MORWELL, Australia: An Australian woman accused of murdering three people by dishing up a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington never asked after her dying guests’ well-being, her husband told a court on Friday (May 2).
Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with three murders – the parents and aunt of her estranged husband – and one attempted murder.
She has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Her defence says the fatal beef-and-pastry meal, laced with death cap mushrooms, was the result of “a terrible accident”.
On the third day of a trial that has made international headlines, the accused woman’s husband Simon Patterson said she never asked him about his family’s health as they lay in the hospital.
“It intrigued me that she never actually asked,” he told the jury at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell, southeast of Melbourne.
Defence lawyer Colin Mandy asked the husband if he had explained to her how ill his parents were.
“We didn’t have that conversation, I don’t think, at any time,” Simon said.
The night before the lunch, the husband had declined an invitation to eat a “special meal” at Patterson’s home in the sedate Victoria state farm village of Leongatha.
But four members of his family went: his parents Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson and her husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson.
