Canadian True Crime - The Mushroom Murders with Australian True Crime [2]

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

[Part 2 of 2] The mushroom lunch moves from medical emergency to criminal investigation as doctors, police and health officials try to trace the source of the poison. As Erin Patterson’s explanations begin to shift, new evidence emerges from hospital CCTV, phone data, a local garbage dump – followed by a dramatic courtroom showdown.Find Australian True Crime on your favourite podcast player.Watch Australian True Crime’s episode about the Mushroom Murders on YouTube.Watch Kristi in conversation with Meshel Laurie about the murder of Connie Grandinetti.Look for early, ad-free release on CTC premium feeds: available on Amazon Music (included with Prime), Apple Podcasts and Patreon.Canadian True Crime donates monthly to those facing injustice. This month we have donated to Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime , who offer support, research and education to survivors, victims and their families. You can learn more at crcvc.ca.Full list of resources, information sources, credits and music credits:See the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes/214 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Canadian True Crime, a completely independent project funded mainly through advertising. To listen, add free and early, subscribe to our premium feed on Amazon Music Included with Prime, Apple Podcasts, and Patreon. This podcast often has disturbing content and course language. It's not for everyone. Please take care when listening. This is part two of the Mushroom Murders case with special guest Michelle Lorry from Australian True Crime. Where we left off, Erin Patterson invited her estranged husband, Simon, and his elderly parents and other family members for lunch, out of the blue, saying she had something important to discuss with them. Simon declined because he'd already suspected Aaron had tried to poison him several times, allegedly. But his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt and uncle, Ian and Heather Wilkinson, said yes to the invitation.

Over lunch, Erin announced that she'd been diagnosed with serious cancer as she served them individual beef wellingtons on grey plates. The guests noticed that Erin's plate was orange. Within 12 hours, all four elderly guests were violently ill. Their organs began to shut down and they were rushed to hospital. Simon put two and two together and sounded the alarm to the hospital that this might be an intentional poisoning and death. cap mushrooms came up. Doctors needed to find out more about the meal that they ate. But where was

Erin Patterson? Anyway, the doctor who was there is a great character in this story. Dr Chris Webster. He was in charge of the unit that day, just happened to be on shift at Lee and Gathar as this was unfolding. And when she arrived, he was like, oh, thank God, because he knew there was one person unaccounted for. From talking to all the people about the story, he's thinking, where's the other one? where's the other person who ate this lunch? She shows up. He goes, yes, great. We've been looking for you.

Fantastic. But of course, the jury didn't know that he had already been warned. We think she's the poisoner. Right. So again, the jury's a bit perplexed by this guy. But he says, look, no, I was just glad to see her because I knew there was a person missing. So when she came to it, it's a tiny emergency room, you know, because it's a tiny hospital. And she walks through these sliding doors and the nurse says,

great, you're here, the doctor wants to see you, take a seat. Where they sit her ends up two metres away from where Ian Wilkinson and Heather Wilkinson are fighting for their lives. They're still there at the little hospital. There's CCTV of this. Erin doesn't go over to them. She never asks anybody about them. They're lying right, unconscious, right near her. And she doesn't acknowledge them at all. Does she know that they're there? She can see them very clearly. There's no curtain between them. There's nothing between them. She's in a chair. They're in beds two metres away. And of course, there's not much conversation because she was only at the hospital less than five minutes. But Dr. Webster and Aaron did not hit it off. I think it's fair to say.

She said later that he is a guy with no inside voice. That was the way she described him. And he wasted no time in asking Erin where she got the mushrooms for her Wellington. So now everybody knows the Wellington is the suspect. It's the mushrooms. And he says, while I've got you, where did you get the mushrooms for that Wellington? She says, without hesitation, Woolworths. He says later, she said one word and it was Woolworths. And in the witness box, Dr. Webster offered no judgment about that conversation. But after the trial, he was more candid.

He said, once she said that answer, my thoughts were, holy fucking shit, you fucking did it, you crazy bitch, you poisoned them all. And he got a little bit of it. of trouble for saying that. There was sort of a moment where people went, hey, you are a doctor. You can't actually say that. And so in the end, I think he had to do a course about, you know, communications or something. He had to do a couple of language and stuff. Yeah, yeah. But I think most of the community appreciated what he was saying because, again, so much of this case didn't seem to make sense because of all the bits left out in the court case that when he finally came out

and said, listen, if she had said to me, some of the mushrooms in there, I foraged. I went and found some mushrooms. Oh, my God. What if I've made a terrible mistake? It would have been a completely different ballgame. But he said, the minute she looked at me and said, Woolworths, I knew she was lying.

And I knew, oh, my God, they're right. These crazy bitches poisoned all of these people. And just for my Canadian audience, Woolworths is just a major grocery store chain. Yeah. You see you're your big, perfect grocery store that won't sell a bent carrot, let alone a poisonous mushroom. So it was insane. It was an insane thing to say.

And this again is where Erin lets herself down. You think, hang on a minute, aren't you a genius? But I honestly think she never seemed to think beyond the plan working. I think for her, the plan goes, I had them over for lunch. I feed them these mushrooms. they're dead in a couple of days and nobody knows why and nobody will ever know why and why I survived. Well, good luck fearing that out because you won't find that, you know, the toxin. So when it started to unfurl, she didn't seem to have a backup plan, right?

