Something surprising happened at the Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

Erin Patterson, who has been charged with the murder of three people and one count of attempted murder, took the stand in her own defence.

To be clear, Patterson has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder.

Defendants aren’t required to testify at their own trials, and typically don’t.

What was perhaps more surprising was the number of lies Patterson admitted to on the stand, including deceptions about her health, owning a food dehydrator, and where she got the mushrooms for the beef Wellingtons she served to her guests – which she has now admitted must have been death caps.

This morning, I’ll walk you through the lies Erin Patterson has admitted to, and how that squares with the other evidence we’ve heard so far.

In July 2023, Erin Patterson invited five people over to lunch: her estranged husband Simon Patterson, his parents, Don and Gail, and his aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

According to texts shown in court, Simon told Erin the night before the lunch that he would not be attending.

The lunch was held at her home in the regional Victorian town of Leongatha. Don, Gail, Heather, and Ian all attended. All four became very ill following the lunch, and Don, Gail, and Heather later died in hospital with suspected death cap mushroom poisoning.

Traditionally, beef Wellington is cooked as one large baked dish, to be cut and served in slices. However, Erin prepared individual beef Wellingtons for her guests. On the stand this week, she explained this was because she couldn’t find a big enough piece of beef for a whole log, as the recipe specified.

One of the key elements of beef Wellington is a mushroom paste, which Erin told her defence barrister, Colin Mandy SC, that she made using some dried mushrooms from her pantry.

She said she believed these to be from a packet she’d bought at an Asian grocer in eastern Melbourne, which she had stored in a Tupperware container for some months.

Erin admitted she now believes, however, that it’s possible dried mushrooms she’d foraged were in the Tupperware too — and that she could have unknowingly foraged death caps. This detail is a departure from her police statement in 2023,

Erin gave an interview to police on 5 August 2023, when authorities were beginning to investigate the now-fatal lunch.

In that interview, she told them she had “never” gone foraging for mushrooms.

Erin has now told the court this was not the truth — in fact, she had foraged for mushrooms in her area and eaten them in the past. Under questioning from Mandy, she said she began picking mushrooms during the first COVID lockdowns in 2020, and that this interest led to her buying dried mushrooms from Asian grocers.

Later in the week, under cross-examination from prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, Erin said she didn’t tell anyone at the time about her concerns that mushrooms she had foraged ended up in her meal.

What she did tell people, however - namely, health authorities - was that she had shopped for dried mushrooms at Asian grocers in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

We know this because those authorities searched for any dried death cap mushrooms for sale in the area following Erin’s statements. They did not find any, the court was told.

The prosecution has alleged Erin intentionally sought out death cap mushrooms in her area, using listings on a website called iNaturalist.org. They allege search results from one of Patterson’s devices show her accessing pages with those listings, submitted by people in the area, hoping to make sure no one picked the poisonous fungi.

While Erin said it was “possible” she had looked at the website, she has denied intentionally picking death cap mushrooms. One of the key factors the prosecution must prove for the jury to justify a charge of murder is intent.

When the prosecution and defence teams gave their opening statements back in April, both sides revealed a few details the public hadn’t heard about yet. Chief among them was the revelation from both the prosecution and the defence that Erin led her guests to believe she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was seeking their advice over lunch on how to tell her children.

This was also repeated by Ian Wilkinson when he gave evidence.

On Wednesday, Erin told Mandy she had a history of ovarian cancer in her family and was worried about it. She added that in the past, Don and Gail had shown her care and concern whenever she discussed medical issues with them, and her desire for that interest in her wellbeing to continue.

Erin told Mandy she was “not proud of this,” but that she had led her guests “to believe that I might be needing some treatment in regards to [ovarian cancer] in the next few weeks”.

However, Erin has since admitted she’s never been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Instead, she told the court she was planning to get gastric bypass surgery, following decades of struggling with her body image and disordered eating. Erin told Mandy she’d need the support of her in-laws for the operation, but that she had ultimately lied to them.

On Thursday, under cross-examination from prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, Erin said she didn’t think she had explicitly told her guests she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She agreed she wanted to lead them to believe she had cancer, though.

Another lie Erin has admitted to telling police is about a food dehydrator.

In the days following the lunch, Erin said she had diarrhoea. She went to the local hospital because she thought they could give her fluids. It was at that point, Erin says, that she learned doctors were concerned about a possible death cap mushroom poisoning, because her guests were already in hospital.

Erin discharged herself from the Leongatha hospital against medical advice so she could make arrangements for her children and animals. When she returned, she was transferred to a hospital in Melbourne for more serious care, because doctors were worried she’d been poisoned.

Erin told the court that when she was at the Melbourne hospital, she spoke to Simon and mentioned the dehydrator. She said Simon then asked her: “Is that how you poisoned my parents?” (When he gave evidence earlier in the trial, Simon denied ever saying this.)

Erin said she panicked when Simon said this, fearing she would be held responsible in some way, and that child protective services would take her children away.

It’s at that point she threw her dehydrator into the tip, she said. CCTV footage presented to the court shows Erin disposing of the dehydrator, and a fingerprint expert has also confirmed her prints were on it.

This contradicts Erin’s police interview after she went to the tip, when she said she did not own a dehydrator and didn’t dehydrate food.

She has now admitted to both the defence and the prosecution’s lawyers that this was a lie.

Erin stepping up to testify has thrown off the timing of the trial, which was originally planned to last six weeks.

On Thursday, Justice Christopher Beale told jurors to expect at least another week of proceedings before they begin deliberations.

With a long weekend ahead, proceedings will resume on Tuesday as the trial enters week seven, with Erin to return to the stand for more questioning by Dr Rogers.

The world’s media - and the jury - will be watching.

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