If you walk past the imposing Corinthian columns that welcome you to the State Library of Victoria, then head all the way through to the grand old building’s archives, you can find what is possibly the first reference to Erin Patterson in the media.
It’s here, on a microfilm copy of The Age newspaper from early 1992, that you’ll see Erin’s name, and a code for the science course at the University of Melbourne for which she’d just been offered a place.
Back then, she was Erin Scutter — a teenager who was decades away from facing charges of murdering three people with a beef Wellington lunch containing death cap mushrooms.
In scarce public references, in social media accounts and from her time in the witness box, a picture emerges of a woman who shifts and morphs depending on who is telling the story.
There’s the RSPCA worker who found love in a Melbourne council building. The air traffic controller whose behaviour is derided by some colleagues. The one-time bookstore owner in rural Western Australia. The would-be nurse. The mushroom forager.
Then there’s Erin Patterson, the star of the courtroom — her sketched portrait featured on TV bulletins and news websites around the world.
Erin Patterson gave hours of evidence to her triple-murder trial. (ABC News: Paul Tyquin)
From the court, we learn about Erin the self-described Christian who is accused of mocking her religious in-laws, and Erin the social colleague who’d go for drinks with workmates.
In rural Korumburra, where she settles to raise her children, a picture emerges of a dedicated mum, a community volunteer and a liar furious with her ex. But she is also plagued by low self-confidence, and drifts from studying one university course after another.
So who really is Erin Patterson, the mushroom cook behind the fateful lunch?
An academic upbringing in Melbourne’s suburbs
From the courtroom in the regional Victorian town of Morwell, Erin’s mind turned back to the suburbs of Melbourne.
“When I was a kid, Mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren’t putting on too much weight and so I went to the extreme of barely eating,” Erin testified.
It’s here in childhood, Erin said, that her lifelong battles with eating disorders and low self-esteem began.
“I’d been fighting a never-ending battle of low self-esteem most of my adult life, and the further inroads I made into being middle aged, the less, less good I felt about myself,” she said.
Eating disorder resources:
Despite such feelings, many of those who know Erin remember her as smart and witty.
She was raised in a brick home in a quiet leafy street in Glen Waverley, a middle-class suburb, deep in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.
Gumtrees lined her family’s front yard, with parklands and horse-riding trails not far away.
Hers was an intellectual family. Her mother Heather Scutter was a much-respected lecturer at Monash University and expert in children’s literature.
She wrote books and academic articles, and gave interviews — including to the ABC. Many former colleagues remember the academic as a lovely co-worker who was dedicated to her job, but not someone they socialised with.
Heather Scutter spoke to the ABC several times to discuss Australian literature. (ABC News)
Erin’s father, Eitan Scutter held director roles in multiple Australian companies, including in his home state of South Australia, and at Eden in NSW, where he later retired.
And while Erin was offered a place to study the subject at the University of Melbourne, her sister Ceinwen worked as a scientist at Monash University.
But Erin was no scientist.
Former colleagues remember ‘aggressive’ and ‘strange’ co-worker
Sitting in a bright pink top, in the centre of the photo, the serious face of Erin stands out.
Erin Scutter was among the Air Services class of trainee air traffic controllers in 2001. (Supplied)
It’s from 2001, and Erin was sitting for an Air Services class photo that shows all the trainee air traffic controllers from that year.
She was in her mid-20s — and it was taken after she’d left her science course and, according to her ex-husband Simon Patterson, studied accounting.
But in a lifelong pattern, she’d drifted onto another career.
She’d taken the notoriously difficult test to become an air traffic controller and had been one of the few to make it through to the training program.
If you speak to people who worked with Erin during this time, you can guarantee they’ll have a story to tell.
Erin was one of a handful to make it through the challenging air traffic controller training program. (Supplied)
Unlike later in her life, Erin caught the attention of others.
The accounts of some colleagues — who the ABC confirmed worked with Erin at the same Melbourne office but declined to be identified — paint a picture of her as a solitary young woman, an odd loner, while others remember someone who was abrupt and abrasive.
One former colleague who spoke to the ABC described Erin as “a little bit strange”.
In the small training group of 14 people, they said, the air traffic controllers became close, like a second family.
Erin’s colleagues remember her as “clever” but sometimes “aggressive”. (ABC News)
According to her former colleague, Erin was the only person who declined all invitations to social activities.
