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.
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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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