Explosive details about mushroom killer Erin Patterson have been aired, just weeks before she is set to front court for a plea hearing.
It can now be revealed that Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, suspected she had repeatedly poisoned him in the years and months before the deadly lunch that claimed the lives of his parents and aunt in 2023.
We can now report these claims following a decision by the Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday (August 8) to drop a suppression order preventing any publication of information that was revealed in a series of pre-trial hearings in 2024.
Last month, Patterson was found to have deliberately laced the beef Wellington meal with death cap mushrooms. Her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, died.
Patterson, 50, was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Heather’s husband, Ian, 71, who survived the July 29 meal.
She remains behind bars at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne’s west, where she awaits sentencing. Patterson will have 28 days to lodge an appeal after she is sentenced.
Husband paralysed
Before the trial kicked off in April, Patterson was originally also facing three separate attempted murder charges for allegedly poisoning Simon.
However, those charges were dropped on the eve of the trial for reasons that were not publicly disclosed at the time.
The charges related to three incidents in 2021 and 2022, where Simon believed that Patterson had attempted to kill him with a range of poisonous meals that included a chicken korma, beef stew, a wrap, and cookies.
The civil engineer claims Patterson first tried to kill him in November 2021 with a serving of penne bolognese that she had given to him in a Tupperware container.
In a Melbourne courtroom last year, Simon claims the penne made him so ill he turned grey and began vomiting profusely. He was later admitted to the hospital, where doctors struggled to determine what had caused his illness.
A few months later, Simon ate a curry that had been prepped by Patterson and became violently ill. Simon ended up in the hospital again, where doctors had to perform emergency surgery to save his life. A large section of his bowel was removed.
As he recovered, Simon says he returned to stay at the family home, where Patterson helped nurse him back to health.
In another instance, Simon ate a vegetable curry wrap and began to feel a familiar pain in his stomach.
“My instincts said, very subtly, ‘Something was not quite right here,’” he told the court.
He was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he claimed to have lost all muscle function.
He added: “By the end, I could only move my neck, tongue, and lips.”
So convinced that his wife was trying to kill him, Simon says he compiled a spreadsheet where he started to note what she had fed him and when.
In his statement to police, Simon wrote: “After the first time I got sick, I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought. In September 2022, my cousin Tim called to [talk about] whether Erin had been poisoning me. It was the first time I took it seriously.”
Five months before the deadly meal, Simon reportedly told his doctor that he believed Patterson had tried to kill him.
“I believe she’s tried to harm me,” he allegedly said.
So convinced of his wife’s motives, Simon changed his advanced care directives and his power of attorney, cutting Erin out. He put his father, Don, and brother Matthew in charge.
Secret chapel meeting
In the days after the infamous meal, family members of the Wilkinsons and Pattersons gathered inside the chapel at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital, where their loved ones lay gravely ill.
Inside the prayer room, Simon told the family about his fears that Patterson had poisoned him before and had now targeted their family.
Heather and Ian Wilkinson’s daughter, Ruth Dubois, was at the chapel.
During a pretrial hearing at the Supreme Court, Ruth said: “[Simon] wanted to tell us that he suspected his own illnesses had been a deliberate act – that he’d stopped eating food Erin had prepared because he suspected that she might have been messing with it.
“And that he was really sorry that he hadn’t told our family or our parents before this, but he thought that he was the only person that she was targeting and that they’d be safe.”
Simon reportedly then emailed his medical records to the family as proof.
Friends tell all
Just weeks after police charged Patterson with murder in September 2023, her online friends jumped at the chance to spill their thoughts on the then-accused killer.
According to Daily Mail Australia, a woman posted to an online group dedicated to Patterson that she was an “ex-friend of EP. Ask me anything”.
The woman continued: “I haven’t spoken to EP in a few years. I don’t know much about her current life, though. She has a new posse who are mean girls. I’m wondering why they aren’t defending her in the media.
“The media reports of her being naive [sic] and comments about her being stupid are not true. She’s meticulous and very smart.”
Other members then began asking questions about her experience with Patterson.
“Her whole family are extremely smart people. Seeing her hysteria in the media was very shocking. That is not the EP I knew,” she wrote.
“She was super super super *emphasis on super private. I know she had above what I would consider normal resentment for Simon, though.
“He didn’t pull out of the marriage. But yes, very lucky not to have been at that lunch. She left him after she got the inheritance.”
Another friend claimed that Patterson was “true crime obsessed.”
During the trial, the court heard that Patterson had been involved in a true crime group on Facebook dedicated to convicted baby killer Keli Lane.
Want to know more about the mushroom murders?
- Read about the new legal blow Erin Patterson is facing here.
- Read about the 10 key moments you may have missed from the trial here.
- Will the case be made into a TV drama? Find out here.
