Reuters World News - Australia’s mushroom trial

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

A triple murder case with a culinary twist is transfixing Australia and the rest of the world. Erin Patterson is accused of using poisonous mushrooms concealed in a Beef Wellington lunch to kill three elderly relatives of her estranged husband. The jury in her trial is expected to begin considering its verdict next week. In this special episode of Reuters World News, we look at the prosecution and the defense in this case. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠here⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠here⁠. Visit the ⁠Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement⁠ for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit ⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices⁠ to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A family lunch in rural Australia ends with three coffins, one survivor, and a nation asking whether death by Beef Wellington, which contained deadly mushrooms, was a tragic mistake or murder. On this special episode of Reuters World News, we dive into the alleged mushroom murders which have gripped Australia and the world. I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. Mother of two, Erin Patterson, is on trial accused of murdering her in-laws and another relative in 2023 by serving them up a Beef Wellington lunch, which contained death-cap mushrooms.

Our reporter Alistair Powell has been covering this case since the beginning. Hi, Alistair. Hi, Kim, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for joining us. This is a case with so many twists and turns. But let's start by taking everyone to the place where this drama, this tragedy, is now all playing out. You'll see Belpastings, whenever you are, seated.

You go from Sydney to Melbourne to get to the small town a few hours out from there. How about you? I've just arrived in Morwell. It's a fairly unassuming former coal mining town of about 15,000 people. And one of the first things I saw, or one of the first things I heard, was camera shutters. because the defence team were leaving a nearby cafe heading back to the court after lunch. They were being trailed down the street by photographers.

At least in the town centre of Morwell, this case is completely taken over. This town is bustling, cafes are doing a roaring trade with journalists from all around the world. And Alistair, there's even been lines of people waiting outside the court. We've seen people from all over this part, of the world turning up at the court to queue for hours for the hope of getting one of the

limited seats in the public gallery yeah so i am a true crime fanatic so i do take my true crime quite seriously and i thought oh well i may as well you know it is unique it's really been wall-to-wall coverage in australia a lot of publications are running data live blogs from the trial. There's a couple of documentaries in the works. And there are several daily podcasts recapping what's happened in court that day. And they call it the mushroom case. Let's start at the start and get a handle on the main characters here. There are five. And the first we need to know about is the accused, Aaron Patterson. Allister, tell us about her. Yeah, so Aaron Patterson, she is 50 years old. She's a mother.

of two, and by all accounts that we've heard in the trial, including her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, she is a very intelligent and articulate woman. She trained as an air traffic controller briefly. She was editing local newspaper or newsletter shortly before her arrest, and I think it's fair to say, not the kind of person that's normally arrested for an alleged triple murder. Her estranged husband, you just mentioned, Simon Patterson, wasn't at this lunch, but his parents were. So at the lunch, we have Simon's parents, Don and Gail. We have Gail's sister, Helder Wilkinson, along with Ian Wilkinson, Heather's husband. There were five guests were supposed to be there. Simon was invited, but he pulled out the night before the lunch, saying he

didn't feel comfortable attending. What was the relationship like between Erin and her former partner, Simon? And why were her in-laws and the others invited? The court has heard that there were problems in Simon and Aaron's marriage soon after they married in 2007. They went through a number of periods of trial separations before separating for good, although they do still remain legally married. However, their relationship, the way it's been characterized in the court,

and this is obviously, it very much varies, depending on whether you believe the prosecution or the defence, they did seem to have a functional relationship for much of that time. They co-parented their two children amicably, and as we know from this lunch, there was still a relationship between Aaron and her in-law. even at the time of these deaths. And the reason that Erin wanted them to be at the luncher, at least this is what the court has heard,

is that she had some medical issues that she wanted to discuss with those present. And those medical issues become part of this as well, right? Because she had been claiming that she had cancer. At the lunch, we've heard from Ian Wilkinson, who is the sole surviving guest in the lunch that Erin told those assembled that she had cancer. Now, the prosecution alleges that this cancer diagnosis, which it's not in dispute that Aaron lied about this cancer diagnosis. The prosecution alleges that this was in fact a way for Aaron to lure those guests to the lunch to get them to attend, even if Simon wasn't there. Okay, so Erin admits she lied about having cancer. We'll get to what she says is her reason why in a bit.

But first, walk us through what happened when the guests arrived for this lunch. They arrived around midday or just after midday. The four of them, they had a sort of, they had a brief look around downstairs in the kitchen. They had a look in the garden. And then they went back into the kitchen where Erin was preparing lunch. the exact events of what transpired are in dispute. Another very key piece of prosecution evidence we heard in the testimony of Ian Wilkinson is that when this lunch was plated, so it's beef, Wellington, mashed potato and green beans.

Ian Wilkinson said in his evidence that Aaron served herself on a different colour plate. Yeah, the prosecution says Aaron Patterson ate off an orange-tanned-colored plate while everyone else ate off grey plates. Now, obviously, the inference from that that the prosecution is trying to make is that that was a way for Aaron to be sure that she wasn't feeding herself a poisoned meal. Now, the defence disputes this. They say that the plates were mismatched in general. and there was no matching set of plates, and it's possible that Ian Wilkinson might have been mistaken about that. So they eat this meal.

