Mushroom cook ‘aggressive’ to in-laws before lunch
Emily Woods |
Erin Patterson’s “extremely aggressive” text messages with in-laws left her estranged husband wanting to bring in a mediator in the months leading up to a deadly mushroom meal.
Simon Patterson took the witness stand for a second day on Friday, after spending all of Thursday giving evidence to a Supreme Court jury in his former wife’s triple murder trial.
She has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder over the deaths of Simon’s mother and father, Don and Gail, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, who all attended a lunch at her regional Victorian home on July 29, 2023.
Patterson has also pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of Simon’s uncle Ian Wilkinson, the only surviving guest from the poisonous beef Wellington lunch.
The mother-of-two, 50, wore a sage green jumper at the back of Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell on Friday and put on her glasses to read text messages between her and Simon shown to the jury of 15.
Simon said that although estranged, their relationship had been friendly since separating in 2015, but began to break down in November 2022 after she asked him to start paying child support.
He was paying $38 per month to Patterson and had been advised not to make additional payments for their two children.
By December 2022, about six months before the death cap mushroom lunch, Patterson was sending “inflammatory messages” to Don and Gail Patterson in their family Signal chat as the child support issue continued, Simon told the jury.
He said he decided to involve a mediator to sort it out.
“I was keen to resolve it because Erin and my parents’ communication about it, it wasn’t working,” he told the jury.
“From my point of view, Erin was being extremely aggressive, so I thought a mediator would probably help us communicate.”
Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC challenged that and said she could have been “upset” or hurt over the situation.
After describing his father “really struggling” in hospital about 12 hours after the fatal meal, Simon was asked again about his communications with his wife while they had treatment.
“It intrigued me that she never actually asked (about their conditions),” he said.
Earlier, Mr Mandy showed the jury text messages from November 2022 when Patterson was upset about not being invited to Gail’s 70th birthday.
“Seems like my invite tomorrow is a bit of an afterthought, and not even from your parents, so I might pass thanks,” Patterson texted Simon.
“What I reckon is that everybody forgot to invite me to this … I feel very hurt about that and your response is to say I’m being ridiculous,” another text from Patterson read.
Simon replied: “Well you can believe whatever you feel like but frankly you’re as far off the mark as you possibly could be on this. I know they would love you to be there, they’ve been talking about this and losing sleep over it for weeks”.
Patterson decided to go with her kids to the 70th birthday, but after the event she texted Simon and apologised for “shouting” at him.
“I was feeling very hurt and lashed out. It’s no excuse. I’d like to not do that again,” she texted him.
He told the jury “mum and dad were really stressed about it” and Don had believed she had already been invited to the lunch.
Simon will return to the witness stand on Monday as cross-examination continues.
Before the jury left on Friday, Justice Christopher Beale issued them a warning about speaking to people about the case or engaging in any content over the weekend.
He advised the jurors to come back to the court refreshed on Monday.
“Switch off from this case on the weekends, that’s the best preparation,” he said.
AAP
