Criminal - She Killed Three People with Poisonous Mushrooms. Did She Mean To?

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

In 2023, a woman named Erin Patterson had her husband's family over for a lunch of beef Wellington. A week later, three people were dead. Phoebe interviews Guardian reporter Nino Bucci about what happened next. You can also watch this interview at ⁠youtube.com/criminalpodcast⁠. Say hello on ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠. Sign up for our ⁠⁠occasional newsletter⁠⁠. Follow the show and review us on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠. ⁠⁠Sign up for Criminal Plus⁠⁠ to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make ⁠⁠This is Love⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Phoebe Reads a Mystery⁠⁠. Artwork by ⁠⁠Julienne Alexander⁠⁠. Check out ⁠⁠our online shop⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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why these three lunch guests have died and other ones, you know, on death's door. And yet she's fine. Today I'm talking with Nino Bucci. He's a justice and courts reporter at Guardian Australia. And last year, he covered a trial there that made international. headlines, a case that involved poisonous mushrooms. Back in July, 2003, a woman called Erin Patterson hosted her parents-in-law and also their relatives, so the auntie and uncle of her husband at her house, which was on a piece of

land in country, Victoria, which is sort of one of the southernmost mainland states. in Australia and she invited them around for Saturday lunch, a lunch of beef, Wellington. Erin said, didn't give a reason exactly for the lunch, but basically wanted to talk to them about something. And she was in this quite new house. So, you know, they came around. Most of them hadn't been there before. It was quite an unusual thing for her to invite them all over. And she showed them around a beautiful house, did what people normally do when they have people over for lunch and fussed a little about plating up. And then eventually they all sat around her dining room table and had a beef Wellington. It said that her in-laws were there, but was her

husband there? No. So her and Simon were estranged at that time. Simon didn't live there. He'd actually been invited to the lunch and cancelled late the night before. So he wasn't there. And his absence was something that as this sort of went on became somewhat more interesting. So you said they were having Beef Wellington. This seemed like a kind of a proper Saturday lunch. For people who don't know what Beef Wellington is, what is Beef Wellington? Sure. So there's a few different ways around it.

And effectively what it is, though, is a piece of beef wrapped in pastry. So this particular version that Aaron was making was from quite a well-known Australian chef, her version is not sort of one big log of beef, as is traditional, wrapped up in pastry, but Aaron sort of made single bits of beef wrapped up in pastry. And there was, you know, quite importantly in this case, between the beef and the pastry, there was a mushroom mix that was placed in their sauteed down mushrooms that were sort of, you know, put on top of the meat before the whole thing were wrapped up in little individual parcels. So each of those lunch guests had in front of them

effectively a little individually made parcel of beef mushrooms on top wrapped in pastry. So they sat down, they had their beef Wellington, and what happened next? Well, the discussion continued. They were, at that point, Erin was sort of raising concern she had about cancer. You know, they then realized that was why she invited them all around there to talk about her cancer diagnosis. But, you know, it ended the way most of these lunches ended. Everyone was sort of, you know, waxing lyrical about the meal, very glad to have been there, hopped off in their cars and went home. So everyone leaves after lunch, goes on their own way. And then what happens? So later that night, the lunch guests start to fall ill and they fall ill with symptoms that are quite similar to, you know, acute food poisoning or gastroenteritis.

There's, you know, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps. They all think basically, you know, they've eaten something bad. And when it becomes clear that it's all people who are at Aaron's place for lunch, they assume it's something they've eaten that day that, that they've potentially all had a bad piece of meat, for example. But as it kind of went from, you know, the early hours into, you know, dawn, they realized that we really need to get ourselves to hospital here because we've, you know, because of how violently unwell they were. They went there into, you know, the emergency department. They started receiving treatment, but it became pretty clear, pretty quickly that things weren't getting any better.

eventually it were sort of rushed off to bigger hospitals in Melbourne. How quickly did the doctors figure out that this wasn't just regular food poisoning? Yeah, it took a while. There was some stuff about their presentation and about, I guess, their liver function and the function of other major organs that sort of suggested this was something far more significant than, you know, eating, you know, a bad piece of steak. as they thought early on. And eventually they sort of, you know, through a process of elimination, decided it was probably amnita Floyd's or death cap mushroom poisoning.

