I got really scared."

Patterson was "frantic" when she got home, telling the court she felt responsibility because "I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick".

So the next day she took the dehydrator to the rubbish tip.

"I was scared that they would blame me for it," she said.

"Blame you for?" defence barrister Colin Mandy SC asked.

"For making everyone sick. I was scared they'd remove the children," Patterson responded.

"I thought there might be ... evidence of any foraged mushrooms in there."

The alleged murderer on Wednesday revealed the steps she took to make the beef Wellington dish.

Patterson made "deviations" to the RecipeTinEats recipe, including buying 10 beef tenderloin steaks after being unable to find a log of beef, swapping in filo pastry instead of making a crepe and omitting mustard and prosciutto because Ian didn't eat pork.

She recalled starting early on the day by frying garlic and chopped shallots before adding two tubs of mushrooms she bought from Woolworth to make the duxelles, or the mushroom wrapping.

"I cooked it down. I tasted it a few times. It seemed bland so I decided to add the mushrooms from the grocer I had in my pantry," she told a full court room and 14 jurors.

Mr Mandy SC asked her to reflect on what may have been in that additional container of mushrooms from the pantry, which she said she bought in Melbourne.

"Now I think that there was a possibility there were foraged ones in there as well," she responded.

Patterson previously said she began foraging for wild mushrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 at Korumburra Botanic Gardens, on her three-acre properties in Korumburra and Leongatha and along a rail trail.

She had accepted there "must have been death cap mushrooms" in the lunch she served.

Patterson recalled plating up five beef Wellingtons with mashed potatoes and green beans, with Ian, Don and Heather finishing their entire plates, Gail eating "quite a lot of hers, not all" which Don finished.

She ate about a quarter to a third of her own plate.

"I was talking a lot. I was eating slowly," she said.

After the guests had left, Patterson was cleaning up when she said she had the rest of the cake Gail had brought, which left her so full that she "went to the toilet and brought it back up again".

Lines of people curious to catch a glimpse of Patterson giving evidence have stretched from the regional court's doors as the case continues into its sixth week.

The trial resumes on Thursday.