Judge cautions jury over ‘hearsay evidence’ given by accused mushroom cook’s estranged husband Simon and surviving lunch guest Ian

Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale said the jury heard evidence from the accused woman, Erin Patterson, that she had a tendency to forage for edible wild mushrooms from about 2020, and picked and ate what she found.

In summarising Patterson’s evidence to the jury, the judge said the accused said she loved the taste and tried various varieties from places such as grocers, including Asian grocers, and from the wild.

She said she used the mushrooms in curries, pasta dishes and soups and that she thought the exotic varieties tasted better.

Mushrooms, the accused said in her evidence, grew at her three-acre property at Korumburra in 2017 to 2018 and also at the local botanic gardens and rail trail. Some were edible, but one had her worried, she told the jury, and she would scroll through Facebook messages as part of her mushroom research.

“Eventually she told you she started consuming them,” Beale told the jury in his charge.

He told the jury that Patterson said in her evidence she became confident enough to fry some foraged mushrooms in butter and put them in her children’s meals, after chopping them up small enough so her son and daughter would be unable to notice them.

“She told you that she accepted that death cap mushrooms were in the beef Wellingtons, she told you that the vast majority of the mushrooms for that meal came from the local Woolworths in Leongatha, although some came from [an] Asian grocery store she purchased from in the 2023 April school holidays,” Beale said.

Beale recapped that Patterson said in her evidence that she bought a dehydrator when she moved to Leongatha, and posted photographs of it to Facebook. She later dehydrated mushrooms picked from the local botanical gardens, but they did not turn out well.

That was more of an “experiment” before Patterson said she went on to dry and eat other mushrooms as she grew in confidence, the judge summarised.

She maintained she did not pick any from under oak trees at the botanical gardens, but did pick them from near three trees there.

In Patterson’s pantry in May and June 2023, Beale told the jury, there was a Tupperware container with different dried mushrooms inside.

Beale said Patterson agreed that she later picked mushrooms from her Leongatha property, and in the lead-up to the fatal lunch, but denied ever seeking toxic mushrooms.

But during her evidence she agreed she lied to others in the aftermath of her lunch about foraging.

When police searched her house, the judge told the jury, Patterson agreed that police didn’t find any books about mushrooms, but noted some books remained in the garage unpacked.

Beale told the jury: “If you find that she had a tendency to pick and eat wild mushrooms, including putting them in meals she served to others, or if you think it is a reasonable possibility that she had that tendency, you may consider that it increases the possibilities that the death cap mushrooms ended up in the beef Wellingtons accidentally, rather than deliberately.”