Now, they weren't necessarily in a position at that hospital or type, diagnosed that really, you know, clearly from that point. So they started speaking to people in Melbourne who were experts on it. And they started sort of treating them as a presumptive case of that fairly early on,

even before that was sort of, you know, actually evacuated to, to those bigger hospitals. And it became, you know, obviously once that was the presumptive diagnosis, they were really concerned that these people might not survive. What happens to the body when you eat death cap mushrooms? Yeah, it's quite horrific, really, and it's effectively a, you know, it's quite a slow and painful process for which there's,

There's very little that can be done. And something you really stuck in my mind that was particularly sort of frightening about the people that kind of eat death cap mushrooms is that, you know, you go through this process of really intense symptoms of, you know,

vomiting, diarrhea, exactly as you would when you've got, you know, a really bad food poisoning. But then there's this kind of period where it eases off and a lot of people who are suffering kind of think, you know, they're kind of getting better. But what's actually happening at that point is that it's this, you know, the organs have failed to such a point that they're not even doing that anymore.

You know, there's such a relentless sort of progressive and frightening deterioration of everything that even though symptoms stop, but doesn't mean you're getting any better. It in fact means that you've, you know, almost progressed to the point where you're beyond saving. And I found that quite horrifying. Once the group gets to the hospital and they realize, Aaron Patterson, the woman who had house they'd been at, she also comes to the hospital complaining of stomach issues. Yeah, so more than a day after the others,

Erin also goes to hospital. She's not as unwell, but she's also, you know, half their age and, you know, somewhat healthier. So, you know, yeah, she's sick, but she's not as bad. I mean, she walks in, for example, as opposed to having to be taken there by ambulance is a kind of fair indicator of the difference between the two. And she also, somewhat strangely, you know, at this point they're fairly confident that it is death cap mushroom poisoning. And so, you know, the local hospital, when she comes in a far more alive to the prospect, this could be something really serious than they were when her other lunch guests came in, you know, more than a day earlier.

So they basically say, hey, you've got to come in here straight away. And she actually leaves. She leaves a hospital, says she's got stuff to take care of at home and kind of comes back later on, which again, you know, was something that people at the hospital found unusual at the time, but also was very different to how the lunch guests were reacting to that poisoning. What happened to everyone who got sick? So of those four people who became terribly unwell after eating beef, Wellington at Aaron Patterson's house, three died. And the only survival was Ian Wilkinson. He spent months in intensive care. You know, he was in an induced coma for large parts of that. And, you know, still sort of to this day, you know, we're almost three years on now, sort of has ongoing health complications from that. from that meal. How quickly did the police launch an investigation after the deaths?

By the time the family had been taken to that major hospital in Melbourne, it's called the Austin Hospital. They do a lot of, you know, toxicological deaths, poisonings, that sort of thing. By the time the family were there, which was, you know, within days of the lunch, police were looking at the case. And, you know, by sort of November, so, Sort of some four months after, after that lunch, Aaron Patterson was in fact charged with those three murders and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson. What did she tell police had happened? So this is an interesting one because what Aaron Patterson did in her first interview was effectively kind of say, look, I don't know what's happened here. I have never gone foraging.

I have no reason to harm these people. I was sick as well. I bought the mushrooms from the supermarket and an Asian grocer. Beats me what's happened effectively, you know, but I've got no reason for to hurt them. I love them. And it could have been me. You know, at a basic level, that's what she's saying.

That story would change somewhat as the sort of months rolled on. But basically when, you know, she speaks to police, she's seemingly as baffled as they are about why these three lunch guests have died and other ones, you know, on death's door. And yet she's fine. We'll be right back. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of

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wasn't around, did she have a good relationship with them? As you might imagine in a case like this, the question of what Aaron's relationship was like with Simon was somewhat contested. and, you know, even pieces of evidence that seemed quite open and shut about that relationship could be interpreted in a number of ways. I guess if you sort of think about, for example, she'd be, there'd be text messages tended about conversation she was having just with him, and they'd seem maybe a little heated and, you know, there'd be discussions about money or whatever, but they were, you know, progressing. Then at the exact same time,

having these conversations with him, she's having separate conversations with her friends where she's speaking in quite a disparaging way about Simon and his family. So it is not easy to say what that relationship was like, not only because of obviously what followed and the context in which we were learning about it being a triple murder trial, but also because there was seemingly kind of two sides to Aaron and how she engaged with people about that relationship. Once the police initially interviewed Aaron, what happened with their investigation? What else did they learn after interviewing her? These interviews, fairly early in investigation, they've kind of been explained to me before by people in homicides, gods and things like that. It's effectively

