Lana Lam
Live reporter

A bit more information on her other days of testimony too...

Monday

In her first appearance since the high-profile trial started six weeks ago, Ms Patterson told the court that in the months leading up to the fatal lunch, she felt the Patterson family were distancing themselves from her.

She also detailed marital problems with her then-husband Simon Patterson, saying the couple had poor communication and couldn't resolve issues amicably.

The mother-of-two also spoke about the traumatic birth of her first child, saying she discharged herself early from hospital after the emergency caesarean against medical advice.

Tuesday

We heard about Ms Patterson’s long-standing love for mushrooms which expanded to wild varieties in early 2020, when she started foraging for fungi at locations close to her Leongatha home.

She apologised for a series of expletive-laden Facebook messages on a private group chat which were critical of her estranged husband Simon and her in-laws, Don and Gail.

The 50-year-old also claimed the mushrooms used in the beef Wellington were a mix of store-bought ones and some from an Asian grocer in Melbourne.

For a recap of Wednesday's evidence, scroll back a post.

James Chater
Live reporter

Let's recap what the court heard yesterday, the third day of Ms Patterson giving evidence:

• Ms Patterson said that she had only eaten a small part of the toxic meal and later consumed two-thirds of a cake, becoming "over-full", then vomiting up the food up. We earlier heard her talk about a history with disordered eating, dating back to her teenage years
• She admitted to lying about a cancer diagnosis - which the prosecution says she used to compel the guests to come to the lunch - instead of revealing she was planning to have weight-loss surgery

• Asked about the source of the mushrooms in the dish, Ms Patterson said there were fresh ones from a supermarket and some dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer added for extra flavour
• Through tears, she said she now feared there was a possibility mushrooms she had foraged were in the same container and had made it into the dish as well
• Ms Patterson said there were no assigned seats or plates at the meal. Earlier the trial heard one of the deceased had questioned why Ms Patterson had used a different-looking plate to the other guests
• Hours after the meal, Ms Patterson said she began to feel sick so took herself to the hospital, where she was "shocked but confused" when staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms
• The court also heard that Ms Patterson had changed her phone number over security concerns related to her estranged husband, Simon, who she said had accused her of poisoning his parents
• Ms Patterson says she performed a factory reset of her phone multiple times in the days after the fatal lunch - including once while it was in police custody - to prevent detectives from seeing her photos of mushrooms

The trial centres around a lunch that Erin Patterson hosted at her Leongatha home in regional Victoria in July 2023.

Her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, died in the days after they ate Ms Patterson's home-cooked beef Wellington which had poisonous death cap mushrooms in it.

Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, also died while her husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, 71, survived after spending weeks in an induced coma.

Ms Patterson - facing three murder charges and one of attempted murder - has denied she purposely poisoned the four guests with her defence team calling it a tragic accident, while the prosecution argues she deliberately served the toxic meal.

Tiffanie Turnbull
Live editor

Welcome back to our live coverage of the trial of Erin Patterson, who is accused of killing three relatives and gravely injuring another by intentionally serving them a toxic mushroom meal.

The 50-year-old denies this, saying it was all a tragic accident. She has been giving evidence since Monday afternoon.

We heard late yesterday that her defence lawyer is almost finished his questioning, which means the prosecution will be given the opportunity to cross-examine her today if they wish to.

We have a team watching the case from the courthouse in regional Victoria and listening in Sydney, and will be bringing you updates throughout the day.

That is it for our live coverage of the trial today. We will be back tomorrow as Erin Patterson continues to give evidence.

The short answer is that we don't know.

The trial was initially estimated to run for six weeks but we're now into that sixth week, and it is looking more likely that the case may drag on beyond that.

The prosecution case has called more than 50 witnesses and has taken up almost all of that time so far, with the defence starting their turn when Erin Patterson entered the witness box on Monday afternoon.

Her team will also have the opportunity to call other witnesses if they wish. The prosecution can opt to cross-examine any of them.

Once that's finished, there'll be closing arguments from each side before the judge gives final instructions to the jury.