As soon as they've had this mushroom, you know, Woolworth's conversation, I think she realized that she was in trouble. So she left. She left the hospital. So he said to her, don't go anywhere and then he had to run off and help patients. she started leaving. Two nurses grabbed her and begged her, please, please stay. You have to stay. The other people who ate your lunch are in a really bad way, let's say.

She's, no, I'm not ready for this. I have to go home and feed my animals and pack my daughter's ballet bag. And they're like, under the circumstances, no, no, I have to do this. She goes, I'll be back in 20 minutes and she walks out the door and there's nothing they can do about it. 45 minutes later, she's still not back. Wow. So Dr. Webster decides he has to call the cops. He's like, look, as far as I know, there's a woman around driving around the community

who may have been very severely poisoned, I have to call the police, right? So the police arrive at her house just as she's arriving back at the hospital. Dr. Webster's on the phone to everybody. He's on the phone to the police. He goes, she's here. Don't worry about it. But actually, while you're there, he goes, Erin, are there any leftovers from this meal in the bins or anything that we can analyze?

She said yes. and she directed the police to the bin, outside bin, that had leftovers. So the leftovers were analysed later and found that they did contain traces of the mushrooms, the death cat mushrooms. So when we're hearing this evidence in court, we're thinking, okay, well, maybe it is just a miracle that neither Erin nor her children got severely ill from eating the same meal. But then, of course, we have to remember that Erin made a big song and dance about the fact the meal was all prepared the night before when Simon texted to say he wasn't coming.

So a person would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps that portion in the bin was the portion originally intended for Simon. Right. That he dodged. When Erin got back to the hospital after 45 minutes, they admitted her straight away. They said, where have you been? Like, we tried to explain to you that this is a crisis. This is a very potentially serious situation for you and your children.

Where were you? She goes, oh, I just had a nap. I just got home and I fed the animals and I packed the ballet bag and then I thought, I just, I need to lie down. But the prosecution presented phone tower evidence that they say proved that she actually took a little trip during that 45 minutes to the nearby town of Outram. Outram has a tip. So just remember that.

Because that will come back. Quick note, the tip in Australia is what we here in Canada call the dump, the landfill, the waste disposal facility. So Tuesday, 1st of August, so we're now four days out from the lunch, everybody's in hospital at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. Gail and Don, Heather and Ian, and Erin, and her children. By this stage, they've got everybody in the Austin Hospital, which specialises in poisons. So the four elderly patients are all deteriorating. I think they may be conducted the first liver transplant around this time, but these poor people are fading fast.

Erin, luckily, has found to be clinically well and her vital signs are all normal and she is discharged. She and the kids are discharged and allowed to go home. But the Victorian Department of Health starts to get involved, of course, because they've heard that people are dying from death cat mushroom poisoning and they want to know very importantly where have they come from. They ring around the doctors and one doctor says she reckons they came from Woolworths. And they have to treat that seriously and go, is our biggest supermarket chain selling poisonous

mushrooms in the vegetable department? We need to really try and get to the bottom of this. So they get on to Erin and Erin mentions for the first time a Chinese grocer. She says, actually, now that I think about it, I had some fresh mushrooms and I thought for a bit of an interesting taste I might mix in some of these dried mushrooms that I'd bought at a Chinese grocer. And that must be the problem behind all of this. Oh, she's blaming the Chinese. There's definitely a racist tinge in all of this. There's definitely an idea that, oh, you never know what the Chinese will sell you. Right. And there was a portion of the population that would go

for that. Especially at that time, you know, a couple of years after COVID. Exactly. This was disproven, obviously, very quick. From the outset, the people from the health department said, that's not really, you can't really farm death cat mushrooms. They don't grow in the same places that edible mushrooms grow. Like, how would that happen? But they went and visited every Chinese grocer in Melbourne

and checked just to be sure and, of course, found nothing, no evidence. What do these mushrooms look like? At the bottom of their stem, they had. have a rim around there that most mushrooms don't have. So just above the soil line, they have this rim. They're sort of yellowy green, quite a long stem, and the top of them, the cap, the death cap, if you will, yellowy green and white fronds underneath. The biggest giveaway is they only grow under oak trees. It's some relationship they have with the oak tree, which is introduced to Australia. So that's another thing we've got to thank England for. But they don't grow everywhere. They don't

pop up often. People who forage mushrooms can avoid them pretty easily. You know, you don't have to be a mushroom expert to really quickly read. Don't pick those really bright yellow ones under the oak trees. Just leave them alone. That's what they looked like. I could go into about three days of evidence about them if you want, but it's really tedious. And I remember one day they went to lunch or whatever, so the jury's out, everyone's out. And the judge says to one of the lawyers, he goes, how much longer do we have on this evidence? Because there's at least one juror or sleeping a lot. Oh, my God.

Between the anapaloides evidence and the phone tower evidence. Oh, yeah. Days of learning the technology. And I get it. Like, they have to tell us how they work before they can tell us how it's pertinent to this. But it's like you're doing a crash course in telecommunications for two days just to then get to, oh, and by the way, it means that Erin drove to lock.

