During his first day in front of the jury, Simon Patterson sat on an office chair a few metres away from his wife in the dock who spent large parts of the hearing staring intently at him and at times was seen shaking her head.
Simon Patterson wiped tears from his eyes as he was asked questions about some of the last conversations he had with his parents before they died, and about how close his father had been to Erin before the fatal lunch.
He said his wife had shared a good relationship with his parents.
“They got on very well, I think. She especially got along well with Dad, they shared a love of knowledge and learning and an interest in the world and I think she loved his gentle nature.”
Other members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families seated in the courtroom also appeared to become distressed as Simon described his parents becoming increasingly unwell.
Simon said an early morning phone call from his father was the first sign that anything was wrong. Don Patterson said he and Gail as well as the Wilkinsons had fallen ill in the late afternoon, early evening after attending the lunch.
Simon drove to the Wilkinsons house to check on them and offered to drive them to hospital.
Heather commented to him: “I noticed Erin served herself food on a coloured plate, which was different to the rest.”
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Under cross-examination, defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, asked Simon Patterson about the different plate.
“She had a mixture of plates and it’s not that they’re all different to each other, but she had a bunch of ceramic plates generally that weren’t all the same, but there are a few of the same as each other,” Simon said.
Mandy asked: “Amongst those plates, there are a number of colourful ones?”
Simon replied, “No, there’s only one colourful one.”
The jury were also taken through details of Simon and Erin’s relationship which featured a number of separations, some lasting six months, before they separated on a permanent basis, without officially filing for divorce.
The pair met in the early 2000s while both working for Monash City Council, Simon as a civil engineerand Erin in animal laws and welfare.
A court sketch of Erin Patterson.Credit: Paul Tyquin
They married in June 2007 and had two children together.
The court heard Erin Patterson had been an atheist and Simon a Christian when they met. But Simon said his wife was moved by a service she attended with him and other friends at the Korumburra Baptist Church.
In the years that followed she joined her husband during Bible study sessions and attended regular Sunday services.
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“She was influenced by a few factors, including, I guess, my involvement in her life. I’m a Christian … it’s really God’s leading that makes us Christians or not,” he said.
Simon Patterson attended Korumburra Baptist Church, where Ian Wilkinson was the pastor, on Sundays and ran the technical operations of the church. Erin Patterson attended every second week with their children, to help with running a livestream of the service.
During this time, the court heard, Erin Patterson had inherited $2 million from her late grandmother’s estate and the family purchased holidays and went travelling overseas, as well as loaning money to Simon’s siblings.
“For both of us money has not been the most important motivation to either Erin or me,” Simon told the court.
In 2015, the Pattersons separated permanently but remained in frequent communication.
“When we lived together, it was always her leaving me,” Simon told the jury. “However, there were a couple of times I tried to reconcile and I stayed with her for a short period, and then went back to my home, I guess.”
However, Simon told the court the couple’s relationship took a turn for the worse in late 2022 when he listed himself as separated on his tax return for the first time.
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Simon Patterson recalled dropping the kids off when his former wife asked him if they could chat.
“I could see it was a serious thing,” he said.
“She sat in the car with me … and she said that she’d discovered that my tax return for the final year for the first time noted that we were separated. Before that, we hadn’t got the government involved in the fact we were separated.
“She said that it mattered, I think for the family tax benefit, something of that nature, so she would be obliged to claim child support off me, which had never happened before.
“She was upset about it. That was probably the first thing that made me feel there was substantial change in our relationship.
“Our habit for years was to message each other a lot in a chatty way. The chatty nature of it pretty much stopped. It became functional, and sometimes nothing.”
Erin Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one of attempted murder over the lunch.
The trial continues.
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