Australian woman Erin Patterson is giving evidence in her triple-murder trial
The court has heard Ms Patterson, 50, cooked and served a beef wellington meal containing toxic death cap mushrooms at her home in regional Victoria in July 2023, which killed three relatives and seriously injured another
The prosecution says Ms Patterson included the poisonous mushrooms deliberately - she denies this and her defence team says it was a "terrible accident"
Her estranged husband's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, both died as well as Gail Patterson's sister, Heather Wilkinson. Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, became ill but survived
Her testimony today centred on the breakdown of her marriage and health anxieties which developed in the lead up to the lunch for her relatives at her home
Yesterday, she told the court that her relationship with her in-laws had grown more distant by 2023
Watch: Three things you need to know about Australia's mushroom murder trial
She tells the trial she was drawn to "exotic mushrooms" because they "just taste more interesting... [have] more flavour".
Ms Patterson then describes experimenting with mushrooms she'd foraged herself, cutting them up and cooking them with butter.
"They tasted good and I didn’t get sick," she said.
Lana Lam
Live reporter
Erin Patterson is now talking about a long-standing love of mushrooms.
"They taste good and they're very healthy," she says.
"I'd buy all the different types that Woolies [supermarket Woolworths] would sell," adding that she'd also go to local farmers' markets to buy other varieties.
Her love of mushrooms expanded to wild ones in early 2020 after the pandemic hit and she would take her children on walks outdoors after the first lockdown.
"There were lots of [wild mushrooms] at the gardens," she tells the court.
Her barrister also asks her about posting pictures and comments to a Facebook chat group about her love of mushrooms and her use of a dehydrator.
In one post she talks about hiding dried, powdered mushrooms in "everything", including chocolate brownies fed to her children.
Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
Barrister Colin Mandy says he’ll now talk about Ms Patterson's “body image issues".
"I’ve had it ever since I was a teenager, as long as I can remember. I’ve tried every diet under the sun," she explains.
Ms Patterson begins detailing a childhood where her mum weighed her weekly to make sure she wasn't putting on too much weight, leading to under eating. In adulthood, her struggles turned to binge eating. She describes consuming anything she could get her hands on then "bringing it back up".
"I’ve never had a good relationship with food, a healthy relationship”.
Her disordered eating was a secret, she tells the jury. "Nobody knew."
These messages were sent as conflict about finances between Simon and Erin Patterson ratcheted up, the court heard.
School fees and child support were bones of contention, and Ms Patterson had at one point sought support from his parents in mediating the issues.
"It was wrong to involve Don and Gail and I should have approached it differently with Simon," Ms Patterson tells the court.
“I wanted [my in-laws] to agree with me that I was right, Simon was wrong, and that wasn’t fair."
Erin Patterson’s lawyer has now started asking her about messages she sent in a private Facebook group criticising and expressing frustration at the Patterson family.
At times crying and wiping her eyes with tissues, she said the group "became a safe venting space for all of us".
The women in it talked about everything from cooking and children to politics. The alternative for her was to go to the paddock and rant at the sheep, she said.
"I felt heard and validated and understood," Ms Patterson said. They were a "cheer squad".
She regarded the group as private but expressed regret about the explicit language she used.
"I wish I had never said that – I feel ashamed... They didn’t deserve it."
Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell
Erin Patterson’s lawyer is going over all the events methodically – after more than two hours of questioning, he’s not even reached the day of the fateful lunch.
After the defence team finishes questioning, it will then be the turn of the prosecution to cross-examine Ms Patterson.
We are now in week six of the trial - a trial that the judge initially estimated would last about six weeks, but it’s looking increasingly likely it may drag on longer.
Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell
Just before the break, Erin Patterson was explaining that her relationship with husband Simon Patterson - from whom she had been separated since 2015 - became more difficult towards the end of 2022, after he noted on his tax return that he was single.
She told the court that by doing that, she was able to claim a family tax benefit that until then she’d not been able to take advantage of.
Her lawyer then asked if after that, other financial issues appeared.
"Yeah, it did, it did," Ms Patterson said.
She was then shown a series of messages between her and Simon Patterson. She puts on glasses to look more closely at the messages which talk about childcare. They also revisit the issue of being invited to Gail’s 70th birthday last-minute, which came up earlier in the trial.
"I felt hurt because I thought I’d been left off the invite list. But I was also annoyed with myself because I had forgotten it was a big birthday coming up for Gail," she said.
Court has just been taking a brief morning break, but while we wait here's a recap of the trial so far.
BBC Correspondent Katy Watson has been reporting on the case since it started. Today, she's inside the courtroom, hearing the testimony of Erin Patterson first-hand.
Here are the three key things she thinks you need to know.
Watch: Three things you need to know about Australia's mushroom murder trial
At different times, Ms Patterson tells the court she thought she had a brain tumour, MS (multiple sclerosis) and ovarian cancer due to concerns of chronic headaches, repeated swelling in her hands and ongoing abdominal pain.
She says she did "a lot of Dr Googling" - researching her symptoms on the web.
Reflecting on the multiple referrals, she said: "I think I wasted a lot of time." Particularly that of doctors, she adds.
She continues: "It's hard to justify it but with the benefit of hindsight I just lost so much faith in the medical system I decided anything to do with my or my children's health, I'm going to have to solve it myself."
Now she says she knows "not every headache is a brain tumour".
Lana Lam
Live reporter
Detailing some illnesses her children experienced, Ms Patterson is explaining she developed a mistrust of the health system.
She recounts a time she sought help for her baby daughter who was in pain, but doctors effectively told her she was an "over-anxious mother" and to "relax".