Oh, okay. Right. I can't, unfortunately, you can't just take their word for these things. They have to actually prove every single element of it. So on the Wednesday, this is an important day. This is, you know, four days out from the lunch, errands back home after the hospital. The health department by this stage are still visiting every Chinese grocer in Melbourne saying, can we ever look at your mushrooms? And they find that they're all in sealed packages. They're all perfectly safe. There's, you know, nothing going on. And I think, to be honest with you, this was when the community got a bit

suss. It's when I got a bit suss, because this was a minor story at this stage, like, oh, it's terrible. Tragedies happened out in beautiful. Gippsland is the sort of name of the greater region. These lovely people are in hospital. They're desperately ill. They might die from food poisoning. Then they started to mention this mushroom theory sort of crept into the media. And I know I wasn't the only person who thought, well, then why aren't they pulling mushroom sales from Melbourne? If they didn't suspect at all that there are poisonous mushrooms for sale anywhere in Melbourne. They would be telling us,

oh, don't eat a mushroom for a while, yeah? Yeah, just let us get to the bottom of this and don't eat any mushrooms for a while. But they never did. There was never a warning about mushrooms whatsoever. And that made me suss right from that moment. But on the Wednesday, Erin did something interesting. She did two important things that day, actually.

She did a factory reset on one of her mobile phones. And of course, the police were able to see that that had happened a little bit. later on. But there was another part to this that actually was kind of smart. It was, it doesn't look great, but she did manage to pull off a little coup around this time. But so, yeah, she did a factory reset on one of her two mobile phones. No one knew she had two, by the way. Not a family. Nobody knew. She had two. And, and she also made a trip to the outtrum tip. Another one. Another tip. No, same tip. Different trip. So this is two trips so far. far that we know about, yes. We don't know what she's doing there, but the evidence later,

the phone pings tell us she went back out to Outram. Now, on the Thursday, the health department, still in communication with Aaron, and the media is starting to really pick up on this. As I said, I'm not the only one who's going, I don't think they believe her story about the mushrooms. On the Friday after the lunch, so this is six days, both Heather and Gail died. Yeah. So this is when the story is getting serious. And honestly, in the media coverage up to that point, it was not a bit of fun, but it was like just that quirky story in the news. And you would have expected if they're in hospital that they were being treated and that the worst was behind them. Yeah, because it's six days. So, but again, this is the insidious nature of the poison. It is

the most horrible way to kill someone. It's really unbelievable. These people suffered for so many days. Their family talked later about the conversations they were having with them. They were still conscious for several days. There was a talk about Heather thanking every healthcare worker who walked past her, basically, thanking the Ambo's for driving her to the other hospital. Thank you. Oh, thank you so much for caring for us.

Like, again, just the most beautiful people. Heather and Gail both died on the Friday. On that same day, police received a tip off from our friends at the Outram Tip. somebody at the tip because why this stage we're seeing a bit of Erin on the news and someone at the tip went hey that lady was here a couple of days ago I might just ring the cops and tell them please tear us out there to the outterum tip and they have a look at their CCTV and there is Aaron in her car reversing up pulling out a box throwing it in this spot in the tip they run straight out there to that spot and they find they find the

dehydrator, the food dehydrator, complete with remnants of dried mushrooms still inside. She didn't even wash the bloody thing, but I suppose you don't want it in your dishwasher or in your sink or anywhere because this is so toxic. So they found the food dehydrator, they have a vision of her putting it where they found it two days earlier. On the Saturday, August 5th, Don Patterson died. Don had definitely had a liver transplant. So in the seven days since he'd eaten that lunch, he had been to hell and back.

He had had a liver transplant and in the end it didn't work out. So he passed away and police made it clear that they thought these deaths might be suspicious by executing a search warrant on Aaron's house. Now the media by this stage is camped out at the front of her house, which is very helpfully on a very quiet road. So there's plenty of room for all the cameras, all the crews to just go out there and sit there chatting, gossiping, hanging out, waiting for something to happen, which they obviously knew was going to happen. And sure enough, the police roll up and they search her house. They seized

one mobile phone, now known as phone B. This is the phone that she already done the factory reset on, right? At the time, thought to be her only phone. But what they weren't aware of was that she had her other phone. She had it stashed around there in the house somewhere. They never found it. And we call that one phone A. And to this day, we have never found phone A. Wow. Now, The suggestion is that if it was her primary phone, there was probably searches. I don't know about you, but while the kids are in doing something, you know, I'm on my phone. Yeah. I'm getting on with my life on my phone.

So the suggestion is that that's the phone that had various searches and things on it. And that maybe she wasn't confident in trying to factory reset it. I mean, like most of us, you'd think, oh, the coppers can find everything. Even if I think it's reset, even if I think I've deleted it, they can find everything in there. And to that, the police took phone B, right? The following day, Erin did a remote factory reset on it. So it's sitting in an evidence drawer at the police station and she did a remote factory reset from her house.

That's really something, isn't it? And she said in court, I just wanted to see if they were dumb enough to leave it on. Well, that bodes well. So again, this goes to her attitude. On the Monday, so a week and a bit after the lunch, Erin did the thing that made this story go stratospheric, I think. And tell me, I'm sure you remember this moment.

