“I really want to repeat that I had absolutely no reason to hurt these people whom I loved.”
The woman who served the mushrooms that are believed to have killed three people and left one critically ill is giving a detailed account of what happened during and leading up to that fatal lunch for the first time. On Friday, Erin Patterson gave a written statement to Australian police (which police say was provided to her attorneys, not taken by a police investigator) after first declining to answer questions from homicide detectives, and ABC published the statement on Monday.
On July 29, 48-year-old Patterson hosted her estranged husband’s parents, Gail and Don Patterson, and Gail’s sister and her husband, Heather and Ian Wilkinson, for lunch. The next day, Gail, Don, Heather, and Ian were taken to the hospital for food poisoning, where the former three died a few days later. Ian’s family has said he is in critical, but stable, condition. The BBC reports he is awaiting a liver transplant.
Who is Erin Patterson?
According to CBS, Patterson is a community newsletter editor in Leongatha, a small town in the southern state of Victoria. She was separated “for some time” from her husband Simon and they had been living apart when she invited him and a few of his relatives over for lunch. She says the split was amicable, although Simon did not attend the lunch, canceling at the last minute.
In May of last year, Simon reportedly spent about two weeks in the hospital with a severe stomach illness and Erin took care of him for three weeks once he was discharged.
What did Erin Patterson say in her statement?
Patterson served beef wellington, an English dish made of steak coated with pâté and duxelles (a mushroom paste), wrapped in a puff pastry.
In her statement, Patterson told police that she used two different kinds of mushrooms, which she obtained from a major supermarket chain and an Asian grocery store in Melbourne, although she was unable to identify the specific store.
Patterson said that she allowed her guests to choose their own plates of the beef and she served herself last. She said she also ended up in the hospital with diarrhea and stomach pains, and was put on a saline drip and given medication. She said she was then transported to Monash Medical Center in Melbourne from Leongatha Hospital. That hasn’t been confirmed, but Australian officials did say that a fifth person who was at the lunch was transported to Monash from Leongatha hospital.
She also said that, contrary to prior reports, her children were not present at the lunch. They ate the leftover beef wellington the next night, but she’d scraped off the mushrooms because they don’t like mushrooms. (Traditionally, the mushrooms are baked inside the puff pastry.)
Police say that all four guests showed symptoms consistent with poisoning by death cap mushrooms, a deadly variety native to Europe. Patterson denied any wrongdoing when speaking to reporters last week. “I didn’t do anything,” she said, adding that she was “devastated” by the deaths. She also told reporters, “I can’t believe that this has happened and I’m so sorry.” She said Gail, Heather, and Don were “some of the best people I ever met,” and “they never did anything wrong to me.” She described Gail as “the mother I never had.”
She lied to investigators about a food dehydrator
Patterson admitted that she previously lied about when she got rid of a food dehydrator that her ex-husband accused her of using to poison his family members. She’d initially told investigators she disposed of it at a dump “a long time ago” but admitted in the statement that she did so in the aftermath of the poisonings. She said that she was discussing the food dehydrator while in the hospital with her children, when Simon confronted her about using it to poison his relatives. At that point, she says she panicked and left it at the dump because she was worried she’d lose custody of her children.
Did Erin Patterson intentionally poison her relatives with mushrooms?
The investigation into the deaths is still underway, and Victoria Police told NBC on Monday that the deaths are still being treated as unexplained. Patterson has not been charged. However, Detective Inspector Dean Thomas told reporters that Erin Patterson is a suspect because she cooked and served the meal that seems to have killed three people.
Patterson denies any wrongdoing. “I am now wanting to clear up the record because I have become extremely stressed and overwhelmed by the deaths of my loved ones. I am hoping this statement might help in some ways,” she stated. “I believe if people understood the background more, they would not be so quick to rush to judgment. I am now devastated to think that these mushrooms may have contributed to the illness suffered by my loved ones. I really want to repeat that I had absolutely no reason to hurt these people whom I loved.”