When her daughter was eight months old, doctors did eventually find a mass.
“It considerably damaged my faith in the health system," Ms Patterson tells the court.
“I didn’t trust that these people knew what they were doing. It was hard enough to get [my daughter] in the first place… I didn’t want to lose her.”
Under questioning from her lawyer, Ms Patterson says her bad experience with the health system prompted her to discharge herself from hospital after the 2023 lunch at the centre of the case - despite doctors concerns she may have eaten poisonous mushrooms.
Simon Atkinson
Australia producer, BBC News
Ms Patterson is asked about her health - and admits never having had ovarian cancer or ever having had a needle biopsy.
The trial earlier heard from prosecutors who say she lied about having cancer, and that she gathered her family to the fateful lunch on the pretence of being diagnosed with the disease - something she denies.
Her barrister has previously said the cancer claim was the product of Ms Patterson's very real fears of contracting the disease.
Ms Patterson is telling the court she had been worried about having ovarian cancer and that this was why her internet search history included symptoms for cancer. “I consulted Doctor Google,” she says.
She also said her family had a history of ovarian cancer.
Ottilie Mitchell
Live reporter
When asked how the couple handled the separation, Miss Patterson sighed and said there was no animosity between them.
"We tried really hard to work out an arrangement where the kids could be together," she told the jury.
The defence questioned Ms Patterson on how her and Simon Patterson's assets had been divided.
"We just wrote down what we had," she said, and then split it "down the middle".
Ms Patterson started the day telling the court about the inheritance she received from her grandparents and parents, which enabled her to buy property for her family.
Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
The questioning has now turned to Ms Patterson's separation with Simon Patterson in 2015.
“I didn’t want to be separated but I felt there was no choice," she told the court.
"It was the living together that didn’t work."
She says the couple struggled to work out disagreements in a way where neither party felt "hurt or misunderstood".
Of the separation, she said: "In the immediate aftermath it was difficult... but that only lasted a couple of weeks... we went back to being really good friends."
She fights back tears as she tells the court how her relationship with Don and Gail Patterson endured after her separation from their son.
"It never changed, I was just their daughter-in-law. They just continued to love me."
Katy Watson & Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell
There are quite a few members of the extended Patterson and Wilkinson families in court today - Ian Wilkinson, the sole surviving lunch guest, is here with his relatives. Some of Simon Patterson’s siblings are here too.
Some of these people have been coming for much of the trial, but today, they’ve got extra supporters.
In the media overflow room, more than 30 journalists are also present, reporting on the trial.
Image source, EPAIan Wilkinson gave evidence earlier in the trial
Ms Patterson yesterday told the court she and her husband had briefly settled in Perth, where they had their first child. She's now detailing her family's decision to move from Western Australia back to Victoria.
"We packed up our life in Western Australia in early 2013 and took a number of months to get back to Victoria," she tells the court.
By September that year, her family was back living in the Gippsland region.
She explains that her son was a "very extroverted child" and struggled with "lack of siblings" and having "no friends to play with".
Moving back to Victoria also meant her son could be closer to his grandparents - Don and Gail Patterson - calling them his "nanna and papa".
Ms Patterson was also preparing for the birth of her second child and wanted to be near her in-laws too, she said.
A reminder: the jury is being asked to weigh up evidence and decide whether Erin Patterson is guilty of four charges - three of murder, and one of attempted murder.
The case centres around a beef wellington lunch she served at her home in Leongatha in July 2023.
Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch, including Ms Patterson's former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, as well as Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66. Heather's husband, 71-year-old Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson, survived after weeks of treatment in hospital. Simon Patterson, the accused's estranged husband, was also invited but pulled out at the last minute.
Prosecutors say Ms Patterson intentionally served up the meal containing mushrooms. She has pleaded not guilty - her defence says it accepts deadly death cap mushrooms were in the food but that it was an accident and Ms Patterson "didn't intend to cause anyone any harm".
Ms Patterson has just started speaking again, but this is a recap of what she said during her evidence yesterday afternoon - which largely focussed on her personal life in the years before the fatal lunch in 2023.
She told the court she had been a "fundamental atheist" but converted to Christianity due to the influence of her husband Simon Patterson.
She also spoke about the "very traumatic" birth of her son and her relationship struggles - she and her husband struggled with how to work out disagreements, she said.
By 2023, they were separated, and Ms Patterson told the court she felt distant from her in-laws and suspected that her husband did not want her "too involved" with the family anymore.
Ms Patterson also spoke about her long battle with low self-esteem throughout most of her adult life.
Katy Watson
Reporting from Morwell
The case is being heard in Latrobe Valley Law Courts - a fairly small and unimposing modern building on the main road through the town of Morwell in regional Victoria.
Because of the huge interest in this trial, the court has had to organise how journalists can adequately cover it. Only six journalists are allowed into court each day - everyone else has to watch from an overflow room here or in Melbourne.
The BBC was given a spot for today - long before we knew Erin Patterson would be speaking - so I’ll be watching her testimony from inside court 5.
There’s lots of interest in this case beyond the media though too, members of the public queued up from early this morning too. Standing outside the court now, waiting to go on, are 30 or so people - there won’t be space for them all.
Tiffanie Turnbull
BBC News, Sydney
We're resuming our live coverage of Erin Patterson's murder trial in regional Victoria, where she's due to continue her testimony this morning after a quick 45 minutes in the witness box yesterday.
Proceedings will start for the day in a few minutes - and we've got a reporter inside the tiny courtroom - so stay tuned as we bring you all the updates.
Erin Patterson was asked about her children, religion, and finances, among other things, during her murder trial today. Here's a recap of what she told the court.