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The jury and Simon Patterson have returned to courtroom 4 after an hour-long lunch break.
Simon has started to provide evidence again, discussing his children on the day after the beef Wellington lunch – July 30, 2023.
Simon Patterson arrives at court on Thursday.Credit: Jason South
His two children needed to be checked out at the hospital because they’d had the leftovers of the lunch, Simon explained to the jury.
When asked what they had eaten, Simon said the children told him they had eaten steak, mashed potatoes and beans. One of the children then said she hadn’t had mushrooms because she didn’t like mushrooms.
Simon took the children to Monash Children’s Hospital where they were admitted for observation. T
They were both found not to be ill, but they were kept overnight just in case. At that time, Erin Patterson was in a different part of the Monash Medical Centre.
Simon said the children spent the day there until it was time for them to sleep. In that time, he did not notice any signs of frequent diarrhoea or vomiting.
“There was no sign to me of diarrhoea or vomiting, and I guess by that moment, like obviously I wasn’t with her when she was in the toilet. She went to the toilet. [It was] not the frequent toileting that she’d been telling me that she’d been experiencing before,” Simon said.
Simon Patterson continues to tell the jury about Sunday, July 30, 2023, the day after the beef Wellington lunch at Erin’s home.
That same day, Simon spoke with Erin over the phone and told her about his parents’ illness, the jury heard.
Erin Patterson and Simon Patterson.Credit: Jason South
Simon told the court that Erin said she’d had diarrhoea herself after the meal, and that it had made it difficult to drive one of their children’s friends home to Korumburra. “She was worried that she’d poop her pants,” Simon said.
“She said she’d gone to Subway … and she didn’t want to get out of the car then because she was worried she might have an accident at that time.”
The following morning, July 31, 2023, Erin called Simon asking to have a chat about 7am, the jury heard.
When Simon responded that he had two hours’ sleep and suggested they chat later, he said Erin became “indignant”.
“She said something like a bit sort of sarcastically, you know, ‘I’ll sort out my own problems’, or something to that effect,” Simon said.
Simon said Erin told him she had continued to have diarrhoea, and asked for a lift to the hospital.
“I suggested she get an ambulance,” Simon said.
Later that morning, Simon said, he and Erin spoke on the phone again. During that conversation, Erin said she had been admitted to Leongatha Hospital and that she had fed leftovers to the children.
“She said the hospital had said, ‘Well, the kids need to be checked out too, given there’s a bunch of people sick from this meal’. And so she said the kids needed to be picked up from school, and she was keen to drive to their school and pick them up and take them to hospital, to get checked out,” Simon said.
Simon Patterson said he told Erin it made no sense for her to pick up the children from school if she was unwell, and offered to pick them up himself. “After I said, ‘I’m glad that you’re feeling healthy enough to make that drive’, she paused … and then that’s when … the conversation turned and she accepted that it did make sense.”
Simon said that after Erin discharged herself from Leongatha Hospital, “she got home, and she said she lay on the floor, and fell asleep for about 45 minutes”. After that, he recalled, she drove herself back to Leongatha Hospital.
Inside the Morwell courthouse, Erin Patterson has her eyes fixed on Simon, her estranged husband.
Sipping from a paper cup, Simon Patterson is talking about July 30, 2023, the day after the beef Wellington lunch – the day that started with a phone call from his father.
“He told me that he and Mum had been vomiting and had diarrhoea … and so they called emergency services, and they were waiting for, I remember, patient transport to pick them up,” Simon told the jury.
Upon learning that Ian and Heather Wilkinson – the two other guests at the lunch – were experiencing the same symptoms, Simon also tried to call them. When they failed to pick up, he drove to their house. Ian answered the door.
From left: Don Patterson, Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson all died after ingesting poisonous mushrooms. Ian Wilkinson (right) survived after weeks in hospital.
“He looked grey, I suppose, and stopped,” Simon recalled.
Inside the home, Heather was sitting on the couch, near a bucket. “She looked pretty crook,” Simon said.
After Ian left the room, Simon said Heather looked at him, puzzled, and said: “I noticed Erin served herself food on a coloured plate, which was different to the rest.”
Simon said that after being told the ambulance would be about an hour away, he resolved to take Heather and Ian to Korumburra Hospital, but was advised by staff there to take the couple to Leongatha Hospital instead.
Simon Patterson outside court on Thursday.Credit: Jason South
On the drive there, the jury heard, Heather again brought up the different coloured plates.
