An Australian woman felt ostracised from her husband’s family in the months before she allegedly murdered three of his relatives with toxic mushrooms, a court heard on Monday.
Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with murdering the parents and aunt of her estranged husband in 2023 by serving them a beef Wellington laced with lethal death cap mushrooms.
She is also accused of attempting to murder her husband’s uncle, who survived the meal after a long stay in hospital.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges in a trial that continues to captivate the country.
Having watched the prosecution build its case over the past five weeks, Patterson took the stand for the first time on Monday to mount her defence.
She described how husband Simon — the pair were estranged but still legally married — seemed to be pushing her out of the family in the lead up to the fatal meal.
“We saw each other less,” she told the jury.
“I’d become concerned that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much in the family anymore. I wasn’t being invited to so many things.”
At the same time she was struggling with lifelong issues of low self-esteem.
“I’d been fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my adult life,” she told the court.
“The further I got into middle age, the less I felt good about myself.”
Patterson said their marriage had for years been plagued by poor communication.
“Primarily what we struggled with over the entire course of our relationship was we couldn’t communicate well when we disagreed about something.
“We could never communicate in a way that made each of us feel understood and heard.”
Steak and mushrooms
Patterson asked husband Simon to a family lunch at her secluded house in rural Victoria in July 2023, also extending an invitation to his parents Don and Gail.
Simon turned down the invitation because he felt too uncomfortable, the court has heard previously.
But his parents Don and Gail were happy to attend, and died days after eating a beef-and-pastry dish prepared by Patterson.
Simon’s aunt Heather Wilkinson also died, while her husband Ian fell seriously ill but later recovered.
The meal consisted of “an individual serve” of beef Wellington entirely encased in pastry and filled with “steak and mushrooms”, Ian Wilkinson previously told the court.
The guests’ meals were served on four grey plates, while Patterson’s was on a smaller orange plate, he said in earlier testimony.
Patterson and Simon were at odds over finances and child support at the time, the court has heard, and she had sought help from his parents.
The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests and took care that she did not consume the deadly mushrooms herself.
Her defence says it was “a terrible accident” and that Patterson ate the same meal as the others but did not fall as sick.
The trial is expected to last another week.
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