“We always joked and supported each other, she was never part of that,” they said.
That colleague remembered a bright young woman: “She was clever, she is no dope.”
But she didn’t make friends during her time at Air Services Australia.
Erin’s former colleagues say the air traffic control team was tight knit. (ABC News)
Three former colleagues said some would call her “crazy Erin” and “Scutter the nutter” behind her back.
At one point, Erin made a bullying complaint against another air traffic controller, one former colleague said.
Another former colleague, who also didn’t want to be named for work reasons, remembered a more hostile version of Erin Scutter.
“She was quite aggressive in the way she spoke to people,” they told the ABC.
Erin worked in the air traffic control team at Melbourne Airport. (ABC News)
They spoke of a tension while dealing with Erin, where they were always unsure how she would act.
“She wasn’t necessarily always unpleasant to be around but you tended to be wary that she could snap or say something unpleasant at the drop of a hat,” they said.
A third former colleague said during her time at Air Services, Erin would call into the air traffic control centre pretending to be another worker and say they were sick.
They thought it was part of a plan Erin had to pick up lucrative shifts covering the sick leave of others.
Another remembers Erin giggling in a corner of the room when a confused air traffic controller was being quizzed by her bosses, who asked: “Why are you here? Didn’t you call in sick?”
They suspect Erin was behind a phone call to the bosses earlier that day, as a prank.
‘Witty’ Erin meets her future husband
She wasn’t an air traffic controller for long.
Within three years of entering the industry, she was working in animal management for the RSPCA, based in the City of Monash’s council building back in Melbourne’s south-east.
Erin met her future husband while working at Monash council in Melbourne’s south-east. (ABC News)
It’s here, in 2004, that she met a council engineer, Simon Patterson.
For this stage of her life, it is Erin and Simon’s own narrations given to the court that we must rely on.
“He was friends with people I had become friends with, so we would come up against each other at lunch or after work drinks, that sort of thing,” Erin told the court.
They started dating and went camping with mates.
“We had other friends, not Monash friends, that he would do that with, and I was included in that,” Erin said.
Simon said he was drawn to Erin’s lighter side.
Simon Patterson told the court he was drawn to Erin’s sharp wit. (AAP: James Ross)
“I guess some of the things that attracted me to her in the first place was definitely her intelligence,” her estranged husband testified.
In the same year Erin met Simon, she had her first serious brush with the law.
In June 2004, Erin was almost three times over the legal limit when she was involved in a drunken crash at Glen Waverley.
Court records reveal she was driving an unregistered car and didn’t stop after the crash or give her name and address. She was also driving 35km/h over the speed limit in a 60 kilometres per hour zone.
Erin pleaded guilty to five charges and was convicted and fined $1,000, which she elected to pay in $40 monthly instalments.
Her licence was cancelled and she was disqualified from driving in Victoria for two and a half years.
A $2 million inheritance changes everything
Three years after they first met, Simon and Erin Patterson were married, with his cousin walking her down the aisle.
Erin’s parents weren’t at the wedding. She told the court they were on a holiday — “in Russia, on a train”.
It marked the start of a very significant period of her life.
Her paternal grandmother Ora Scutter died in Adelaide in July 2006. In her will, she left her house to a grandson, with the rest of her significant estate divided between her two sons (including Erin’s father) and seven grandchildren.
Simon told the trial Erin’s share of the estate ended up being worth about $2 million — disbursed across an eight-year period starting in 2007.
Soon afterwards, Erin and her husband quit their council jobs and began travelling around Australia.
Erin and Simon moved about Western Australia’s south-west, including the town of Pemberton. (ABC News)
When they reached Western Australia, they could buy a house without a mortgage. They lived in Perth, and also in York. At one stage, Erin opened a second-hand bookstore in the small rural town of Pemberton, where her husband worked with the local council.
But they didn’t hang around there for long, and few residents contacted by the ABC remember much about the one-time bookstore owner.
When her mother passed away from cancer in 2019 — eight years after her father had also died from cancer — the entire estate was left to Erin and her sister.
It wasn’t small. The parents’ beachfront retirement home in Eden sold for $900,000.
The Scutter family’s home in Eden, NSW, was sold in 2019 for $900,000. (realestate.com.au)
The money from the inheritances allowed Erin and Simon to provide interest-free loans — worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — to his three siblings and their partners, so they can buy houses.