Was this a moment Canada woke up to Erin and got excited? It was the day that she came home from somewhere in her car and decided to give an impromptu press conference in her front yard. Remember that? Yeah, I saw that. But I'm not sure if it was because I was subscribed to... A Current Affair, probably. A Current Affair is one of those news magazine shows that's on.

on every night and their journalist was the one who kind of got the scoop because when she pulled into her driveway, all the journals seemed a bit timid. They were like, oh, what do we do? What do we do? Do we approach her? Do we stay outside her gate? What do we do? And this one brave soul crept forward with his cameraman following him and he said, hi, Aaron, can I just ask you for your questions? And he's probably expecting, we're all expecting her to scream, get off my property and no comment and run into her house. She instead turns around, steadies herself, looks down the barrel of the camera, and then sort of gets emotional, looks up to the sky and starts talking and starts making sounds like crying, but there's no tears coming out.

Can you tell us about the mill that you cook? The journalist is Sam Cucciara for a current affair. These clips have been edited for clarity and brevity. I'm so devastated by what's happened by the loss of Donning. Don is still in hospital, the loss of Ian and Heather. And Gail, it was some of the best people that I've ever met. Gail was like, Gail was the month that I didn't have,

and Gail's never been anything but good and kind to me. And Ian and Heather, with 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. They never did anything to me. Isn't that a weird thing to say? Yeah, it's like indicating a kind of a under the surface feeling that she's got going on.

It's a defence to me that don't think I killed them, don't think I poisoned them because they never did anything to me. And I remember thinking, no one said you did love. Like, what do you... But again, behind the scenes, what we didn't realize was that she'd already been questioned by the police, she'd been interviewed, she knew full well that... So she's communicating with the police, actually, in this moment.

By the way, she's wearing the same white pants, so she must have had one pair of pants. Loves them. Them and the Birkenstocks. She's wearing the same outfit she was wearing a few days earlier. I just can't fathom. What has happened? And you must be pretty shaken up with this as well.

I'm devastated. I love them. Don't think for a second we didn't all pick up on the past tense of that. I loved them. Well, two of them are still alive, Erin. So at this stage. And I can't believe that this has happened. And I'm so sorry that they have lost their lives. Just can't believe it.

Can you tell us where the mushrooms came from? She now appears to be breaking down as she walks around to the other side of her car to grab something out of that before walking inside. The reporters chase her. Leave me alone, please. 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 I'm devastated that they're gone. That's what I have to say. Where do the mushrooms come from? Do they pick by you or... What meal did you cook them? She has this emotional moment and then she walks inside very calmly and, and and a current affair got their scoop and the rest of us got our moment with Erin to see who

is this person. And I'm not body shaming anyone, but she, she looks like a little garden gnome. I mean, as I said, she's a middle-aged lady. She just looks like a normal lady like all of us. Any lady you'd see at Netball. And then she's giving this performance. So it is hard to believe. It is hard to believe that this little lady could be an evil poisoning mastermind. But this is the story that's starting to emerge. And the things that she said that day were suss. We were like, again, we feel like we've missed something in this story. And we had.

We didn't realize that she knew that the police were looking at her hard for homicide. So then it went sort of quiet, media-wise. Everyone was talking about it, though. Everywhere you went, people were going, you know, you're on public transport, you're getting your nails done, you're at the doctor's surgery. People are going, hey, what about that mushroom lady? Everyone's just calling her the mushroom lady. Everyone's going, whatever happened about that mushroom lady?

It's like you and I was saying earlier, you know, about true crime podcasts versus journalism. Journalism gives us these headlines. And in this case, every couple of weeks, we'd get a little crumb. We'd get, oh, by the way, Ian Wilkinson survived. The one last guy survived and they're moving him out of hospital. And we go, oh, yeah, whatever did happen about that mushroom lady? So it was like that for about three months. And then all of a sudden, on the 2nd of November, so three months after the lunch, Aaron Patterson

arrested and charged with three counts of murder. And then, I mean, it's on for young and old, isn't it? Then everyone in the world's talking about the mushroom lady. Then we start to get all the theories. People talk about the fact that women, historical poisoners. That's the method of choice when a woman kills somebody, yeah. Yeah, because you don't have to subdue the person. And so we get all the stories and documentaries start coming out about previous poisoners and all that kind of stuff.

And Erin is locked up for this period of time waiting to go to trial. And it took ages. I don't know about Canada, but in Australia, we're still trying to catch up from COVID. It was like there was this huge backlog. And all these years later, it still takes years now for a trial like this to happen. So it was about a year and a half later when we finally got more headlines about the mushroom lady. and we're like, oh my God, this trial is actually going to happen. It's going to start.

And by this stage, we knew that lovely Ian Wilkinson, the pastor, had survived. He had gone back to his church in Coramara. Do they know why he survived and the others didn't? There was much, much evidence about it in court. And at the end of the day, nobody knows. It's pure luck of the draw. His personal, his health, he didn't need as much as Don. We know Don bless him, 8-1 and 1.

half, Wellington's. Ian ate one whole Wellington and certainly he had a liver transplant as well and his health has never recovered. So he survived by the skin of his teeth but something about his metabolism just meant that he somehow survived. By the time it came to trial, we learned

that there were three extra charges on the docket. So Erin was facing three murder charges and four attempted murder charges. That was for Ian Wilkinson and for the three alleged poisonings of Simon, her husband. Aha. For these two years, people started dropping rumors.

