Mushroom lunch’s sole surviving guest details deadly meal and its aftermath as trial of Erin Patterson continues do sex sex to

Ian Wilkinson arrives at the Latrobe Valley magistrates court in Victoria. Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha in 2023. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAPView image in fullscreenIan Wilkinson arrives at the Latrobe Valley magistrates court in Victoria. Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha in 2023. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAPVictoriaMushroom lunch’s sole surviving guest details deadly meal and its aftermath as trial of Erin Patterson continuesIan Wilkinson, whose wife was among three who died, tells Victorian court the triple murder accused ‘just seemed like a normal person to me’ Who are Erin Patterson and the other key figures in Australia’s mushroom murders trial? Nino Bucci Justice and courts reporterTue 6 May 2025 08.41 BSTFirst published on Tue 6 May 2025 05.54 BSTShareThe only surviving guest of the beef wellington lunch at Erin Patterson’s house has told her triple murder trial he was happy and excited about being invited for the meal.Ian Wilkinson, the pastor at the Korumburra Baptist church, is the sixth witness in the supreme court trial at the Latrobe Valley law courts in Morwell.Wilkinson told the court on Tuesday that Patterson was at a church service when she invited his wife, Heather, to lunch less than a fortnight before the meal in July 2023.Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to the beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha.Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering or attempting to murder the relatives of her estranged husband, Simon Patterson.She is accused of murdering Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.View image in fullscreen Illustration: Guardian DesignWilkinson said that his relationship with Patterson “was friendly, amicable, [but] it didn’t have much depth”.“I think we were more like acquaintances, we didn’t see a great deal of each other,” he said.His wife’s relationship was “very similar”, he said.“Heather would have seen Erin more than me, talked to her more than me, but we didn’t consider that the relationship was close.”When asked by Jane Warren, for the prosecution, to describe Patterson, Wilkinson said she “just seemed like a normal person to me”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email “As I say, when we met, things were friendly. We never had arguments or disputes.“She just seemed like an ordinary person, I don’t know how to describe it.”Wilkinson said that he and Simon had discussed relationship issues the estranged couple were having, but he never discussed these with Patterson.Wilkinson had never been for a meal at Patterson’s house, nor been inside any house she lived in, he said, and no reason was given for the invitation.But he said he and Heather were “very happy to be invited”.“It seemed like maybe our relationship with Erin was going to improve,” he said.View image in fullscreenErin Patterson’s Leongatha home. Photograph: James Ross/AAPThe Pattersons collected the Wilkinsons about 30 minutes before they were due at Patterson’s home, Wilkinson told the court.Heather noticed when they arrived at Patterson’s house that Simon’s car wasn’t there, and one of his parents confirmed he would not be attending lunch.Wilkinson said Patterson met them outside, and they continued into the open-plan kitchen, dining and living room of the newly built house.Heather and Gail went to inspect the pantry, but Wilkinson felt Patterson was reluctant for them to see it, so he stayed speaking with Don near the dining table.TimelineErin Patterson: how Australia's alleged mushroom poisoning case unfolded — a timelineShow29 July 2023 Erin Patterson hosts lunch for estranged husband Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt and uncle Heather and Ian Wilkinson. Patterson serves beef wellington.30 July 2023 All four lunch guests are admitted to hospital with gastro-like symptoms. 4 August 2023 Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson die in hospital. 5 August 2023 Don Patterson dies in hospital. Victoria police search Erin Patterson’s home and interview her. 23 September 2023 Ian Wilkinson is discharged from hospital after weeks in intensive care.2 November 2023 Police again search Erin Patterson’s home, and she is arrested and interviewed. She is charged with three counts of murder relating to the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson. 28 April 2025 Jury is sworn in. 29 April 2025 Murder trial begins. Jury hears that charges of attempting to murder her estranged husband Simon are dropped.Was this helpful?Thank you for your feedback.He said they went outside soon after, before heading back inside for lunch.Patterson was asked by Heather and Gail if she needed help plating up, but she said she didn’t, Wilkinson said.He noticed that there were four large grey plates and a smaller plate that was “orangey, tan” colour.Each plate had a beef wellington, which he said look like a pastie, green beans and mashed potato.He sat at the head of the table, with Don next to Gail, to his right, and Erin opposite Don to his left.After lunch, Wilkinson said, Patterson “announced that she had cancer”.Erin Patterson concocted cancer diagnosis to ensure children missed fatal mushroom lunch, murder trial hearsRead more“She said that she was very concerned, because she believed it was very serious, life threatening, she was anxious about telling the kids, she was asking our advice about that, should I tell the kids or should I not tell the kids about this threat.