Erin Patterson’s ‘ashamed’ tears

From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, June twenty four to twenty twenty five. Almost three million low paid workers are getting a pay rise. The wage bump announced by the Fair Work Commission works out to be about thirty two dollars a week for those on the minimum wage. A controversial so called supertax

Our son was a very extroverted child, and he seemed to struggle with the lack of siblings and contact with cousins and living in the middle of nowhere with no friends to play with. We'd gone back to Victoria once or twice, and he just loved being with his cousins and Nana and Papa, and we wanted to come back for him. And secondly, I was trying and ended up being pregnant with our daughter. I wanted to be near Don and Gail when we had her.

Don and Gale Patterson were Simon Patterson's parents, who would both die in twenty twenty three after eating Aaron Patterson's beef Wellington.

And during that time after twenty fifteen, how was your relationship with Donna and Gail?

It never changed. I was just their daughter in Lauren. They continued to love me.

So does that mean that in terms of Don and Gail, you and the children continued to see them often?

Yeah, we did. We went to their house often for lunch with Simon. Without Simon. They would drop in and knock on my door, sometimes drop things off. They'd have my son over to play and have sleepovers. They were very involved.

Mandy asked Patterson about Heather and Ian Wilkinson, who was the pastor at Cornborough Baptist Church.

So I'd always have a chat with them after church if I could. Ian was very popular as the pastor and always had a lot of people wanting to talk to them. But Heather would always make a point of coming to talk to me, and I saw them sometimes at Christmas gatherings outside of the family, and I probably didn't get to chat to Ian so much, but Heather would always go out of her way to come and sit with me and make sure that I had company.

She was asked about Facebook chats the jury has previously been shown. Mandy wanted to know what was her attitude to religion during those years or to God.

It remained how it had been since two thousand and five. I was and am a Christian.

Did you ever tell Christine Hunt that you were an atheist?

No, I didn't know, Patterson said she would have only said that she was previously an atheist. Patterson described the sale of various properties and the purchase of a family home in Lee and Gatha, which was put into both her and Simon Patterson's names.

Well, from my perspective, it was I always I thought we would bring the family back together. That was what I wanted, and I did that because I wanted some way to demonstrate to Simon that that's what I really believed and wanted. It was something tangible to say I see a future for us.

Mandy asked about Patterson's health records over the years, including a GP visit in twenty twenty one when she feared she had ovarian cancer.

I'd been having for a few months by then, a multitude of symptoms. I felt very fatigued. I had ongoing abdominal pain. I had chronic headaches. I put on a lot of weight in quite a short period of time, and had like my feet and my hands seemed to retain a lot of fluid.

Now the notes indicate this, Aaron worried about ovarian cancer, has been googling her symptoms. That's right, yep, is that what you'd been doing? I had yeap, I consulted doctor Google.

Patterson said she'd struggled to get any health professional to listen to her. Her concerns about her baby daughter too, So.

Right from when she was born, I thought there was something wrong. She cried a lot, but not normal crying. I'd already had one baby by then, and I knew what to expect. She cried a lot for long durations that I thought demonstrated pain, and I took her to a lot of doctors and even the hospital, and what they communicated to me was I was an over anxious mother and she would just relax and she's just a normal baby.

She said. With both her daughter and son, they turned out to have medical issues that doctors hadn't been able to diagnose. Patterson said it all undermined her faith in medicos. She requested a brain MRI, and when that came back negative, asked for a spinal MRI. She googled ovarian cancer, brain tumors, ovarian cancer that metastasized to the brain and lungs, heart conditions, lupus, and multiple sclerosis.

The train just kept going. I think I wasted a lot of time, not just my time, but medical people's time through all my doctor googling. It's hard to justify it, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that, like, I just lost so much faith in the medical system that I decided that anything to do with my health or the children's health. I'm going to have to solve

Mandy turned to Patterson's relationship with her husband, Simon and how it deteriorated in twenty twenty two during a dispute about child support payments.

I'd been preparing to do my tax return, and as we always did, I asked Simon for his income to put down on my tax return and wanted to give him mine. It arose out of the discussions that he'd put himself down as single on the tax return, so that wasn't necessary anymore. She said.

She wanted to claim the family tax bear, and to do that had to put in a child support application to cent a link. She said Simon Patterson seemed agreeable to that. In October of twenty twenty two, Patterson became upset about finding out on a Friday that the following day would be a seventieth birthday lunch for her mother in law, Gail Patterson.

I felt hurt because I thought I'd been left off the invite list, and I was also annoyed with myself because I'd forgotten that it was a big birthday coming up for Gail. But yeah, I was hurt.

In November twenty twenty two, another dispute, Patterson asked Simon to pay for an anesthetist bill for their son. The jury was shown a text message exchange between Simon and Aaron Patterson.

The Department of Human Services instructed me not to pay you anything for the kids from now on, So I cannot pay that. I'm afraid it's not paying me'sying he's anthetist.

On December five, it flared up again during a discussion about their son's pocket money.

You can cancel your pocket money transfers into the Department of Human Services told you not to pay for anything for the kids anymore.

In court, Aaron Patterson said.

It looks like I was being a little bit petty in that response. By the last sentence, I was clearly using his words back to him. I was being a bit petty.

She tried to involve Don and Gail Patterson in mediation about how the children's school fees would be paid.