We started gossiping with each other. You know, she tried to poison her husband a couple times. Bullshit. No, she did. I swear to God, she did. And one of the reasons was that people started looking at Simon's social media. And he had Facebooked quite a bit about these terrible illnesses. There was that really bad one in particular.

He posted so glad to be back at work. and thank you to my workmates. I've been in hospital. I've been in a coma for weeks and doctors don't know why, have had life-saving surgery and just thanks God and thanks to my workmates

for welcoming me back. So people started to join the dots. I think probably words started creeping out of their family. It started to get around, the community that she tried to poison Simon earlier. And by the way, another interesting tidbit, it's part of the reason that Simon's income was judged to be so low,

in his tax return that he only had to pay her $40 a month was because of the amount of sick leave he'd taken in the previous 12 months because he'd been poisoned. Oh my gosh. Because it went from unpaid, yeah. Yeah, it affected his income. When that came out in court,

oh, and Aaron found out about the tax thing and he only had to pay $40 a month, people, women were saying to me everywhere I went, oh, he's a bit of an asshole, isn't he? He's a bit of a tight, because so many of us have had negative experiences with the family court, with men not wanting to pay and all of that kind of stuff. And I felt I corrected all of them when I had the opportunity to go,

hey, whoa, whoa, no, there's lots more to this than that. Don't cling to that one detail. Because he's actually, and this is the evidence is showing, he's actually a really good guy. He was trying to do the right thing. he was told this was the right thing to do by his accountant and by the tax department, blah, blah, blah. But it was one of those moments that I thought, is she going to get away with this?

Because certainly public sentiment was really swinging in her favour at that stage. And you wonder if the jury, are they feeling the same way? An important moment came when Erin took the stand. But we'll come to that because there was no more sort of erring on the side of she might be okay after we actually heard from her. So those three charges of attempted murder for Simon were dropped days before the trial. And nobody really knows why they were dropped. Then the trial ended up going for so long.

There was so much evidence that it was suggested that maybe it was just too much. Maybe the prosecution decided, oh my God, we'll be here for months if we try and prosecute all of these. Maybe they felt in the end they didn't have the evidence to prosecute for those earlier poisoning. So they were left off the docket. Erin applied for the trial to be conducted in her community, as is her right, but it created a nightmare for the court in the small town of Morwell, which is the closest courthouse to Leon Gathar. So it's this tiny country courthouse. And all of a sudden, as you said earlier, journalists from all over the world are flying in to see her in court to be part of this process. The locals are going, I met a bloke from the BBC yesterday. Like, this is crazy. There's one hotel in the town. It's booked out. At one stage there was a drama because they realized that the jury and some journalists were staying in the one hotel. So they had to move people, but then they realized, but at school holidays, of course, there's no other hotels in town for people to stay at.

Like, it should never have been held here. But again, once we hear from Erin herself on the stand, we realize she's a contrarian. She loves to make things difficult for other people. That is definitely a part of her personality, and especially if she's upset with them. She's a bit passive-aggressive, but she suffered in the end because she didn't realize that she would have to stay in more well for the whole trial. She would have to stay in the tiny lock-up in the police station that's designed for a drunk to stay in for a couple of hours. She had to stay in there for 11 weeks. On Friday nights, she got to go back to the normal prison. She had to come back on Mondays, but she starts complaining very early on, go,

Jesus, cold in here. And can I have a proper doona? And like the pillow's really uncomfortable. And they were saying to her, well, this is your idea, mate. This is your accommodation for the entirety of this trial. So it was a nightmare for Erin. And she definitely got grumpier. It's bizarre because usually they don't want the trial in that area

because it could taint the jury. They specifically request for the trial to be moved to a different location where there's less chance of like a jury knowing what's happened. There was a theory kicking around that statistically country juries don't convict as often or something. So there was some kind of magical thinking going on. So yeah, I don't know why she pushed for that. She pushed for it. She got it.

She wish she hadn't in the end. So hundreds of lawyers, you know, legal teams, assistance, support staff, journalists, everyone had to move. and stay in Morewell. Now, I couldn't do that, unfortunately. I wish I could have. I mean, I would have given anything to have been there every single day, but I have children. And like Erin, I'm a single mum.

So I tuned in every day. I had a link. So I got to listen every day. But I know that they had a raffle system every morning for journalists, because they're only about 12 seats in the court for journalists. So every morning, everyone from the local Leigh and Gathor newspaper to the BBC had to roll up to the court and hope that they're, number got pulled out of the raffle to go and sit in the courtroom. And everyone else went and sat in

an overflow room where they had a video. So everyone could hear what was going on. And then Erin decided to take the stand. We're weeks in. We've all learnt how telecommunications towers work. We're all experts on mushrooms. And we're all wondering, will Erin testify? Will she testify on her own part? And finally we got to the moment where her defense barrister said, Your Honor, I call my next witness Erin Patterson. And you could hear the squeals of delight go up across the country, across the world. We were like, oh my God, we're going to get to hear from Erin. Of course, for two days, she's talking to her lawyer.

