Mushroom Recap: The Lunch

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The meal that started it all.

I'm the ABC's True Crime Investigative Reporter, Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

This is the first episode of a five-part series that'll take you back through the entire story that started with a homemade meal and ended in a murder trial.

In this episode, The Lunch, how it unfolded.

Welcome to the case of the mushroom lunch.

Just a week after four people sat down for a family lunch in rural Victoria, three of them were dead.

Homicide detectives are still piecing together what exactly happened at the lunch.

It's certainly looking like the symptoms are consistent with death cap mushrooms.

Erin Patterson said she bought the dried mushrooms at a supermarket and an Asian grocery store months earlier.

I cannot think of another investigation that has generated this level of media and public interest.

Yippsland is full of these just rolling green hills and tree-lined streets.

And on this Saturday afternoon, there are four people in a car driving down a road between Corranborough and Lee and Gather, heading to their daughter-in-law's house, the 48-year-old mother of two, Erin Patterson.

Yes, Stocky, July 29th, 2023, so exactly two years ago today.

It's a Saturday, it's just past midday, and it's the middle of winter, but the weather's fine.

And Don Patterson and his wife, Gail, are driving through this beautiful Victorian countryside on their way to Erin Patterson's house.

Also in the car is Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, and her husband, Ian.

And all four, they're all a bit older, late 60s, early 70s, and they have lots of kids and grandkids.

And the four of them are very close.

As I said, Gail and Heather are sisters, but they all attend the same church where Ian has been the pastor for the past 25 years.

And they catch up for coffees in their small town of Corranborough together.

And Stocky, they're much loved members of the Corranborough community.

They're all teachers in some capacity.

Don and Gail have worked at the local high school.

Heather's an ex-teacher who now teaches English to migrants at the local community centre.

And of course, Ian, as I mentioned, is the pastor at the local Baptist church.

So it's the first time Erin's actually held a lunch like this.

Erin is separated from Don and Gail's son Simon.

And she's never had Ian and Heather over.

But that doesn't matter.

They're all really excited about this lunch.

And Heather even mentioned how excited she was about it.

You know, she used to know Erin from when Erin's daughter was at playgroup and Erin was a bit shy, so Heather used to talk to her to make her feel a bit better about being there.

So Heather's thinking, well, maybe our relationship going to improve and get a bit closer.

And she puts the lunch in her paper diary, which I love, Stocky, because as you know, I'm a paper diary fan, old school, and they're all very excited about being there.

And they pull up at Erin's house, which is a lovely two-story home among the gum trees.

And as they pull up out front, Erin comes out to welcome them.

This house is a reasonably new build.

Erin Patterson described it as her forever home, a place that she built for her and her children.

It's been finished in the year or so

prior to this lunch.

There was a fifth guest who was supposed to be attending this lunch, but he doesn't show up.

And, you know, Erin welcomes the four guests who have attended into her home, sort of like bringing them through this, you know, kind of the main entryway into the house, into the kitchen, and yeah, showing the place off.

Erin loves this house.

She describes it as her final house, the place where she'll grow old, her children will grow up, a son and a daughter.

And she says if they moved away from union work, you know, she imagines them coming back to stay here, bringing maybe their children.

But that was her hopes for this house.

Now she shows the four guests inside.

Now, Heather happens to be really into pantries.

So Heather and Ian have just built a pantry and Heather wants to know about everyone else's setup, how it all works.

So she asks to see Erin's pantry.

Erin looks a little bit uncomfortable by this,

but Heather rushes in, she calls Gail through, she calls for Ian to come look.

But Ian says that Erin seems a little bit reluctant, like maybe it was messy and she didn't want them to go inside.

So he stays back talking to Don.

The two guys just chat.

And then after they've done the pantry inspection, they all go out to the garden.

They talk about the mulch, the plants, the fence.

Heather and Gail are really into gardening.

So they give Erin some gardening advice and then they all head back inside ready for lunch.

One of the conversations they had was about a tree that wasn't coping particularly well in one of the spots that it had been planted.

So, a lot of conversation around, you know, what might help that tree, you know, find its roots, grow a little bit better out in the garden, which, you know, which is, you know, a bit of a feature of this home on the outskirts of Leon Gatha.

But yeah, the guests go back inside and they start basically getting ready to sit down for this lunch.

And this lunch is a beef wellington.

The recipe is from the Recipe 10 Eats book written by Nagi and served with this meal, beans and mash, some packet gravy.

Now, beef Wellington is a beef loin.

So it's a long piece of meat that is wrapped in like a mushroom duck sell, wrapped in prosciutto, wrapped in pastry, or baked in the oven together.

That's how they would normally be served, Rach.

This one, not served in that kind of traditional way.

Yeah, that's right, Stocky.

Instead of the traditional way, so one big beef tenderloin log, she does individual portions.

So she buys individual beef cuts and everyone gets a serve of that wrapped in pastry, also with the mushroom paste.

And Ian describes it much like a pasty.

So pastry case and when you cut into it, there was steak and mushrooms.

The recipe calls for 700 grams of portobello mushrooms, but Erin swapped in less flavoursome pre-sliced button mushrooms.

And of course, we know they're not the only mushrooms that go into this meal.

Yeah, so all of the guests are standing around in the kitchen at this point.

You know, there's conversation.

They've had a look at the pantry.

They've had a look at a garden.

This meal has been almost completely finished.

Aaron Patterson is removing the individual pastry parcels from the oven.

And to give you a sense of this space, there is a kitchen table with six chairs in it.

It's a large, modern kitchen dining area.