Overwritingly, they thought that Simon and I should set all the issue together, but they didn't want to become like official mediators.

Patterson said she vented in frustration on a Facebook group with women she'd been speaking to online since twenty twenty.

This family, I swear to fucking God, I'm sick of this shit, so fuck it. Nobody listens to me at least so I know they're a lost cause.

In court, Patterson said she was stressed and believed this was a private chat.

I wish I'd never said it. I feel very I feel ashamed for saying it, and I wish the family didn't have to hear that I said that. They didn't deserve it.

Why did you write that to your Facebook friends?

I needed to vent. I needed to get my frustration off my chest. And the choice was either to go into the paddic and tell it to the sheep or vent to these women. But I regret the language that I used, but I knew that they would rally around me. I probably played up the emotion a little bit to get that support.

And did you mean those things?

No? I didn't. I was really frustrated with Simon, but it wasn't don in Gale's fault. It wasn't the family's fault. It wasn't even entirely Simon's fault. I played a part in the issue too.

Did you understand that then?

I think at the time I thought I was right and he was wrong. But I reflected on it a lot in New Zealand and I realized that I was wrong to try and involve Donn Gale and I should have approached it differently with Simon.

Aaron Patterson told the jury she'd battled her weight and self esteem since adolescence.

When I was a kid, my mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren't putting on too much weight, and so I went to the extreme of barely eating. Then through my adulthood going the other way and binging. I suppose, for one of a better word. I never had a good relationship with food, a healthy relationship.

She said she would throw up after binge eating something she did in secret while the children were.

At school, and who knew about it?

Nobody? Nobody, everybody now, but nobody knew then.

Patterson said she'd picked and cooked mushrooms since first noticing their proliferation in the local area on family walks during twenty twenty.

Had you always liked eating mushrooms. Yeah, I had why.

They taste good and they're very healthy.

In terms of varieties of mushrooms, did you eat different varieties?

I did. I'd buy all the different types that woolies would sell. We'd have local farmers markets and I'd get different sorts there from grocers up in Melbourne. Yeah, I tried all of them. I'd use them in curries or pasta dishes or soup, spaghetti.

And what did you like about the more exotic mushrooms?

They just taste more interesting, more flavor.

She said she found field and horse mushrooms in the paddocks on her own property, and also foraged in places like the local botanic gardens and rail trail. She said there was one type of mushroom growing in her back paddock that she wasn't able to identify, so she didn't eat those. And she said her children sometimes helped her to pick mushrooms when they.

Were out and about.

When I got to a point where I was confident about what I thought they were, I cut a bit off one of the mushrooms, fried it up with some butter ate it and then saw what happened. And what happened they tasted good and I didn't get sick.

And thereafter? What did you do with the mushrooms that you found on that property?

So? If I saw mushrooms, the same mushrooms growing, I would usually pick them and eat them and sometimes put them in meals. We all ate.

You said you put them in meals? We all ate? Does that mean you and the children?

Yep?

How did you put them in the children's meals? What did you do?

I chopped them up very very small so they couldn't pick them out.

Coming up, Pattison is asked for the first time in court about the fatal lunch. For the first time in this trial, Aaron Patterson was asked directly on Tuesday afternoon about the fatal mushroom lunch.

In terms of the meal that you cooked for the lunch, which is the subject of this trial. Do you accept that there must have been deathcap mushrooms in that meal? Yes?

I do.

And speaking globally, do you remember where the mushrooms that went into that meal came from? So all of the mushrooms that went into that meal.

Right, So the vast majority came from the local Woolworths in Leongatha, and there were some from the grocer in Melbourne.

So there's been evidence that you told people that you bought some mushrooms from an Asian groser in April. That's right. Do you remember that event? Is that an event clear in your mind.

Not the specific purchase of them. No, it's not clear.

Patterson said she remembered going to an Asian grocer in the April school holidays when she and the children were staying at Mount Waverley, but that she had also done so on previous occasions.

There was Shitaki Poccini. I think an Oki was one of them. Sometimes the bags might say something like wild mushroom mix or forest mushroom like they wouldn't be specific about the types of them.

Patterson said she bought a dehydrator in twenty twenty three to better preserve mushrooms, and would dehydrate specimens, including button mushrooms she brought from Woolworths, then store them in a plastic container in her pantry. The jury heard she made a social media post that said.

So fun fact, dehydrator reduces mushroom mass by ninety percent.

Colin Mandy took her back to the mushrooms she bought from an Asian grocer in April twenty twenty three.

I remember that I was going to use them the day that I bought them, but they were very pungent. I didn't think that would be a great smell for what I was making, so I just put them in a container and put them in the pantry at that point.

And what happened to that container in the pantry?

So I took the container back home to Gibson Street when we went home.

Gibson Street is Aaron Padda since home in LeeAnne Gatha, where the fatal lunch would be held. Three months later. She said those mushrooms were still in the container in the pantry when she later dehydrated mushrooms in May and June.

Do you have a memory of putting wild mushrooms that you dehydrated in May or June of twenty twenty three into a container which already contained other dried mushrooms.

Yes, I did do that.

At that point, Justice Christopher Beale called an end to the day. Aaron Patterson will return to the witness box on Wednesday, June four at ten thirty am. You can follow proceedings live reported by our colleagues Ellie Dudley and John Ferguson from the courtroom. By joining our subscribers at Theaustralian dot com dot au