What the jury wasn’t told about Erin Patterson: Husband reveals how she made him four ‘poisonous’ meals that left him gravely ill

Erin Patterson‘s estranged husband knew his wife was dangerous long before the fateful lunch that claimed the lives of his parents and aunt.

Civil engineer Simon Patterson believed she had repeatedly tried to kill him with poisonous dishes in the years and months before it. 

Victorian detectives were convinced of it too, charging Patterson with four counts of attempting to murder him. 

On July 7, Patterson was found guilty of three counts of murder and one of attempted murder after a month-long trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria in the Latrobe Valley, in the state’s east. 

The jury of 12 did so without ever knowing the full, shocking case against the 50-year-old mother of two, who is expected to be sentenced for her charges beginning August 25.

The Daily Mail can now reveal the arduous task faced by Homicide Squad detectives to bring Patterson to justice and the setbacks that threatened to see justice denied.

The now-convicted killer was initially set to face a single trial incorporating her various alleged attempts on Simon’s life. 

However, that plan was scuttled after a long legal debate in October last year at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne. 

In short, Justice Christopher Beale ruled the attempted murder allegations could not be run in the same trial as the charges related to the deadly lunch. 

Patterson had pleaded not guilty to murdering Simon’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. 

They died after consuming death cap mushrooms served in a beef Wellington during lunch at her Leongatha home in July 2023.

Pastor Ian Wilkinson was the only one to survive the lunch, giving evidence at her trial. 

Justice Beale agreed with Patterson’s defence that the attempted murder allegations needed to be separated from the murder allegations in the interest of ensuring her a fair trial. 

Prosecutors took the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal, which agreed with Justice Beale’s decision. 

The prosecution had been determined to tell a jury Simon’s illnesses had been no coincidence and set the scene for Patterson’s ultimate betrayal at the lunch. 

Just weeks before the murder trial began, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Victoria Brendan Kissane, KC, made the hard call to abandon the prosecution, dumping all charges against Patterson related to the attempted murder of her husband. 

Justice Beale’s ruling and the dumping of those charges meant no-one during Patterson’s murder trial could speak a word about the allegations. 

It was a move that incensed Simon, who was warned by the judge not to attempt to engage with media before the trial concluded. 

He is now expected to tell his version of events in interviews, books and podcasts.

‘POISONOUS’ MEALS… AND A SUSPICIOUS TREAT 

Simon maintains Patterson attempted to kill him with a poisonous penne bolognese, chicken korma, beef stew, a curry wrap, and cookies he suspected were laced with anti-freeze in the years before the fateful lunch. 

Effectively gagged by the judge’s ruling, Simon engaged Justice Beale in the witness box when the jury left the courtroom for a break during the first week of the trial. 

‘The legal process has been very difficult. As a witness, especially, and that is why I say it to you without the jury here, especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that – or non-evidence now, I guess – I have a lot to grieve and am grieving a lot about all this stuff here, as I’m sure you can imagine,’ he told Justice Beale. 

‘All the hearings that have led up to this, all the discussions about the way we got to this point here, where I’m sitting here, half thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about and I understand – I don’t actually understand why, it seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is.’

Simon complained as a witness he had been unable to keep track of the trial and asked that he be provided transcripts to catch up with what had happened in his absence. 

‘As I grieve the legal process, to help me deal with that grief… it will take me years,’ Simon said.

On October 15 last year, standing in a Melbourne courtroom, Simon was able to tell a story the jury never heard. 

He claimed Patterson had first tried to kill him in November 2021 – about six years after they separated. 

It came in the form of a penne bolognese served up to him in a Tupperware container by Patterson. 

So convinced was Simon that his wife had been trying to kill him, he compiled a spreadsheet noting what she had fed him and when. 

The couple had been in the process of reconciling and had been about to embark on a trip to Wilsons Promontory in Victoria’s south-east. 

Simon claimed the bolognese made him so sick he turned grey and continued to vomit throughout the drive there. 

At the time he thought it was just gastro – an opinion initially shared by those that would later die from death cap mushroom poisoning at the lunch. 

The court heard Simon was so ill they decided to cut the trip short and stay at an Airbnb in a town near Wilsons Promontory. 

But as the sickness grew, a decision was made to get Simon to hospital. 

‘We went to Leongatha Hospital,’ Simon told the court. 

‘I felt like I was going downhill.’

Put on a drip, Simon was provided anti-nausea medication and discharged the following day. 

He was back there within days as his creatinine levels climbed – a sign of impending kidney failure. 

Simon spent five days at the Monash Medical Centre as confused doctors struggled to ascertain what had caused his illness. 

‘They did tell me they were testing for a bunch of things and none of those tests confirmed an outcome that explained my symptoms,’ he said. 

No-one mentioned food poisoning as a possible cause. 

Police later suggested Patterson was likely poisoning her husband with rat poison and could have searched at some stage for the word ‘hemlock’  – a highly poisonous flowering plant – on one of her devices.  

