The 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.
Wilkinson 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”.
“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.
The 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.
Timeline
Erin Patterson: how Australia’s alleged mushroom poisoning case unfolded — a timeline
Show
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.
All four lunch guests are admitted to hospital with gastro-like symptoms.
Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson die in hospital.
Don Patterson dies in hospital. Victoria police search Erin Patterson’s home and interview her.
Ian Wilkinson is discharged from hospital after weeks in intensive care.
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.
Murder trial begins. Jury hears that charges of attempting to murder her estranged husband Simon are dropped.
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”.
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“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.
Later 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, and the morning after that 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, 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”.
But 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. 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 trial continues.