They'll then retire to deliberate, before returning a verdict.

Koh Ewe
Live page reporter

Thank you for joining our coverage of Erin Patterson's murder trial today. In case you missed it, here are the main takeaways from today's hearing:

• Ms Patterson said that she did not finish her portion of lunch, partly as she had been talking a lot. She said that after guests left, however, she ate two-thirds of an orange cake that one of the guests had brought
• After eating the cake she felt ill, she said, and brought up the food. Yesterday she told the court that she had a history of disordered eating

• She said she had planned to get gastric bypass surgery but was embarrassed to tell anyone. She instead lied to her guests about having ovarian cancer so that she wouldn't have to reveal the weight loss surgery, and they could help her with logistics around the kids, she said
• The trial heard earlier that Ms Patterson's phone might have travelled to nearby towns where death cap mushrooms had been spotted – but she said today that she did not know about the mushrooms there

• Ms Patterson told the court that she started feeling sick hours after the lunch. She took herself to hospital to "get some fluids", and was "shocked but confused" when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms
• Her children were admitted to hospital, too, after doctors raised concerns that they could have ingested toxins from the lunch leftovers she had served them
• Ms Patterson said that there were no assigned seats or plates at lunch, and that she did not remember which plate she used. Earlier in the trial we heard that Heather Wilkinson, one of the deceased, questioned while in hospital why Ms Patterson had used a different-looking plate to the ones her guests ate from
• Finally, the court heard that Ms Patterson changed her phone out of security concerns stemming from her ex-husband Simon. She also performed a factory reset of her phone multiple times in the days after the fatal lunch – one of those times to prevent detectives from seeing her photos of mushrooms and dehydrator

We're closing our live page now, but will be back with more updates tomorrow as the trial continues.

Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell

That’s a wrap for today – the third day of giving evidence for the defendant.

The day covered a great deal of ground, as the court heard more details about what happened at the lunch, at Ms Patterson's home after guests left, and the worsening condition of the guests in the days after eating beef Wellington that contained toxic mushrooms.

But the questioning is far from over for Erin Patterson. While the defence team has said they are nearly finished, it will then be the turn of the prosecution to cross-examine Ms Patterson and that is expected to take several more days. This trial was meant to take six weeks but we’re already in that sixth week – and it’s not close to finishing yet.

Flagging that he has about 15 minutes of questioning left for Ms Patterson, her barrister Colin Mandy says he'll pick things up again tomorrow morning and the jury is sent home for the day.

Once the defence has finished talking to Ms Patterson, the prosecution will have the opportunity to cross examine her.

We'll have a recap of all we heard today for you shortly.

Speaking through tears, Ms Patterson is telling the jury that her children were close with both of their grandparents too, but that Don and her son were "especially" close.

"They were like two minds separated by like 50 years. [My son] just loved him," Ms Patterson says.

Koh Ewe
Live reporter

The court is being shown messages exchanged between Ms Patterson and her in-laws, including Don Patterson giving her suggestions about French cricket and asking after her well-being.

When Ms Patterson and her daughter got Covid in February 2023, she says, Don and Gail had helped look after her son.

Don also started giving her son mathematics tutoring to "help him keep up".

There were also regular virtual gatherings between the family members, which started during Covid, and "kept going" afterwards, she said.

"It was a really good relationship," Ms Patterson says.

We're hearing evidence about Ms Patterson's relationship with the lunch guests, here's a reminder of who attended:

Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell

It's not often that such a small courthouse hosts a case as closely watched as this.

The Latrobe Valley Law Courts are a small and unimposing modern building on the main road of Morwell in regional Victoria, and space inside courtroom 5 is very limited.

Because of the huge interest in this trial, seating has to be closely managed. Only six journalists are allowed into the court each day – everyone else has to watch from an overflow room here or in Melbourne. There's a little more space reserved for members of the public, but not much.

The BBC was given one of those coveted six spots yesterday, but today we're back in the media overflow room, watching Ms Patterson's testimony on a livestream.