What happens after that? Yeah, so around midnight on the evening following the lunch, and this is according to the testimony of Ian Wilkinson, he and his wife, they started to feel quite unwell, there was vomiting all through the night. And then dawn on the morning after the lunch, Heather called Don and Gale, who said they had similar symptoms.

All four lunch guests go to hospital and doctors fairly quickly figure out this is a suspected case of poisoning by what's called death cap mushrooms. They're transferred to a specialist hospital in Melbourne. In the next few days, Aaron Patterson's former in-laws, Don and Gale, as well as Gail's sister, Heather, die. Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, is critically ill. He gets a life-saving liver transplant. and ultimately survives. Alistair, what about Aaron? Did she get sick?

She claims that she was also unwell and she began feeling unwell around that afternoon. And she also attended a local hospital the morning after the lunch. She then very quickly left the hospital saying she had to attend to some things at home against the advice of medical professionals.

She even has to sign a waiver to leave the hospital, right? she's leaving despite doctor's advice, because they've connected her to the other patients and already suspected this was a case of poisoning. Erin does return, though? She eventually returned around an hour and a half later. They also moved her to a specialist hospital, as they believed, as she was, the cook of the lunch, she may also have been affected, but it certainly seems that she did not become as sick as the four guests at the lunch.

Erin's vitals look good and she's discharged. A police investigation begins. And just over a month later, Erin Patterson is charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder. That brings us to the trial where everything comes out. So the prosecution puts forward what they call four deceptions. What are they?

So the first deception is the fabricated counterfeit, diagnosis. That was a way to lure the guest to the lunch when they may have not attended if it had been something less serious. The invitation might be, the invitation might have seen more unusual. That's a prosecution's allegation. The second deception is obviously poisoning the meals while serving herself an untainted portion. Then thirdly is the allegation that Aaron Patterson was lying about being sick in order to avoid suspicion. The prosecution says that her symptoms were clearly not as serious as the other four. There was no evidence that she'd ingested death cap mushrooms,

and her claims to be sick were a fabrication. And the fourth deception of the prosecution alleges is that she then began a cover-up when police began investigating the deaths. Now, that includes disposing of a dehydrator that was later found to contain death-cat mushrooms. that includes factory resetting mobile phones that she owned on numerous occasions, and that also includes lying to investigators and experts who were looking into this case.

What did they say about the deadly mushrooms in the meal? They say that these mushrooms were dehydrated and then they were blitzed into some kind of paste, which was then combined with other mushrooms that she'd bought at a local soup market, a local grocer. Beef Mountain obviously has a kind of mushroom paté in between the beef and the pastry, and that's how the prosecution alleges that she hid these mushrooms in the meal. Death cat mushrooms are an invasive species in Australia. They can appear greenish, yellowish, brownish or off-white. They're commonly found near oak or pine tree.

often in forests. The Australian Botanic Gardens website, which gives information about Australia's fungi, says they're similar to the harmless straw mushroom. Alistair, where did the mushrooms Aaron allegedly used come from? Well, according to the prosecution, these were Death Cat mushrooms which Aaron Patterson had picked herself and then dehydrated and introduced into the meal.

Now, the evidence they have that this is the case is there's a website called I Naturalist where people can post sightings of all kinds of animals and plants, one of those being Death Cat Mushrooms. And there is evidence that she visited this website, visited pages containing sightings of Death Cat Mushrooms, and the prosecution says that forensic evidence, sort of an examination of her mobile phone, shows that she visited these areas after visiting this website and actualist. Okay, let's come to the defense case now and staying with those death cap mushrooms. What did Aaron say about that? Her story has changed somewhat in the two years from the lunch to the trial. This happened almost two years ago now. Initially,

when she was asked by police where the mushrooms had come from, she said from a local grocery store. Then she said they were dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne. Health and safety officials visited all the Asian grocery stores in the areas that she said she may have bought them.

They found no evidence of death cap mushrooms. Really now, during her testimony, she says she simply doesn't know. She had containers of dried mushrooms at home. She believes that maybe some forage mushrooms, had got into those containers of dried mushrooms, and really the presence of death caps in this lunch was a tragic accident. So she doesn't say that she actually foraged anything?

She does, I mean, she does say that she foraged mushrooms, but she says she never knowingly foraged death cat mushrooms, which is what the prosecution alleges, and that's really what's required to secure these convictions. they have to demonstrate that Aaron Patterson not only forage for deathcats, but she knowingly did so, and she knowingly introduced them into the lunch.

And what about the plating up of the meals? The defence says that the plates, evidence from Ian Wilkinson, he was honestly mistaken. There were not four identical plates in one different plate that Aaron Patterson served herself on. In fact, these plates were all mixed up.