So it's all, you know, it's all great. It's all terrific stuff. She's just a mum having a go. And she's had a great relationship with these lovely people. and why on earth would she want to hurt anybody? And why would she want to hurt them of all people? And Simon, a bit of an asshole, but, you know, she's dealing with it, she's getting on with it, she wasn't happy about the tax stuff, but she got over it.

That was ages ago, and it's all delightful. And then they finished up and we got to cross-examination. And we all knew this was going to be electric because the prosecutor was a lady called Dr. Nanette Rogers. That's coming up in a moment. We're back with the Mushroom Murders trial and Erin Patterson's cross-examination. Here's Michelle Lorry.

Now, if Aaron is a garden gnome, Dr. Nanette Rogers is like a cartoon character prosecutor. But she's that quirky woman who's like, I'm not here to have nice hair, guys. I'm here to make sure the law is done, the justice is done. So she's got this, curly hair, she's wearing bright yellow tights and flat shoes and she might have a tartan skirt

on and she might have some kind of scarf wrapped around her head and halfway up her, you know, her neck and halfway up her head. She's just a really energy. She's just a little tiny energy ball, little glasses. She just takes no rubbish from anybody. She's fabulous. And she's obviously got a brain like a steel trap. Like she's brilliant.

And we've been listening to her make the most boring things interesting for three weeks or something by this stage. And now she gets her hands on Erin. And it did not disappoint. It was amazing. These women hated each other. They made no effort. Erin flipped on a dime. Like she was suddenly a different person. Again, mistake by Erin. She'd been a great mom and all that for two days. All of a sudden, it's like she locked in on this woman. She hated her. And she was going to try and outwit her. She was going to try and make her look silly. She was so defensive. They fought about things she corrected Dr Rogers on dates and times. It was insane.

They had a moment where Dr. Rogers said to her, are you making this up as you go along, Miss Patterson? And Erin was like, no, that's outrageous. It was crazy. And Erin did start bringing up some stuff that we hadn't heard before. And it seemed like it came as a surprise to her defense team as well. At one point, she said, I never told them I had cancer.

That was her thing all along. I never told them I had cancer. Then all of a sudden she went, okay, I did tell them I had cancer, but I didn't mean it and I wasn't trying to trick anybody. What it was was, I wanted weight loss surgery. Oh my God. Exactly. We're all like, what?

Where is this coming from? This is completely new information. Okay, what it is was I wanted weight loss surgery because I've got such low self-esteem. And I thought if I told them it was cancer, that they would be sympathetic and supportive to me when I had my weight loss surgery and they would help me with the kids. But I thought if I told them it was weight loss surgery, they wouldn't be as. So she never had cancer, but she was going to play, like, make them believe. Yeah. So initially for months, years, she said, I never said I had cancer.

Now all of a sudden she goes, okay, I did. Okay, I did say I had cancer. Wow. But this is the reason why. I was actually going to have this weight loss surgery and I wanted them to help. So then Dr. Rogers is like, again, on her feet, she just goes, well, what sort of, where were you going to have weight loss surgery? What sort of effort had you put into getting that surgery?

And Aaron comes up with this, I went to this clinic. She names the clinic. Dr. Rogers goes, oh, Your Honor, can we have an early lunch, please? Let's just have a little early lunch and we'll come back. I just need to gather my thoughts. By the time she comes back from lunch, an hour and 15 minutes later, they have called the clinic. Yeah. They have ascertained that Erin was never a patient and that the clinic doesn't offer weight loss surgery.

Oh, my gosh. It's crazy. And this is the kind of thing that happened for three days. Like, Dr. Rogers just battered everything straight back at her so hard. And Erin, as I said to you, in her Trumpian way, just stood there and eyeballed her and said, no, I am not lying. And she was clearly lying about so many things. It was bizarre, and I think the turning point for the jury, for the public, suddenly she just was clearly such an deeply unlikable woman. And the whole idea that everyone was kicking around, but why would she do this?

And that was what her defence was really relying on. Because in Australia, as in Canada, you don't have to prove a motive, right? It's great if you can, suggest one, but you don't have to prove one because some people just do crazy stuff and that's just the way life is. So that was their big thing was like, there's no motive, there's no motive and hoping that the jury would pick up on that. But after three days of seeing Erin on the ropes and seeing how nasty, how arrogant, hearing her say things like, I just wanted to see if the police were dumb enough to leave the phone on. It changed everything. It just changed everything. It just changed. everything. It's like you don't need a motive. She's just... She's just a nasty piece of work,

you know? And then in summing up, Dr. Rogers just kind of put it all together, the most incredible display I've ever seen. Look at me. I'm fangirling so hard. In her summing up, her final arguments, she listed off hour by hour everything Erin was doing and the four other people were doing after the lunch. So she's like, okay, so now 10 o'clock Sunday morning when Gail was in and out of consciousness and crying and saying, you know, praying. Erin was having a coffee outside, as her son said. She was having a coffee outside in the sunshine and they were chatting about whether or not they should blah, blah, blah.