“She asked me, ‘Is Erin short of crockery? Is that why she would have this different kind of coloured plate that she served herself?’” Simon said.
“I said, ‘Yes, Erin doesn’t have that many plates’ and that may be the reason.”
Simon said he stayed with Ian and Heather at the hospital until their daughter, Ruth, arrived. He then went to Korumburra Hospital to see his parents.
In court, Simon Patterson blew his nose in tissues and paused to compose himself before telling the jury his dad was in a worse state than his mum when he arrived to see them.
“Dad was substantially worse than Mum. He was really struggling,” he said.
He told the jury Don Patterson was lying on his side, hunched, with a discoloured face.
“Speaking was an effort, and taking the energy to speak was an effort, and his voice was strained … in a way that … He wasn’t right inside,” Simon said.
Speaking through tears, Simon said his father was struggling, lying on his side in the hospital bed.
Simon said he spoke to Don about the reason for the lunch and was told about Erin’s ovarian cancer diagnosis.
“She was expecting to have, I think, chemo and potentially surgery. I’m not sure if it was established exactly what the treatment would be, but that was what was expected to need,” Simon said.
Simon said to the jury that Don and Gail told Simon they should tell the children about the diagnosis together.
“I’d never heard of a cancer diagnosis positive for Erin,” Simon said.
That evening, on July 30, 2023, Don and Gail were taken to Dandenong Hospital.
On July 29, 2023, the day of the fatal lunch, Simon Patterson picked up his two children and their friend from the cinema in Leongatha, where they had watched the movie Elemental.
He drove them to Erin’s house. There, he dropped one child and the child’s friend off. He then went to his own home with the other child to spend the day together, as they often did on a Saturday. He returned to Erin’s home about 9pm to drop that child off, he told the jury.
Simon Patterson told the jury he and Erin exchanged text messages in the lead-up to the fatal lunch at Erin’s home on July 29, 2023.
As he did so, the jury was shown images of the texts.
Erin invited Simon to lunch to discuss some medical news, the jury heard. “She said she was keen for it not to be with the kids because she wanted to talk about this serious matter,” Simon said.
Simon said he was reluctant to attend but told Erin “that should be OK”.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘Oh, are you gonna put that in your calendar in your phone?’ And I said, ‘I don’t really use the calendar in the phone. I keep a paper diary at home, and I’ll write it down in the diary at home’,” he told the jury.
Simon said his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, did not know the purpose of the lunch and were intrigued about why they were invited along with Gail’s sister Heather and Heather’s husband Ian.
The day before the lunch, Simon said in court, he told his parents he would not be attending the lunch. “I texted Erin to say I was uncomfortable and I wouldn’t be attending,” Simon said.
Here’s some of the text exchange between the pair on July 28, 2023, the day before the lunch:
Simon told the jury that following Erin’s request on the school fees, she complained about the tension between them to his parents, Don and Gail Patterson.
From there, a family chat group was created on Signal toward the end of 2022. “She was … I think it was pretty clear she was asking for them to be involved, that’s my opinion,” Simon said.
While being asked about Erin’s relationship with his parents, particularly his father, Simon began to cry, and told the jury that she loved his “gentle nature”.
Don and Gail and Patterson.
Erin Patterson, seated in the dock, nodded along as Simon spoke about that relationship.
Simon’s tears weren’t the only ones shed during his evidence in courtroom 4 in the Latrobe Valley legal precinct in Morwell.
The tipstaff, the officer of the court who assists Justice Christopher Beale, also just handed tissues to the family members of those who died after the July 2023 lunch, as they also cried during Simon’s evidence.
Crying in the dock, Simon Patterson was asked repeatedly if he needed a break. He told the jury that if it was OK, he would like to continue talking about his marriage.
After asking for a tissue, he told the court that he and Erin once shared a largely friendly relationship after their separation. Often, they would exchange text messages about politics and other interesting topics.
They even continued to share family holidays, he said. They went overseas and interstate, and tried to remain amicable.
Then, he said, something changed.
Simon recalled that one afternoon in late October or November in 2022, he was dropping off the children when Erin pulled him aside for a private chat.
She sat in the car with Simon and said she had discovered that his tax return for the previous financial year noted they were separated. “Before that we hadn’t gotten the government involved in the fact we were separated at all before,” Simon said.