a chance to get people to kind of hang themselves with their own rope. So they're hoping that Aaron is going to say enough about what happened to that lunch that they're going to be able to prove her wrong. And she kind of did that. There was enough that she gave away there to sort of indicate that what she was saying wasn't true. Part of that revolved around, you know, material I'd get later on from her phone and other devices. Part of that was also around. They were able to establish that she had dumped a food dehydrator at a local, you know, what we call it, a tip in Australia, but basically like a dump,

they were basically able to put together these bits and pieces that contradicted very much what she said in that interview. And if you kind of, you know, look at the timeline of that interview sort of occurred, you know, that first interview occurred, you know, I think roughly about three months before she was actually charged. So, you know, the police kind of went away and did a little bit more work and kind of were able to find in their mind enough to sort of point to the fact that this wasn't some accidental death, but that Aaron Patterson had intended to kill these people. When was she arrested?

She was arrested in charge in November of 2023. So there was a kind of four-month period almost between that lunch and when she's when she's charged with with the murders and it became fairly clear early on in that trial that the essential issue was whether she'd meant to put death cap mushrooms in the beef Wellington so somewhat differently to the story that had been presented you know up until that point it no longer was in dispute that she'd fed death cap mushrooms to her lunch guests in those Beef Wallingtons. What had become, you know, the central issue of the trial is whether she'd meant to do it. And effectively, you know, Aaron was pleading not guilty saying that, look, I forage these mushrooms, I didn't realize our death caps, I accidentally

put them in the Beef Wallingtons, that's killed the lunch guests. I got sick too, but for various reasons I didn't get as sick as them. That's basically what the trial came down to, was that question of intent. There were charges that were eventually dropped, attempted murder charges against her husband, Simon, who hadn't been there? That's right. So one of the things that was really fascinating about her arrest and charging back in November is we had no idea about this background or alleged background or history of attempting to poison Simon. And so that really was a bolt from the blue when that came out. So, as part of their investigation, what happened at the lunch, they spoke to Simon,

and he spelled out to them these four occasions where he said she'd tried to kill him before. Now, there were all occasions where, you know, police alleged it was just those two together. He was eating food that Aaron had prepared for him. Their children weren't there. And it all occurred when they were away from home as well. So, you know, Aaron Patterson, when she was charged in November with the lunch charges,

which in and of itself wasn't a huge surprise given everyone knew she was kind of the only suspect. She was also charged with these matters involving Simon that nobody had any idea about. But between her being charged in November and the trial starting the following April, there'd been a lot of legal argument back and forth about these two sets of charges, what were called, you know, the lunch charges and the Simon charges effectively. And right before the trial started, there was a ruling that came down, and the judge effectively said these trials have to be held separately. You can't have one trial on the Simon charges and the lunch charges,

you're going to have to do them separately. And eventually, you know, the director of public prosecutions here decided that they dropped the Simon charges and they proceeded with the lunch charges. What was the trial like? incredible in the sense that we all knew it would be this completely uncontrollable kind of raging storm. And yet it still sort of took us by surprise, I think, all the many reporters who covered it. There was, you know, evidence that was obviously really sort of heart-wrenching from Ian Wilkinson, who was at the luncheon, but also from Simon Patterson, about losing his parents

and also sort of, I suppose, reflecting on his relationship with Aaron and the future for his kids and that sort of thing. And then, you know, later on in the trial, the very sort of final witness was Aaron Patterson herself. And, you know, that was quite remarkable as well because you sort of go from seeing this person in a dock every, day, but sort of having seen her on television for, you know, months before that, and in newspaper photographs and all the rest of it. And then, you know, she sort of comes to life

before your very eyes. And it's, that, that was quite an experience too. Where did the prosecution say they thought she'd gotten the poison mushrooms? So the prosecution said that it was open to the jury to find that she'd got them from one of two locations and this was a fairly laborious part of the trial because basically what they were doing was measuring up location data to sort of say Aaron Patterson was in this location at this time and then kind of cross-referencing that with public posts on a website called I Naturalist which is basically a citizen science website you can log posts on there about things you've found in the wild, you know, whether it be types of plant like mushroom or

animals. And what the prosecution was saying was, look, it's open to you as the jury to find that Aaron Patterson was in a place called Locke and another place called Outram. After there were public posts put on Eye Naturalist identifying those locations as having Death Cut mushrooms. So they didn't know exactly. But they were saying, our case is that she got them from either outram or lock on either of these occasions in the weeks leading up to lunch effectively. What did Aaron say when she testified? She effectively sort of said that she hadn't made that recipe before,

but she wanted to do something different because it was a special lunch. She couldn't find the exact ingredients to follow the recipe that she'd found. So she'd sort of ad-libbed. And instead of buying one big sirloin, she decided to just buy individual sirline steaks, she said she was cooking down the mushrooms, as the recipe is sort of called for. But then they didn't taste particularly good.