Yet just how close Erin was to Simon’s family — and what the relationships were like between her and the four poisoning victims: her in-laws Gail and Don Patterson, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian Wilkinson — has been probed throughout the trial.
There are differing versions.
There’s the caring — if somewhat needy — daughter-in-law, who loved and respected Simon’s family, according to Erin’s testimony.
Erin told the court she felt deeply supported by her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson. (Supplied)
Erin told the court her bond with Gail and Don Patterson was particularly close just after the traumatic birth of her son, while she was in Western Australia.
The couple travelled to Perth to be there with Erin and Simon, and supported their transition to new parenthood.
“I remember being really relieved that Gail was there because I felt really out of my depth,” Erin said.
Ahead of the birth of their second child, Erin and Simon relocated to Korumburra because she said she wanted to be close to his parents — even staying with them when they first moved to Gippsland.
After the birth, it was Don and Gail who brought Erin’s son to meet his sister in hospital.
Simon testified that Erin and his father “shared a love of knowledge and learning and an interest in the world, and I think she loved his gentle nature”. His parents “were really active in maintaining a good relationship with Erin”.
While Erin agreed with crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC that her relationship with Heather and Ian Wilkinson was neither close nor negative, she described the couple having ongoing roles in her life.
Erin told the trial she had invited Heather and Ian Wilkinson to lunch in a bid to bolster family ties. (Supplied)
“Ian had been my pastor for years and years and I would see and speak with Ian and Heather a lot after church,” she said.
For the most part, Erin appeared settled in Gippsland.
Online, she followed social media updates of amateur theatre productions in the region. She told the court about how she applied to study nursing and midwifery at university (a course which she never commenced).
Erin attended Korumburra Baptist Church services, delivered by pastor Ian Wilkinson. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)
At one stage, she edited a local newsletter. She joined a Facebook group discussing the conviction of Keli Lane — who was jailed over the murder of her baby daughter — and followed the Instagram account of a podcast examining the allegations involving Jeffrey Epstein.
But the testimonies of other family members described Erin as drifting from the family in recent years, as tensions between her and Simon rose.
Private venting during times of family tension
Erin said she was hurt when she thought she was a last-minute invite to Gail’s 70th birthday celebration in the months before the fatal lunch.
“I felt hurt because I thought I’d been left off the invite list,” she testified.
There were also suggestions of the tense and strained relationships presented to the jury by prosecutors in screenshots of rants made by Erin to online friends about “deadbeat” Simon and his “lost cause” family.
From the first year of their son’s life, Simon and Erin went through a number of short-term separations, before a more permanent split and financial settlement was reached in 2015.
Simon told the court the pair remained close. They shared custody of their two children, went on family holidays together and had “chatty” communication.
But in 2022, Simon filed a tax return where he listed himself as single — the result of a mix-up with his accountant, he said.
This changed his relationship with Erin, who claimed child support through the federal government agency.
Simon said the agency told him to stop paying for school fees and medical bills he had been previously covering, a move that upset his increasingly estranged wife.
It is a tension of which the couple’s children and wider family were all aware.
Simon’s brother, Matthew, said that in the two years before the fatal lunch, Erin had missed some family events and her attendance at other events had been briefer.
Matthew Patterson and his wife Tanya were among the family members to give evidence to the trial. (ABC News)
Erin’s own online messages to friends, shown in court, showed the deep frustrations she sometimes felt after the breakdown of the relationship.
In one, amid discussion of child support issues, she described Simon’s family as a “lost cause”, before saying she wanted “nothing to do with them”.
In a further exchange about his family, she said “f*** em” .
During another a group chat, she said “this family, I swear to f***ing god”.
“Why isn’t she horrified her son is such a deadbeat that I had no choice but to claim?” Erin wrotes to a friend, referring to her mother-in-law.
In court, Erin told the jury she was “ashamed” of the way she’d spoken in those messages, but they reflected moments of frustration in what was otherwise a loving relationship with her in-laws.
After a jury verdict, Erin’s next chapter yet to be written
In the end, it was the jurors listening to the evidence who had to sift through the stories, and all the different accounts, of Erin Patterson.
To weigh up the evidence and consider the importance of an estranged wife venting online, an accused murderer insisting on her innocence and the conflicting accounts offered by Erin and other witnesses.
The trial is now over with convictions of murder and attempted murder handed down.
Three decades after that first minor newspaper reference, Erin Patterson has become a name steeped in infamy.