Shocking Australian Mushroom Murder Case EXPLAINED

WatchMojo

A shocking case of deadly deception served on a plate... Join us as we examine the horrifying case of Erin Patterson, who poisoned four family members with death cap mushrooms in rural Australia. We break down the investigation, trial evidence, mysterious circumstances, and the troubling questions about motive that made this one of Australia's most chilling murder cases in recent history.

Transcript

00:00Erin Patterson, guilty on all counts of murder, revealed how she poisoned four of her own family,

00:06killing three. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining the mushroom poisoning trial

00:10that shocked the world. Journalists, podcasters, and true crime writers from around the world

00:17descended on the tiny town. On July 29th, 2023, Erin Patterson, resident of Leangatha, Australia,

00:26a small town close to Melbourne, poisoned four of her relatives with death-capped mushrooms.

00:32I'm so devastated by what's happened, by the loss of Don and Don is still in hospital,

00:39the loss of Ian and Heather and Gail. These mushrooms are most often found in Europe,

00:45but have spread around the world and do now grow natively in Australia.

00:49I pray that he pulls through, because my children love him.

00:53And you must be pretty shaken up by this as well.

00:58I'm devastated. I love them.

01:01Almost two full years later, on July 7th, 2025, Patterson was found guilty of three counts of

01:07murder and one count of attempted murder. The victims were her mother and father-in-law,

01:12Gail and Don Patterson, Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, and Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson.

01:17Five people sit down to lunch. Only two will survive.

01:21Her estranged husband, Simon, was also going to attend the lunch where they were poisoned,

01:26but texted Erin the night before, saying he felt too, quote,

01:28uncomfortable to go.

01:30Simon agrees to come, but the night before, he texts Erin,

01:34Sorry, I feel too uncomfortable about coming to the lunch with you, mom, dad, Heather, and Ian tomorrow.

01:40Erin wasn't happy, stressing in messages that have been released throughout the trial how much effort

01:44she put into making Beef Wellington for everybody.

01:46But Simon still didn't attend the lunch, even though it was ostensibly to talk about some

01:51serious health issues Erin was facing.

01:53July the 30th, the day after the lunch, all four guests are admitted to hospital.

01:59Their symptoms strongly suggest they've been poisoned by a deadly mushroom.

02:03Because of the nature of the lunch, discussing Erin's recent ovarian cancer diagnosis specifically,

02:09she and Simon's two children were, she alleges, sent to the movie theater and were out of the house.

02:14So it's right at the end of the meal, and I mentioned that I'd had an issue a year or two earlier

02:19where I thought I'd had ovarian cancer.

02:22She served the individual Beef Wellingtons made from steaks and discussed her cancer diagnosis,

02:27only for Gail, Dawn, Heather, and Ian to become ill the next day.

02:30Served up to guests was the quintessentially British dish Beef Wellington.

02:36They were admitted to the hospital, and quickly, doctors began to be concerned for the well-being

02:41of Erin and the children too.

02:42Erin had also supposedly eaten the Beef Wellingtons, and said that the children had had some leftovers.

02:48But crucially, she had scraped off the mushrooms before giving them to the kids

02:52because she claimed they didn't like mushrooms.

02:54Against medical advice, she leaves, despite being told she's been exposed to a deadly toxin.

03:02Doctors desperately wanted Erin and the kids to be admitted, but she refused,

03:06despite turning up at the hospital and telling them that she was also suffering from stomach pains.

03:10Within six days, Gail, Dawn, and Heather had passed away in the hospital,

03:15while Ian managed to survive after having a liver transplant.

03:18Dawn also received a liver transplant, but his injuries were too severe.

03:22It gets absorbed into the bloodstream.

03:25It then gets transported to the liver, and it gets absorbed into the liver.

03:29By August 14th, a criminal investigation was opened, and Erin's erratic behavior began to look very suspicious indeed.

