An Australian woman accused of murdering three people by dishing up a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington never asked after her dying guests’ wellbeing, her husband told a court Friday.
Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with three murders — the parents and aunt of her estranged husband — and one attempted murder.
She has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Her defence says the fatal beef-and-pastry meal, laced with death cap mushrooms, was the result of “a terrible accident”.
On the third day of a trial that has made international headlines, the accused woman’s husband, Simon Patterson, said she never asked him about his family’s health as they lay in hospital.
“It intrigued me that she never actually asked,” he told the jury at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell, southeast of Melbourne.
Defence lawyer Colin Mandy asked the husband if he had explained to her how ill his parents were.
“We didn’t have that conversation, I don’t think, at any time,” Simon said.
The night before the lunch, the husband had declined an invitation to eat a “special meal” at Patterson’s home in the sedate Victoria state farm village of Leongatha.
But four members of his family went: his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt, Heather Wilkinson, and her husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson.
‘Hates’ hospitals
The four guests developed diarrhoea and vomiting within 12 hours of the meal and were raced to hospital, where they were diagnosed with poisoning by death cap mushrooms.
Within days, Don, Gail, and Heather were dead.
Ian Wilkinson, the pastor, survived after nearly two months in hospital.
Erin Patterson went to the hospital two days after her lunch, telling medical staff she was unwell but initially refusing medical help, the trial heard.
She was also allegedly reluctant to let doctors see her children, saying she had scraped the mushrooms off their meals because they were fussy eaters and she did not want them to panic.
Simon told the court that Erin Patterson “hates” hospitals and had struggled with issues including postnatal depression and arrhythmia — an irregular heart beat.
The children, too, had bad experiences with hospitals, creating “sensitivity” about getting them medical attention, he said.
The prosecution alleges Erin Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests and took care that neither she, nor her children, consumed the deadly mushrooms.
While the jury might wonder about her reasons, “motive is not something that has to be proven by the prosecution”, the prosecutor said at the outset of the trial.
The defence lawyer, Mandy, has described the poisoning as a “tragedy and a terrible accident”, saying his client ate the same meal as her guests but did not fall as sick.
The trial is expected to last about six weeks.
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