Image source, Getty Images

Koh Ewe
Live reporter

Ms Patterson says she was responsible for three factory resets of one of her phones, around the time of the fatal lunch.

She took the phone off her son after he damaged it during a school camp, and after it had dried out, reset the handset to get his information off it.

The next reset, on 5 August 2023, was because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator, Ms Patterson said. Prosecutors say this took place while officers were searching her home.

Another factory reset the next day was done out of curiosity, Ms Patterson told the court. She wanted to test out if she could log into her Google account to see where her devices were, adding that she didn't think detectives would have been "silly" enough to leave them connected to the internet while in their property.

James Chater
Live reporter

The trial has heard that Ms Patterson switched between a few phones and numbers in the months leading up to the lunch and shortly after.

Ms Patterson is now telling the court she wanted to change her phone number in the days after the meal because she was "becoming concerned about Simon's behaviour and his allegations".

"I was concerned for my security and so I wanted him not to be able to contact me anymore," she says.

She adds that her original phone was damaged. The screen was less responsive and it was becoming harder to read, so she decided to use an undamaged phone.

She details how she was updating contact details from the old phone to a new one.

Katy Watson and Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell

By this point, Ms Patterson had been told that there was a suspicion there were death cap mushrooms in the meal.

She says that's why she dumped the dehydrator: "Well I thought there might be evidence of that. Evidence of any foraged mushrooms in there."

"Did you tell anyone that death caps might have been in the meal?” her barrister Colin Mandy asks.

“No, I didn’t,” Erin Patterson says.

“Did you tell anyone foraged mushrooms may have been in there?”

“No.”

She didn’t tell the health investigators about possible foraged mushrooms because she was scared, she says. “I still thought it was a possibility [they came from an Asian grocer]. But I knew it wasn’t the only possibility.”

Katy Watson
reporting from Morwell

Tearfully, Ms Patterson says she began to think about foraged mushrooms she had been drying in the dehydrator weeks earlier, and started wondering whether they had shared a container with the mushrooms she had bought from the Asian store.

By the time she was released from hospital, Ms Patterson says she was panicking.

"I was frantic," she says. "Because I had made the meal and served it and people got sick."

She was then asked about dumping the dehydrator at the local tip. Authorities were coming to her house that afternoon.

"I was scared of the conversation that might flow about the meal and the dehydrator and I just was scared that they would blame me for it."

James Chater
Live reporter

The court is hearing about a conversation between Mr and Ms Patterson, at the hospital in Melbourne. Once alone, Ms Patterson says Simon asked her about using dehydrated mushrooms in the recipe.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?" Simon said, according to Ms Patterson.

"Of course not," Ms Patterson says she responded.

Earlier in the trial, Mr Patterson denied making that accusation.

Ms Patterson says the comment caused her to do “a lot of thinking about a lot of things".

She describes feeling a bevy of emotions: "Scared. Responsible. Really worried… Simon seemed to be of the mind that maybe this was intentional."

Simon Atkinson
reporting from Morwell

By now authorities were scrambling to work out what had made the four guests so ill.

Erin Patterson told the court that public health worker Sally Ann Atkinson called her asking where the mushrooms had come from.

She said they had predominantly come from her local Woolworths supermarket. The rest had come from an Asian supermarket – though she could not recall which.

"In your mind at that time, was that the truth or a lie?“ her barrister asks.

“It was the truth, ” Erin Patterson said.

We heard earlier this morning, Ms Patterson now accepts it is likely that mushrooms she had previously foraged and dried had made it into the dish.

Meanwhile we've also heard Ms Patterson's children were admitted to hospital too.

She was earlier asked to explain why she had tried to leave the hospital so she could pick them up from school herself despite being sick after the meal.

“That's a really hard question to answer because when I look back on it it was kind of absurd, but I was their mother," she says, "and I wanted to be responsible for them."

She also says that she thought her husband wouldn't help them, because he hadn't wanted to drive even 10 minutes to help her earlier that day.