“She said that mattered, I think, for the Family Tax Benefit, something of that nature. And so, she would be obliged to claim child support off me, which had never happened before.”
Simon Patterson arrives at court.Credit: Jason South
Simon told the court his tax status was changed as a result of a miscommunication between him and his accountant. He said Erin rejected his efforts to revert it.
From then on, Simon said, communication became more functional and less “chatty”.
“That was probably the first thing that made me feel that there was a substantial change in our relationship, that before that, our habit for years was to message each other a lot, in a chatty way, and the chatty nature of it pretty much stopped,” Simon said.
He said that a few weeks later, Erin applied for child support. She was also keen for him to sign a form stipulating that they would each pay half of the children’s school fees.
However, Simon told Erin he had been advised by child support staff not to do so, as the school fees would be covered in the child support payments.
“I’m sure she was very upset about that,” Simon told the jury.
Simon and Erin relocated to Western Australia about a month after their wedding. In the following years, they packed up their lives in a four-wheel-drive and, with a young child, set off to explore Australia.
For several months, they travelled across the northern half of Australia. When the family got to Townsville, Erin decided to fly to Perth with their child but without Simon, the jury was told.
In Perth, Erin secured a rental property. When Simon also travelled to Perth, he stayed at a caravan park nearby.
“[Erin] was struggling inside herself,” Simon told the jury.
The couple eventually reconciled and moved in together. At the time, Simon was working as a civil engineer in York, a city in WA’s Wheatbelt region about 100 kilometres east of Perth.
Simon told the jury that during the family’s time in WA, he and Erin separated and reconciled several times before moving back to Victoria in 2013.
Once in Victoria, they lived together in Bena before buying a house in Korumburra.
“Erin decided to buy herself a separate house and move into it,” Simon said. Erin Patterson, the jury was told, had received a $2 million inheritance from her grandmother after her death. Simon said the inheritance was “dispersed very well gradually over about eight years”.
Simon said there was tension leading up to their separation towards the end of 2015, but he remained hopeful he and Erin would reconcile.
“I was always keen to have a good relationship, have a good marriage and a good, strong family to bring up the kids,” he said.
Asked by prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, whether it was always Erin who decided to leave the relationship, Simon responded that it was “hard” to put into words.
“When we lived together, it was always her leaving me. However, there were a couple of times when we tried to reconcile, and I stayed with her for a short, short period, and then went back to my home, I guess,” he said.
Erin Patterson was intelligent, witty and funny. These are the first things her estranged husband, Simon, says he noticed about her.
In courtroom 4 of the Latrobe Valley justice precinct in Morwell, Simon began to paint a picture of how he and Erin first fell in love.
“I guess one of the things that attracted me to her in the first place was definitely her intelligence,” he told the jury.
Erin and Simon Patterson.
Before their marriage, he said, she worked as an accountant and a qualified air traffic controller. She loved to learn and study, he said. She undertook a veterinary science course and also did some legal studies work.
Simon also offered insights after they were married. He told the jury it was “very rare” for Erin to invite people to their home, instead often choosing to gather as a family at his parents, Don and Gail’s house, or at the home of Simon’s brother Matthew.
“After we separated … I can confidently say we never had any wide family gathering with all my siblings and my parents at Erin’s place,” Simon said.
Simon Patterson, Erin Patterson’s estranged husband, has begun giving evidence.
After he is sworn in, he unbuttons his suit jacket and takes a seat in the witness box.
Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, is asking Simon about his relationship with Erin and how they met in the early 2000s when they worked at Monash City Council.
Simon Patterson arrives at court on Thursday.Credit: Jason South
Erin was an RSPCA representative at the time. Simon was a civil engineer.
“I guess there’s a fairly eclectic group of friends that formed throughout that organisation and Erin and I were both part of it. And then, yeah, slowly we got to know each other and then I guess it started, romantic relationship, and then got married,” Simon said.
They married on June 2, 2007.
Rogers is now asking Simon about his family: parents Don and Gail, and siblings Matthew, Nathan and Anna.
Simon tells the jury Don worked as a high school teacher until he retired in the early 2000s, and Gail was a home maker and avid volunteer.
“While we were kids living at home, she looked after the house, home duties, I guess you’d say. And then after most of us left home, she did do some office work at the high school as well. She did a lot of volunteer work as well,” Simon said.
Simon said Ian and Heather Wilkinson also had four children: David, Luke, Ruth and Elizabeth.