‘I can remember telling someone in the hospital that I remember being asked by a medical person what I’d eaten, and so I told them I’d had the penne but also told them the kids ate the same pasta so it was unlikely to be the cause,’ Simon said. 

During his time in hospital, Patterson had been ‘kind and supportive’, Simon insisted. 

SIMON CLOSE TO DEATH

The court heard Simon continued to push forward with the reconciliation and before long they planned another trip away. 

This time it was to be a camping trip in Howqua near Lake Eildon in the shadow of Mount Buller. 

In the lead-up to the trip, Patterson conducted a taste test of spice levels on a curry she planned to take camping. 

The sauces ranged from mild to hot, Simon said. 

‘My preference was somewhere in the middle,’ he told the court. 

While the taste test went off without a hitch, the curry would come back to bite him while camping. 

Simon told the court his wife served up sausages the first night, which they enjoyed with bread. 

On the second night he was served a chicken korma with rice. 

‘I was getting the fire going when she prepared the curry,’ Simon said. 

He believed both he and Patterson had eaten the same meal that night. 

It was about midnight when he took a turn for the worse. 

‘At first I felt hot, especially in my head, and that led to feeling nauseous, and that led to me quite suddenly needing to vomit, and then after vomiting I started to have diarrhoea,’ he said. 

After vomiting all night, the decision was made to return home. 

They never made it. 

Instead Simon ended up in Mansfield Hospital where he was again hooked up to an IV and provided anti-nausea medication. 

Again, no diagnosis for his illness was forthcoming. 

Over the following days, Patterson nursed Simon as he struggled to recover.

On one occasion, she was forced to call triple-0 after Simon was unable to get out of bed. 

‘Next thing I recall is being on a trolley in hospital and Erin trying to attract attention of medical staff and that person brushing her off,’ he said. 

In recovery, Patterson was asked for permission to operate on Simon as his next of kin.  Doctors advised Simon would die if they didn’t operate. 

The court heard Patterson sought Don Patterson’s advice before providing permission. 

It was a life-saving operation that saw a large proportion of his bowel removed. 

When it was done, tests again found no cause. 

Simon spent weeks in rehabilitation where the court heard Patterson fussed over her estranged husband. 

She cleaned his house, organised a gardener, had his car serviced, a tyre fixed and paid the bills. 

She then asked him to move into her new home on Gibson Street in Leongatha where she had set up a space for him. 

SIMON FALLS ILL AGAIN

Simon spent a month there before becoming unwell yet again after being served a meal by Patterson. 

It was a ‘special or unusual activity’, Simon said of the lunch.

‘She had specially made some stew for me to have and I appreciated that,’ he said. 

Like before, illness hit him again in the dead of night and he was taken to Leongatha Hospital. 

There he endured more drips, more drugs and zero answers as to why he was suffering. 

On release, Simon spent another two weeks living with his family before Patterson grew tired of his presence. 

Simon told the court Patterson began giving him ‘the cold shoulder’. 

‘It seemed obvious to me that she didn’t want me to be there,’ he said.

‘She told me that she was very upset with me. I spent a lot of time in bed and didn’t help around the home like she wanted or get the kids to school. She thought she’d had concerns when I was recovering because I asked her to bring me a charging cable and stuff. She felt concern I was being a bit dictatorial and that she was frustrated with me and what I was doing. That, when I’d get up, I’d make my own food – ham cheese toastie – and return to bed.

‘I replied, I paused for quite a long period, wasn’t sure how to respond. I said to her: “I’m sorry to hear you feel that.” And she stormed out. From that, it was very clear to me it wasn’t wise to keep staying there, so I decided to leave.’ 

Despite the rise in tension, Simon claimed the couple continued to push ahead with their relationship. 

During a picnic at Wilsons Promontory, Patterson served up Simon a curry and vegetable wrap. 

Simon claimed he observed Patterson eat some of the same food, but not in a wrap. 

After a walk on the beach, Simon felt that familiar pain in his guts. 

‘My instincts said, very subtle, “something was not quite right here”,’ he told the court. 

They headed home, arriving at Simon’s parents’ house where he ran for a ‘bed and a bucket’. 

What happened next is a blur, Simon said. 

He was taken by ambulance to the Monash Medical Centre where he claimed to have lost all muscle function. 

‘By the end I could only move my neck, tongue and lips,’ Simon said. 

SIMON VOICES HIS WORST FEARS 

Upon discharge, Simon moved in with his parents and was referred to a specialist. 

The court heard that specialist was a Bible study mate of Simon’s, whom he confided to about his concerns that Patterson was trying to kill him. 

‘I told him in late 2022 I feared Erin was trying to poison me,’ Simon said. 

‘He acknowledged it, but offered no opinion.’

It was around this time Simon decided to start a spreadsheet that could help him note common elements of his various illnesses. 