03:37Erin Patterson says she used fresh button mushrooms from a local supermarket,

03:42and dried mushrooms she had bought in an Asian grocery store months before.

03:47There were her claims that she had also eaten the food but hadn't become sick,

03:51not to mention the disposal of a food dehydrator.

03:54She claimed to police that the food dehydrator was unrelated to the lunch,

03:58and that the mushrooms she had used in the beef wellington had been bought months previously at a supermarket.

04:03At that time, I believed it was just the mushrooms that I bought in Melbourne.

04:09Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.

04:14She'd also lied to police about having a food dehydrator at all,

04:18at one point claiming she didn't, despite posting pictures of the dehydrator and some mushrooms she had dehydrated in it on Facebook.

04:25Erin claims she may have mixed death cap mushrooms she accidentally picked in the wild

04:31with mushrooms she claims she bought at an Asian grocer.

04:35And she was unable to produce the names of any of the stores she alleged she used to buy mushrooms,

04:41at one point saying she bought mushrooms from an Asian supermarket,

04:44and at another saying she bought a, quote,

04:46forest mix of mushrooms from somewhere in Melbourne.

04:49Within months, Erin Patterson is arrested.

04:54Erin was ultimately arrested in November 2023 and charged with three counts of murder

04:59and five counts of attempted murder, with the trial eventually beginning in May 2025.

05:04She pleaded not guilty to all charges.

05:07Some of the attempted murder charges were later dropped.

05:09The trial ended up running longer than planned, and Patterson herself did testify,

05:14along with various investigators, the survivor Ian, Simon Patterson, and some expert witnesses.

05:20And days later, Erin at the tip, carrying a dehydrator to a large shed.

05:26The prosecution outlined the various lies and deceptions Patterson had engaged in immediately following the lunch,

05:32including disposing of the food dehydrator.

05:34The dehydrator was eventually found by police after following CCTV evidence,

05:39with footage of a woman disposing of it in a landfill.

05:42Once home, police claim Erin dried the foraged mushrooms in a dehydrator,

05:48which she then dumped at this tip.

05:51The food dehydrator tested positive for toxins found in death cap mushrooms.

05:55It also had Erin's fingerprints on it.

05:58She said that the reason she threw away the dehydrator wasn't that she was disposing of evidence,

06:02but that Simon, in the hospital, allegedly accused her of poisoning his parents intentionally,

06:07and she panicked and got rid of it.

06:09Here, footage of a doctor examining the very meal that killed three people.

06:14But more evidence emerged, including CCTV and phone records tracking Erin's movements,

06:20showing that multiple times she had driven to visit areas of Australia

06:23where death cap mushrooms are known to grow in the wild.

06:26Months before the murders, Erin Patterson's phone was traced to this area.

06:32Known for growing death cap mushrooms.

06:35Detectives seized her computer and phone

06:37and found that she had accessed images of death cap mushrooms on the website iNaturalist.

06:42This website is for hobbyists who post about interesting plants, animals, fungi, and so on

06:47that they've seen recently, and where they were, including death cap mushrooms.

06:51And it is a region known to foragers who are given warnings about what to collect.

06:57An expert mycologist testified and said that death cap mushrooms only grow in the wild.

07:02So the chances of any commercially grown mushrooms becoming accidentally contaminated is slim to none.

07:08Death cap mushrooms just won't grow in those conditions.

07:11There was also an investigation carried out into local stores to find out whether any of their products

07:15were contaminated with lethal mushrooms.

07:17And police found no evidence of this.

07:20It wouldn't have been the only packet there on the shelf.

07:22And nobody else has died or got sick that we know of.

07:27Others would have bought that same packaged mushroom.

07:31Finally, though they had some phone records,

07:33the phone itself had been factory reset by Erin four times after the incident.

07:37Erin had multiple phones, secretly swapping SIM cards between devices as police were raiding her home.

07:46The jury agreed that Erin had foraged for the mushrooms herself.