And the defense also says, says that there was no separate recipe for Aaron's own beef Wellington. These Beef Wellington's were all identical, and Death Cat Mushrooms were introduced into all of them, and that Aaron Patterson became sick herself. So why didn't she get really, really sick? Yeah, so we heard in her evidence that she did not eat the entirety of her meal. We also heard she had problems with binge eating and purging. and after the lunch she had eaten the large majority of a cake that had been brought by one of the guests

and then purged that food along with the defence argues the contents of the beef fountain where the death cap were contained. Let's go down to another one of the deceptions, as the prosecution put it, the cancer lies. What did the defence say about that? Yeah, so this was something that we heard in Aaron Patterson's testimony. She struggled with her weight and with eating throughout much of her life, that's according to her, and also according to Simon Patterson. And she claims that she was planning to have some kind of weight loss surgery, whether that was some kind of liposuction or gastric band surgery.

She was planning to have that. And she had effectively invented the cancer diagnosis because she was embarrassed about those true reasons and also she felt that she might need help with things like child care. And so she needed really that reason if she was recovering from such a surgery. What was she like when she was giving evidence about that? Erin Patterson, she gave evidence in her defence for around three days. And she was, she was very, very emotional when she was giving that evidence, especially talking about her low self-esteem and her health issues and the impact this has had on this family and on her children. She was very emotional when she was giving that evidence. Yeah. And the defense made a point

right of saying, you know, there's a difference between lying about having cancer and committing murder. That's correct, yeah. The defense does not dispute that Aaron Patterson told lies before this lunch and told lies after this lunch to people investigating the causes of these deaths. But the defence's argument really is, well, just because somebody did not tell the truth doesn't mean that they committed three murders and one of them to murder. If we come to the fourth deception, as the prosecution puts it, what did the defence say about what happened after the lunch, the so-called cover-up and the dehydrator? So this dehydrator is a very key piece of prosecution evidence. We have seen receipts that show it was purchased in 18. April, 2023. And the prosecution alleges that two and a half hours before she bought the dehydrator, her mobile phone suggested she visited areas where death caps were growing. Now, the lunch

took place on 29th of July, 2023. A few days later, on the 4th of August, they found this dehydrator in a rubbish dump dumped by the accused in the days after the lunch. Now, the prosecution alleges this is clearly incriminating conduct. The defense, says Aaron Patterson, she panicked. She was overwhelmed by the situation. She was overwhelmed that a meal that she had prepared had left to the deaths of three people. And she was worried what was going to happen. She worried that social services were looking into this case and they'd visited the check on the welfare of the children. She was worried that her children were going to be taken off her. And that's the reason she says that she disposed of this dehydrator.

What about motive? What was the motive? Was there one or what both sides say about that? So the prosecution has been keen to stress that it does not have to prove a motive. A motive is not required to secure a murder conviction in the state of Victoria where this case is taking place. Having said that, the prosecution did spend quite a lot of time, did spend quite a lot of time, did spend quite a lot of long time hearing evidence that this relationship between Aaron and the rest of the Passon family had deteriorated or was deteriorating at the time of this lunch. And so while the prosecution does not have to prove motive that there has been some introduction of the idea that perhaps things were not well in the Passon family, these spats and frustrations, as they've characterized it, in the Pashton family would lead woman to try to murder four people, including the grandparents of her own children. The defense

says this is just beyond the realms of rationality. So motive is not required to secure a conviction. So we come to the end of this very long trial. Can you sum up for us how the defense to begin with characterizes this whole thing, how they tie all of this together. So the key thing for the defense is the defense does not have to prove anything. The burden of proof is entirely on the prosecution and they have to convince the jury beyond all reasonable doubt that Aaron Patterson deliberately murdered three people and tried to kill at fourth. And that is something that Patterson's barrister, Colin Mandy, was very, very keen to stress

during his closing address. He told the jury, if you have any shred of doubt in your mind, you must acquit her. The defense characterizes Aaron Patterson as somebody who made a mistake, a terrible mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

They say that the allegation that she disposed of evidence or tried to cover up evidence is not evidence of her guilt. It was evidence of someone just panicking at the enormity of what they done, of what she had. done. Okay. What about the prosecution's closing arguments? How do they put this all together and

how do they want the jury to look at what's been presented? Yeah, so we've already discussed the four main deceptions and the prosecution really says that all throughout the lead up to this lunch and after the lunch, Aaron Patterson acted in a calculated, deliberate and incriminating manner. Now, they say the forensic evidence, the evidence from her cell phone, the evidence of her visiting these websites, the evidence of the dehydrator, the coloured plates, these all add up to someone deliberately trying to poison these people. After nine weeks of listening to evidence, the jury will on Monday begin deliberating. If convicted, Aaron Patterson faces life in prison. If she's acquitted, she will, after almost two years in custody, walk free.

We'll have the results on Reuters World News when it breaks. Reuters World News is produced by Gail Esser, David Spencer, Sharon Wright-Garson, Christopher Waljaspur, Jonah Green, and me, Kim Vinal. Our senior producers are Tara Oaks and Carmel Crimmons. Our executive producer is Lila Decretzer. Sound design and musical composition by Josh Summer. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show.