By court reporter Kristian Silva
Security footage has been played to Erin Patterson’s triple-murder trial, showing her dumping a food dehydrator at the tip in the days after she hosted a deadly lunch.
Prosecutors allege traces of death cap mushrooms were found on the black Sunbeam dehydrator, the same toxin ingested by four guests who ate beef Wellingtons at Ms Patterson’s home on July 29, 2023.
The trial of Erin Patterson, who stands accused of using a poisoned meal to murder three relatives, continues.
CCTV from the Koonwarra Transfer Station And Landfill was played to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, showing Ms Patterson’s red car pull up outside a large green shed on August 2, 2023.
Ms Patterson is seen retrieving the dehydrator from her boot and taking it inside the shed. Tip manager Darren Canty said the item was later retrieved from an e-waste bin and given to police.
Ms Patterson made her trip to the landfill hours after being discharged from the Monash Medical Centre.
While Ms Patterson was at the tip, lunch guests Don and Gail Patterson, and Heather and Ian Wilkinson, were in hospital as doctors tried to save their lives.
Mr Wilkinson was the only guest who survived.
Prosecutors have previously told the court traces of Amanita phalloides, also known as death cap mushrooms, were found on the dehydrator after scientific testing.
Ms Patterson is accused of deliberately poisoning the group of four and avoiding illness by serving herself a similar-looking meal that was not contaminated.
She has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder, with her defence lawyers telling the jury she did not intend to poison her relatives.
Professor Andrew Bersten, an experienced intensive care specialist, said he was asked to review Erin Patterson’s medical records.
He said there was evidence she had suffered from a diarrhoeal illness in the days after the lunch, citing mild dehydration and slightly elevated levels of haemoglobin and fibrinogen consistent with a sudden illness.
However, Dr Bersten said, there was no evidence the illness was severe or that Ms Patterson suffered liver damage.
Earlier on Wednesday, mycologist Camille Truong testified that there were no traces of death cap mushrooms found in beef Wellington leftovers retrieved from Ms Patterson’s household bin in Leongatha.
After the lunch, Ms Patterson directed police to her home, where an officer found remnants of a stale-looking pastry and brown filling at the bottom of a bin.
Those items ended up with Dr Truong, who examined the filling under a microscope in her home lab and for a second time at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne.
She said she found no traces of death cap mushrooms, but identified Agaricus bisporus, a mushroom typically found in Australian supermarkets.
Several witnesses have told the trial Ms Patterson claimed to have sourced the mushrooms in the group lunch meal from a local Woolworths and from an unspecified Asian or Chinese grocery store in Melbourne’s south-east.
In the months before the lunch, prosecutors alleged she visited the areas of Loch and Outtrim, near her home, after death cap mushroom sightings had been reported online.
Dr Truong said it would be “impossible” for someone to buy death cap mushrooms from a supermarket, because commercially sold fungi was cultivated and the poisonous varieties only grew in the wild.
Dr Truong, who also works with the Victorian Poisons Information Centre, said she was not aware of any records of people falling sick from mushrooms sold in shops.
Another mycologist, Dr Tom May, was taken through a lengthy exercise by defence lawyers where he was shown 17 pictures of various mushrooms.
He agreed the stubble rosegill, Oudemansiella gigaspora, honey mushroom, buttery collybia, spotted stem ringless Amanita and spring fieldcap — all reported to be growing in Victoria — had some visual similarities to the death cap mushroom.
Not all of those species were believed to be poisonous, he said.
Dr May said identifying species of mushrooms was a challenging task, even for experienced mushroomers like him.
“There are quite a few mushrooms where the state of our understanding of the taxonomy … is still not finalised,” he said.