07:50She later testified to this effect, but said that she was a regular forager of mushrooms,

07:54and had foraged for them many times before the fatal incident.

07:58It was also calculated that she may have been using as much as 600 grams of death cap mushrooms,

08:03or 20 ounces, which is a lot of poisonous mushroom to have been added accidentally.

08:08You probably need 10 full mushrooms to actually get enough paste to have that in there,

08:18so there should be a far amount.

08:20There was another key detail that emerged in court too, the orange plate.

08:25Ian Wilkinson testified that during the lunch, Erin had eaten on an orange plate,

08:29while the other four guests had eaten from grey plates.

08:32Erin denies serving her guests on different plates.

08:35These grey plates weren't found during searches of the property, so couldn't be tested.

08:49It also came out that Erin did not in fact have ovarian cancer, or any type of cancer,

08:54and had been lying about this.

08:56She herself said that she was actually going to imminently undergo gastric bypass surgery

09:00in an effort to lose weight, and had lied to her in-laws because she felt embarrassed.

09:04Detectives would later discover Erin had been texting the family in the lead-up to the lunch

09:10about undergoing mysterious medical tests.

09:14Finally, there was minimal medical evidence that Erin had fallen ill in the days following the poisoning,

09:19like she claimed, other than her own word, as she initially refused any tests.

09:24And when she was tested, there was no trace of poison.

09:27The claims of cancer and weight loss surgery, she certainly used some of those conversations

09:32to appeal herself to the extended family members.

09:36Given the volume of evidence against Patterson, her constant lies,

09:40and her contradictory testimony in the courtroom,

09:43nobody was surprised when the jury returned a verdict that she was guilty on all counts.

09:47Three counts of murder for the deaths of Gail Patterson, Don Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson,

09:52and one count of the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson.

09:55Do you think Erin Patterson really thought she could get away with this?

09:59Well, it seems that she did.

10:01Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel

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10:17But one question remains.

10:19Why?

10:20Why did she poison her relatives?

10:22In some cases, the hatred of the deceased is so strong, it overwhelms logic.

10:29And by and large, you know, these people think they are more clever than they really are.

10:35The court heard evidence that her relationship with her in-laws was strained,

10:38and that there were disputes about the children, their taxes, and other finances between her and Simon,

10:43including many aggressive messages sent between them.

10:46Their son also testified via pre-recorded video and said that the relationship between his parents was not good.

10:51Erin's then asked why she sent her friends messages full of expletives about Simon's family amid disputes with him over money.

11:02I needed to vent.

11:03Erin claimed that the lunch was intended to help family relationships.

11:07But it's clear from the verdicts, Erin organized this lunch to poison her in-laws,

11:11including presumably Simon, who was also invited, and sent the children away to the movie theater to avoid the risk of them also getting ill.

11:19Erin admits to being a serial liar, but maintains it wasn't because she was concealing a triple murder.

11:28Evidence from her electronic devices suggested that she had researched death cap mushrooms,

11:33foraged for them specifically, measured out fatal doses,

11:37ensured that she herself didn't accidentally eat a tainted beef wellington by using a different plate,

11:42and tried to cover up the crimes.

11:43Interestingly, the prosecution didn't try to suggest a motive for Erin in court.

11:48The 12-person jury found beyond reasonable doubt that Erin Patterson murdered Don and Gail Patterson

11:55and Heather Wilkinson with a beef wellington.

11:58Will Erin ever explain why she did it and how she convinced herself she would get away with her crime?

12:04Considering she apparently wants to appeal the verdicts, this seems unlikely.

12:08For now, Australia's trial of the century has wrapped up, and the mushroom murders have been solved.

12:14What I can tell you is that I just can't fathom what has happened.

12:21Were you following the case from the start, or did you not hear about it until the verdict was reached?

12:26Let us know in the comments.

12:28We'll stand by for the movies, the miniseries, and the crime specials.

12:31All eyes of the world have been on Erin Patterson.

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