Six hours later, you know, Erin's driving around country, Victoria, looking at sandwiches. These guys are unconscious and looking at liver transplants. So those were the facts, the absolute unassailable agreed to facts. and then she gets into the lies. You know, Erin said this. We were able to prove that. The other thing that I found extraordinary was then, so then the jury go and deliberate, right? And again, everywhere I go, everyone's talking about it.

Everyone to a man said to me, I think Erin did it, but I think she's going to get off. Wow. And I've asked so many, I've asked police about this. I've asked lawyers. I've asked judges. Why do you think people thought she was guilty, but she wouldn't be convicted? And, you know, there are different theories, but generally they say, look, it was the motive. They said it was all circumstantial evidence and the lack of motive.

Like, no one can understand. No one can feel it in their gut. No one can think, yeah, I might have done that. It's such a heinous crime. The victims are so innocent. The crime itself, we're talking about sitting at your kitchen table, watching elderly people eat food that you know is going to kill them. And you're chatting with them.

It's unfathomable. And just to go along and act like everything was normal. Yep. Thanks for coming. Does anyone want to your coffee? No, you're off. All right, great. Thanks so much for coming, guys.

Yeah. See you at church next week. Yeah. Thinking, no, you're going to be dead. That's the way it played out. And eventually the jury, they deliberated for seven days as well, which was another reason that people were saying to each other, no, I don't think so.

I think they can't convict her. I think they can't. They feel like they haven't got the evidence. They can't do it. They came back and they convicted her. They found her guilty. Guilty of murdering Gail Patterson, Don Patterson and Heather Wilkinson and guilty of attempting to murder Ian.

I mean, these are all people in their 70s, by the way. So again, Ian's survival is miraculous. I was at the court the day of her sentencing because this is back in Melbourne now, right? So we're back in the big courtroom. We can all fit. And I went in there. I had seen her before. I had been to a hearing before, but I don't know if you've been to court.

I hadn't been until about a year ago. I started going about a year ago. What I wasn't prepared for was the depth of the feeling of shame. Like, after everything's happened, we're there. It's sentencing day. And the feeling of shame that's directed at the accused, at this stage, the convicted murderer, I just found almost too much for me. I was like, I was not expecting this.

We're all sitting here looking at this woman like she's in the stocks outside the village and we're all allowed to throw things at her. She's just standing there having to absorb it all. And then the judge eviscerates her for 20 minutes while he gives the reasons for the sentence that he's about to give her. And he commented about the brutality of the crime and the innocence of the victims. And it's not even directed at me, but it was like, oh, God. I'm struggling to breed.

This is so horrible. The family, victim's family, who are her family, by the way, are all sitting together, staring her down. All the journals are sitting together, staring her down. And in the end, he gives her 33-year minimum. He gives her life with a 33-year minimum. And he realizes, and he acknowledges, as he's speaking, that a lot of people are going to think that's not enough.

He's like, you know, and I understand that criticism. you've taken three lives in a brutal way. And a lot of people are going to say to me, she should just go to jail for the rest of her life. But he said, I'm acknowledging the humanitarian limitations of that because he said, you are going to spend a lot of time in solitary confinement, probably years. That's the advice that's been given to me,

is that because you're so controversial, other prisoners might try to harm you and you're going to be in solitary confinement. And he said, that is cruel. and unusual punishment. And for that reason, I'm not giving you a whole life sentence. Interestingly, the Daily Mail reported just this week that she is out of solitary confinement. So it's less than 12 months. Yeah. The other thing is that she's appealing the conviction, actually, and the Department of Public Prosecutions is appealing this sentence. So everybody's

going back to court at some point, and three judges at that stage will then go back over the evidence. So they don't have another whole trial. It's judges going back over the evidence, going over her complaints about the trial and making a decision from there as to whether they're going to uphold the conviction and uphold the sentence. Are they going to increase her sentence? Are they going to vacate the conviction? Do we go back to court? We don't know. But waiting on that news, of course, is Simon Patterson. So Simon, her husband, who is now her ex-husband, of course, they did divorce during this process, has custody of the children and has made it clear through a spokesperson that he doesn't want to speak to anyone, that his purpose, his primary purpose in life is helping these

children, you know, your mum's in jail for murdering your grandparents. It's unbelievable. So he won't speak publicly, he said, but it's come to pass that he is now writing a book. Simon Patterson is writing a book and potentially working on a podcast because he does want to tell his story, but he's like, I don't want to give interviews over and over again. I mean, 60 minutes would have offered him. God knows how much money to sit down and tell this story. But he seems to me to be a man of integrity who just wants to tell his story, his way, what he thinks is important about it once. And we're waiting with bated breath to hear it. But he said, well, I can't even do that yet because it's not over, because we've got this appeal to get through.

Yeah. That's where we're at with Erin Patterson, the mushroom lady. Isn't it the wildest, story? And can you imagine if she actually succeeded in, you know, if Simon did come to the lunch and she poisoned him and he died and then she's off to jail and the two kids have got no parents? Well, that's the other part of the, of the defensive strategy is saying, A, she had no motive and B, why would she do this to her children? We have proven, everybody in the world knows she's an amazing mum and obsessed with her children, devoted to her children. I don't know why, mate. There's no money motivation.