Just next to that.

table is a large long kitchen island and then the other side of that is your stove, your oven, more of your kitchen bench space.

Aaron Patterson is in there preparing this meal.

The guests are standing around and how this meal was served was

really important, right, Rach?

Very important, Stocky.

So Erin also has mash on the go.

She's got green beans.

You've got Heather and Gail and what they do now reminds me of what happens at my family gatherings.

They offer to help.

You know, what can I do?

You know, can I help out with the preps?

And Erin says to them, no, no, no, I got it.

You just, you know, carry some plates over.

Ian remembers the two women carry the grey plates, he says, over to the dining table.

So four grey plates for the guests.

And Erin had a different colour one, her plate's smaller and a tanny orange colour.

Later, Erin disagrees.

She said she can't remember what colour her plate was, but she's adamant that she didn't own a tanny orange plate.

She says she doesn't have a matching set of plates either.

And later these details, Stocky, will come to mean a lot.

So they sit down.

Ian says, Grace, and and they start eating.

And so Ian and Heather finished their portions, Gail eats half of hers, Don eats his own serving plus Gail's leftovers.

The men make a joke about husbands finishing their wives' meals.

Erin says she ate some of her meal.

And then for dessert, they have a fruit platter and an orange cake, which were brought by Gail and Heather.

But it sounds like they just kind of pick at the fruit and the cake because the portions of Beef Wellington were so big that they were full.

And while this meal meal looks like

a really wonderful display of homemaking and community and family,

as the meal goes on,

the guests realise that Erin's got something that she wants to talk to them about.

Yes, Docie, and it involves cancer.

And so they remember it

in varying ways, as we do with all our memories that fade over time and people remember different interpretations of things.

Ian Wilkinson remembers Erin telling him that she had cancer and that she was concerned because it was very serious, life-threatening in fact, and she was anxious about telling the kids whether she should tell them or not about this threat to her life.

Now, Ian Wilkinson remembers it as some sort of ovarian or cervical cancer and that she spoke about a diagnostic test and a spot on the scan that looked like a tumour.

And they never really finished that conversation, do they?

No, they don't.

So when they're talking about it, Don says that they should pray for Erin and the children and that Erin should talk about it with Simon and work out what to tell the kids.

While they're talking about this,

Erin's son comes home from the movies with a friend.

And so

Don and Gail, you know, welcome their grandson.

He runs upstairs to get a book, like a textbook he's been learning.

He's been having flying lessons and he wants to show Don.

This always sticks in my mind really vividly, Stocky, because my pa would do that a lot to me.

You know, questions and curiosity are a great form of love and care, and you could tell the bond that these two had.

So the son was very keen to show him what he'd been doing in his flying lessons.

So they talk about that, and then the group heads off just a bit before three o'clock because Ian Wilkinson has a meeting about the church with some people back at his house in Corranborough.

They all pile back into that same car that they arrived in.

So all four of them, you know, taking another little trip through the beautiful green, hilly Gippsland countryside.

It's a beautiful clear day, the 29th of July, 2023.

Don and Gail drop Ian and Heather home so they can have that meeting and Erin starts to tidy up after the lunch.

That afternoon, Heather raves to two friends about the delicious and beautiful beef Wellington.

They go to bed that night, they're all feeling fine, but it doesn't last.

At midnight, Heather jolts out of bed, rushes to the laundry and starts vomiting.

And soon after, Ian does does too.

And for both of them, the vomiting and the diarrhea continues right throughout the night.

Sounded horrendous.

One of them was cradling a bucket, the other lying outside the laundry so they could have separate bathrooms.

Across town at almost the same time, Don and Gail also become sick, also with relentless vomiting and diarrhea.

When morning breaks, they're no better, they're weak, they've been vomiting all night.

So Don and Gail call an ambulance and go to Corrumborough Hospital.

Simon Patterson, their son, go and check on his aunt and uncle and finds out they're equally unwell.

So he tries to encourage them to go to the hospital.

They're a bit reluctant at first.

They think it's gastro.

He says look mum and dad are really sick.

I want to take you to hospital.

He takes them to Corranborough but the beds are full because Don and Gail are there so he drives them to Lee and Gather Hospital.

Now Stocky, something memorable happens as they're about to leave the house.

Heather's looking a bit puzzled and she says to Simon, I noticed Erin served herself food on a coloured plate, which was different to the rest, so different to the grey plates.

And then on the way to hospital, she brings it up again.

You know, so she's been vomiting and having diarrhea all night, but this image of plates is just stuck in her mind for some reason.

And so on the drive to the hospital, she asks Simon again,

Is Erin short of crockery?

Is that why she'd have this different kind of coloured plate that she served herself with?

Simon replies,

I just think Erin doesn't have that many plates.

Two years later, the events of this lunch and everything that happened before and after will be scrutinised as one of the most publicised Australian trials in history.

And as many of you know, we were there for every single day of that trial, over 10 weeks of evidence, 50 plus witnesses and six days of jury deliberations.

In this five-part series, we're telling the almost unbelievable story of the mushroom cook, Erin Patterson.

And everything you'll hear in this five-part series is taken from what we heard through that trial.

Tomorrow, we'll continue the story, diving into Erin Patterson's past, where she grew up, how she met the Pattersons, and where the tension between them started to build.

The Case of the Mushroom Lunch is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's presented by me, the ABC's true crime investigative reporter, Rachel Brown, and Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and supervising producer for this series is Yasmin Parry.

Many thanks to Audio Studios manager Eric George and our commissioning executive producer Tim Roxborough for helping make this show a reality.

This episode was produced on the land of the Rundrie people.

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