They tasted a bit bland. So she threw in some dried mushrooms that she had in the pantry. Very much, I guess the sort of through line of her evidence was, one of having a great deal of love and respect for the people she was alleged to have killed, having no reason to want them gone, having had some issues in their relationship with Simon, but that, you know, had no reason at all to have done what she was alleged to have done. What was the end of the trial like? What happened? The trial went on and on and on. It dragged far longer than anyone thought.

it went for 11 weeks in the end and you know Aaron Patterson's evidence was was you know the most dramatic period of those 11 weeks and there was there was a point you know in her evidence where I could see a path

to her being found not guilty again you know just to sort of emphasize this is not you know criminal trials are not about a lot of the time are not about someone's innocence, you know, but they're about whether there's enough evidence for them to be found guilty, you know,

beyond reasonable doubt. And there was just enough, I thought, at times early on in her evidence, to suggest that a jury, or, you know, it could be enough for a single juror to have some doubt about whether she'd intended

to kill people with those, you know, poisonous beef wellingtons. But eventually the jury came down and they found Aaron Patterson guilty of all charges. And what was their sentence? Basically in Australia, once there's a guilty verdict down, you know, the jury getting sent out, they're thanked for their work. And there then is what's effectively called a plea hearing for, you know, where the prosecution give their side of the sentence they think Aaron Patterson should get.

And Aaron Patterson's, you know, lawyers basically say, well, these are the mitigating sort of circumstances. You know, in Aaron's case, there wasn't a lot of them. You know, she'd taken it to trial, sort of indicates a lack of remorse. But, you know, that she had never been, you know, found guilty of any other serious sort of criminal offending. You know, this was her first major crime. So, you know, it was all weighed up. And in the end, she was given a minimum sentence of 33 years with a maximum of life. important to sort of say that Erin Patterson's appealing that conviction. She's not appealing the

sentence, but she's appealing that conviction and, you know, she maintains her innocence. And there's going to be an appeal hearing, you know, in her case later this year. Her husband has a book deal. Yeah, Simon Patterson has been represented by, you know, a media spokesperson since fairly early on in this. One of the things that we don't know a great deal about that Simon certainly can talk to are those, you know, alleged attempted murders

that Aaron committed on him where, you know, police had alleged and, you know, he certainly suspects and continues to suspect that she attempted to kill him on a number of occasions before the lunch. Look, if that's the focus of the book, I'm sure that'll be the focus

of even more headlines as well in the coming months. But you know with the motive, if she was trying to kill him, he wasn't at that lunch. So why would she still serve, if she is guilty, why would she go ahead was serving the Beef Wellington to his family?

I've really tossed this around a lot. I suspect that possibly Aaron's thinking was that Simon, may come. And if, for example, like he'd taken their kids out that day, if, for example, he'd come back early and happened to his whole family sitting around eating, maybe he was more likely to partake as well. She did have extras. She had extra beef wellingtons that she could have served to other people who came. Perhaps she wanted to see, obviously, the previous attempts had Simon alleged attempts involving Simon had been unsuccessful. Maybe it was a dosing test.

and it was, let's see how far I can push this. I mean, ultimately where I kind of land with this is that you're on a hiding to nothing when you try and get inside the mind of someone who'll murder three people. And it's a very difficult thing for most of us to do to try and consider their motives, especially when they've been questioned about this particular thing for days on end and, you know, I've sat in the same room while she's doing that, and I'm still no close to understanding why. Well, Nino, thank you.

Thanks, Phoebe. You can read more of Nino Bucci's reporting for Guardian Australia at the link in our show notes. Aaron Patterson's appeal will be held this August. If you'd like to watch the video of this interview and all our other video interviews, follow us at YouTube.com slash criminal podcast, or just click the link in our show notes.

I'm Phoebe Judge. Thanks for listening. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all-in-one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system.

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