“At that moment, I thought, this is the reason we’ve been invited to the lunch.”The conversation ended when someone noticed one of Patterson’s children and a friend were returning home.Wilkinson noticed they had not prayed for Patterson, so he suggested they did so.He asked “God’s blessing on Erin, that she would get the treatment that she needed, that the kids would be OK, that she would have wisdom about how she told the kids”, Wilkinson told the court.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Breaking News AustraliaFree newsletterGet the most important news as it breaksEnter your email address Sign upPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionLater that evening, Wilkinson said, Heather left bed to vomit. He felt alright at this point, but vomited for the first time soon after.He was taken to hospital by Simon the following morning. Simon came to their house, and insisted that they go to hospital, as Wilkinson told the court he and Heather initially resisted.They thought it was “a case of gastro, a few hours we’ll be right”, Wilkinson told the court.The morning after that he was “abruptly woken up” and told there were fears he and Heather were suffering mushroom poisoning.Ambulances arrived during this conversation, and the Wilkinsons were taken to Dandenong hospital. Wilkinson was given a charcoal substance to drink, and agreed he had “no memory” from this point regarding his treatment.The court heard he was sedated and intubated, taken to the Austin hospital, and was treated in the intensive care unit there until 21 August 2023, before he was moved to a ward, discharged to a rehabilitation ward, and then eventually discharged home about a month later.Under cross-examination from Colin Mandy SC, for Patterson, Wilkinson agreed that once Gail and Heather placed the four grey plates on the table, the guests were free to sit where they liked. Patterson took her own plate of food to the table.Mandy suggested to Wilkinson that Patterson did not, in fact, have a set of four grey plates, and told the court no grey or stone plates had been found at her house.Wilkinson insisted the plates were grey, and larger than the plate Patterson had served her own food on.Mandy also asked Wilkinson about why he described Patterson as “announcing suspected cancer” in a statement he made to police in September 2023, when he told the court on Tuesday that she announced she had been diagnosed with cancer.“That was the truth, as far as you were concerned at that time [of the police statement], wasn’t it?” Mandy asked.“I think I was probably understating things at that point,” Wilkinson responded.Wilkinson disagreed with Mandy that Patterson said at the lunch that it was “a suspected diagnosis”.Deliberate poisoning or a tragic accident? The question at the heart of Australia’s mushroom murders trialRead moreBut he said he could accept he also did not mention a “diagnostic test” in his police statement, despite giving evidence on Tuesday that Patterson said at the lunch she had undergone a test of this kind.Mandy asked Wilkinson if anything unusual occurred at the lunch, other than the discussion about Patterson’s medical condition.“There’d been nothing out of the ordinary, apart from that discussion, that had happened on that day. That fair?” Mandy said.“That’s fair,” Wilkinson said.“Just a normal lunch?” Mandy continued.“Yes,” Wilkinson said.Medical witnesses who treated the lunch guests also provided evidence on Tuesday.One of those witnesses, Dr Beth Morgan, told the court that about 10.30pm on the day after the lunch was when she first suspected the guests were not just suffering serious food poisoning.“I was concerned that this wasn’t just gastroenteritis caused by food poisoning,” she said.“There was a discussion about the presentation and how it was quite severe, but the onset of symptoms was quite delayed.“This would be more indicative of a serious toxin syndrome as opposed to a food poisoning.”Another witness, the owner and manager of the business where Patterson bought a food dehydrator, was the first witness of the day.An invoice shown to the court detailed that Patterson bought the Sunbeam Food Lab Electronic Dehydrator for $229 on 28 April 2023.The court has previously heard Patterson excitedly shared with friends that she had used the dehydrator for mushrooms.The trial continues.Explore more on these topicsVictorianewsShareReuse this content