She's got heaps of money. There's no custody battle. We don't know. The only thing we can assume, and thank God I don't know. Thank God I don't understand because I don't have my brain doesn't work the same way. But this feeling of rejection, this feeling of being treated unfairly, being taken for granted. It all just worked in some way in her brain to think that this was a reasonable behaviour. Yeah. Was there any, like, usually they'll undergo a psychiatric assessment or something before

sentencing or something, especially if there's something weird like this that. No, and we were all hanging out for that as well. That was a question a lot of people were asking, when are we going to get the psych report here? Because it was quite an audience built up, you know, by this stage, who were following it very closely. And that was something we were waiting for. It never happened. And again, I've asked lawyers and judges about this. And they said, yeah, they were shocked as well. they were surprised that neither the defense nor the prosecution offered up a psychiatric report. So they said, well, maybe from the defense's perspective, maybe it didn't offer anything positive. But then equally, maybe from the prosecution's perspective, it didn't offer anything damning either.

They said, look, they would definitely have been done. Both sides would have done one. And for whatever reason, neither side thought it would help them. So they didn't use them. Even in sentencing, there wasn't. As I said, Erin had no friends. There were no, she didn't have any character witnesses. The one friend, Facebook friend, gave evidence for the prosecution.

And not in as much as, oh, now I hate her now and now I think she murdered people. But just in what she had to say, she was the lady who said, oh, well, she sent me a message saying fuck them. She sent me a message saying, you know, so even the one friend of hers who was called give evidence didn't help Erin. Although I have to say, I think there is an element of sexism to this story in that, You know, if a man had committed these crimes, we would have said, yep, men do that sometimes. Yeah. You know, men snap and kill their families. It's called, there's a name for it, family annihilator.

They do it. But because it's a woman, it's unfathomable. And everyone's like, but there's no motive. Yeah, but when is there? When is there a reason to kill all your family? Well, I guess statistically it is more likely that a man would kill his family. A hundred percent it is, but I think we accept that. We accept that it can happen.

And when a woman is accused of it, we go, no, it can't happen. Think of all the reasons why that's not possible. When a man does it, we don't stop to think why it's not possible because it is. We know it is. Yeah. She's definitely a character. And I will never forget, as long as I live after the judge, you know, gave his whole thing in sentencing 20 minutes talking about what a terrible person she is and the terrible thing

she's done and then says, and therefore I am sentencing you to, life imprisonment with a minimum sentence of 33 years, you can take the prisoner now. The room was so silent. It was like it was sucking the air out of my lungs and the only sound was the chink, chink, chink of her shackles as she went down the stairs. And she had to walk past, you know, in England they had those beautiful courtrooms where they literally take them down, straight downstairs from the middle of the room. But here in Melbourne she had to walk past the journalists who were,

all sinners, two rows of journalists, and she knocked on their table. It was so creepy. It was chilling. Wow. And they were stunned. Their faces were like jaws on the floor. She just knocked on her knuckle twice on their table. Yeah, that is psycho.

Oh my gosh. Yes, it is. So look, she's appealing. Who knows? Who knows what will come of it? I dare say, I assume, I hope, I guess. I predict that one day there will just be another headline saying, tried and failed and that's that.

Because, as I say, it went for 11 weeks. The prosecution were meticulous in their evidence. I think she'll struggle. But one of the reasons she's using to try and get it overturned was the fact that for a couple of days, the journalists and the jury stayed in the same hotel. There's no evidence anywhere that they chatted, that anything untoward happened.

But the fact that they were in the same building for a couple of days is one of the reasons. she's trying to use to get her conviction overturned. Well, good luck to her, I guess. She's mad, I tell you. Yeah, it makes me wonder, like, why her lawyer thought it would be a good idea for her to testify, you know? Or maybe he advised her not to, and she insisted.

Like, did she really, did they think that she was going to come across well? Yeah, that's the, the gossip is, the gossip out of the court is that they definitely did not want her to testify, but she insisted because again, she thought she was smarter. She thought she was smarter. And look, she had the best representation money can buy because she's a millionaire. So she was able to, I mean, she spent literally millions on this defense. So I don't know if she'll be able to afford them next time. Well, we'll see. Thank you so much, Michelle. I really, really appreciate it. This has been great. And thank you for all the work that you put into this. Thank you for the opportunity to just sit down and

tell the story of Erin. It has been such a joy. And again, I'm not obviously downplaying the crime, but it is such an amazing story. It's such an amazing story of a family of relationships, of misunderstandings, of, you know, context. I guess in a word context is what I'm always fascinated by, and this one's got heaps of it. So I appreciate the opportunity to chat it out with you. Thank you again to Michelle Lorry from Australian True Crime for joining us today and to her team for setting this up. You can find her show on podcast players and on YouTube. Just look for Australian True Crime. To see photos and other media from this case, follow us on the Canadian True Crime Facebook and Instagram pages. We donate monthly to those facing injustice. This month we have donated to the

Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, who offer support, research and education to survivors, victims and their families. Learn more at CRCVC.ca.ca. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsay Eldridge. Sound design and additional editing was by me and the theme song was composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with another Canadian true crime episode.

See you then.