Woman in trial for murder of poisonous fungi says she was trying to fix

An Australian woman accused of serving poisonous fungi of the death of death In a dish that killed three of his four guests who ate it on Wednesday about the incident and detailed how he planned the food.

Prosecutors in the case of the Supreme Court in the state of Victoria say Erin Patterson50, attracted his guests to lunch in July 2023 with a lie about having cancer, before deliberately feeding them in toxic fungi. But his lawyers say that the contaminated meat of Beef Wellington that Patterson served was a tragic accident caused by a fungal storage accident.

Patterson denies having killed the parents of her husband separately, Don and Gail Patterson, and her relative, Heather Wilkinson. The mother of two two also denies having tried to kill Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived the food. If it is convicted, Patterson faces life imprisonment and 25 years for attempted murder.

In a rare step for a defendant accused of murder, Patterson chose to speak in his own defense in his trial this week.

On Wednesday, he spoke publicly for the first time about the fateful lunch and offered his explanations about how he planned the food and did not get sick.

Add more mushrooms to a “soft” meal

No one argues that Patterson served the fungi of the death cover to his guests for lunch in the rural city of Leongatha, but she says he did it without knowing it.

Patterson said Wednesday that he wasted expensive ingredients and investigated ideas to find “something special” to serve. He deviated from his recipe chosen to improve the “soft,” he said.

She believed she was adding dry fungi bought from an Asian supermarket in a container in her pantry, she told the court.

“Now I think there was the possibility that there were also the forages there,” he told his lawyer, Colin Mandy. Patterson had forged wild fungi for years, told the court on Tuesday, and had put some in his pantry weeks before death.

The defendant says that “I should not have lied” about cancer

Patterson, who formally separated from her husband Simon Patterson in 2015, said she felt “wounded” when Simon told him the night before lunch that he “was not comfortable” attending.

He had previously told his relatives that he had fixed the food to discuss his health. Patterson admitted this week that he never had cancer, but after a health scare, he told his in -laws that yes.

Actually, Patterson said he intended to undergo weight loss surgery. But he was too embarrassed to tell anyone and planned to pretend his in -laws that he was receiving cancer treatment, he said.

“I was ashamed of the fact that I had no control over my body or what I ate,” said a tear Patterson on Wednesday. “He didn’t want to tell anyone, but he shouldn’t have lied to them.”

Patterson says he threw his fungi flour

The defendant said she believed that she had been saved from the worst effects of poisoned food because vomiting was self -induced shortly after lunch guests left. He had turned off in most of a cake and then became vomiting, a problem with which he said he had fought for decades.

Patterson also said he believes he had eaten enough food to cause his posterior diarrhea. Then he sought hospital treatment, but unlike his guests at lunch, he quickly recovered.

In the hospital where the health of her guests deteriorated, her separate husband asked about the dehydrator that used to dry her fodder fungi, she said.

“This is how you poisoned my parents?” She said Simon Patterson asked him.

Growing up, fear that they blame her for poisoning and that her children were removed, Patterson said she then eliminated her dehydrator. She told the researchers that she had never had one and that she had not forced for fungi before.

While he was still in the hospital, he insisted that he had bought all the fungi in the stores, although he said that he knew it was possible that forage fungi had accidentally reached food.

She was too scared to tell someone, Patterson said.

Also later, Patterson said his cell phone was remotely cleaned while satting in a box of evidence to eliminate fungal images he had forced.

The prosecutors argued when opening her case in April that she poisoned her husband’s family on purpose, although they did not suggest a reason. She carefully avoided poisoning and pretended to be sick, they said.

The trial continues Thursday with Patterson’s interrogation by prosecutors.