By February 21, 2023 – just months before the deadly lunch – Simon took steps to ensure his father would make all medical decisions on his behalf if incapable of making them himself. 

He told Don he was suspicious of Patterson and feared she had been trying to kill him. 

Reduced to tears, Simon said his father told him to keep that opinion between them. 

‘He felt it could create issues in the way people related with Erin and our family,’ he said. 

The court heard Simon expressed immediate concern upon receiving the invite to what would be his parents’ last meal. 

He confided in his doctor and later spoke to his parents to discuss why they had all been invited. 

‘I declined because I thought there would be a risk she would poison me if I attended,’ he told the court. 

Simon told his mother he would not be attending, outlining his suspicions to her. 

‘I said “because of all the things that have happened in the recent past with Erin and I don’t think it would be wise to attend the lunch”,’ he said. 

‘Dad helped move the conversation past that question.’

Simon said his daughter also inquired as to why he planned to ditch the lunch invite. 

‘I can’t tell you,’ Simon told his daughter. 

ERIN’S ‘FIXATION’ ON COOKIES 

He had once feared his nine-year-old daughter had brought him home poison cookies she baked with her mother. 

During a pre-trial hearing, Simon’s GP Dr Chris Ford claimed Simon had confided in him about his concerns Patterson was trying to kill him. 

Just months before the lunch, Simon told Dr Ford his wife had been eager to know if she’d eaten any of the cookies. 

‘He felt this was odd, that she was ‘so focused to ask about the cookies’, Dr Ford said then. 

Simon later went on to suggest Patterson may have tried to kill him using ‘anti-freeze’. 

‘I recall him saying he had looked into anti-freeze as a possible option (on the cookies),’ Dr Ford said. 

The day after the lunch, Dr Ford received a call from worried doctors at Leongatha Hospital. 

When he arrived at the hospital, Don Patterson handed him a container.

‘He had a jar of vomit with him which he’d kept because he presumed this could be significant evidence because he thought it could be a deliberate poisoning,’ Dr Ford said.

‘I can’t recall the exact words … he held the jar of vomit up and said “I’ve got this sample. What do you think I should do with it, Chris?” I told him to hold onto it because it could be useful later.’

Dr Ford told the court he could not think of a reason why Simon had become so ill previously. 

‘To me there was no other medical reason, no other reasons that could fit … (Poisoning) seemed feasible that it could be a possible reason,’ he said of Simon’s fears.

Simon had shared his concerns about Patterson with his brother Matthew Patterson too. 

While Matthew gave evidence at the trial, he was unable to discuss these concerns before the jury. 

Matthew told the pre-trial hearing Simon had expressed his fears to him while they attended a Ben Harper gig in February 2023. 

‘I recall him mentioning it when we were out one evening at a concert,’ he said then. 

‘He shared that he had some concerns and that he would probably need to be a little careful about interacting with Erin.’

As Simon’s parents lay dying in the Austin Hospital, Matthew said Simon organised a family meeting. 

‘Simon wanted to share with us his concerns (about poisoning),’ Matthew said. 

‘I recall being more of an observer.’

Family members received a copy of Simon’s medical records via an email from him the following day. 

SIMON ‘THE ONLY TARGET’ 

Simon’s sister Anna Terrington told the pre-trial hearing she too knew of Simon’s concerns about his wife before her parents were invited to lunch. 

She told the court Simon had believed he was the only target. 

‘Only Simon was at risk,’ she said. 

‘I took it seriously.’

Ms Terrington told the court she expressed her concerns to her parents about the lunch invite. 

‘I felt anxious about them going because of Simon’s warning,’ she said. 

The court heard Don and Heather were aware of Simon’s suspicions upon accepting the lunch invitation. 

‘Dad said, “No we’ll be okay”,’ Ms Terrington said. 

After the lunch, Ms Terrington said her sick father had tried to play down any notion they had been poisoned by Patterson. 

She said Don had told her mother to stop ‘catastrophising things’. 

Simon told the pre-trial hearing he didn’t believe his parents were in danger from Patterson and even after they reported becoming sick still did not consider they had been poisoned. 

Simon said he expressed his concerns to the Wilkinsons about Patterson poisoning him upon going to their house the day after the lunch.

He described their reaction as ‘thoughtful’. 

‘They were considering what I said,’ Simon told the court. 

In the car en route to Korumburra Hospital, Simon said Heather spoke to him about the lunch. 

‘Heather was thinking about the plate, the colourful plate she called it,’ he said. 

Like her sister Gail, the pastor’s wife could not comprehend being targeted by Patterson with a beef Wellington she had earlier described as ‘beautiful’.  

‘She asked me, is Erin short of crockery, which was why she used a colourful plate rather than like everyone else’s plate.’

At hospital, Don told Simon he had discussed his suspicions over Patterson with his mother, who could not accept she would deliberately poison them. 

She was wrong. 

Patterson will face a preliminary sentencing hearing on August 25, which is expected to take two days to complete.