Patterson shakes her head, looking at Eppingstall from across the table separating them.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever,\u201d she says slowly.<\/p>\n
Eppingstall asks again. Never?<\/p>\n
\u201cNever,\u201d she says before looking away and blinking several times.<\/p>\n
Patterson would later admit to the jury in her murder trial<\/a> that this was a lie and that she had developed an interest in foraging wild mushrooms during COVID-19 lockdowns.<\/p>\n In court, she gave evidence<\/a> that she first picked field and horse mushrooms growing in the paddock of a three-acre property she lived in at the time in Korumburra. She told the court she cut them up, fried them with butter and ate them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey tasted good and I didn\u2019t get sick,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n Foraging for mushrooms would become a key plank of her defence, as the mother of two told the trial that, in the fatal meal, she could have accidentally mixed wild mushrooms she had picked and dehydrated with dried mushrooms she bought from an Asian grocery store in Melbourne.<\/p>\n The dehydrator manual<\/p>\n As Eppingstall moves on to ask Patterson whether she preserves foods, \u201cor anything like that\u201d, Patterson shakes her head. She says she does not.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n Eppingstall doesn\u2019t press the issue, but as the interview continues, he asks Patterson about some items police have found at her house. Among those, there\u2019s a manual for a Sunbeam dehydrator.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know anything about a dehydrator in your house?\u201d Eppingstall asks.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Patterson responds, shaking her head as she looks at the detective.<\/p>\n \u201cOK. Do you own a dehydrator?\u201d Eppingstall asks.<\/p>\n Patterson says she doesn\u2019t before pausing briefly and offering an explanation.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got manuals of lots of stuff I\u2019ve collected over the years. I\u2019ve had all sorts of appliances and I just keep them all,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Asked by Eppingstall when she might have owned a dehydrator, Patterson contorts her face into a confused frown and shakes her head.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. I might have had one years ago,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first got the Thermomix I got really excited about making everything from scratch, you know. And I did a lot of, um, you know, everything from scratch ingredients and I did a lot of that, so I could have had something like that back then.\u201d<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n This, too, would prove to be a lie, as Patterson admitted during the trial that she went to a tip and dumped a dehydrator<\/a> she bought in Leongatha about three months before the lunch, because she was scared people would think she deliberately poisoned guests.<\/p>\n During the trial, prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, told the jury Patterson bought the dehydrator two hours after cell phone data showed she had potentially visited a nature reserve in Loch where death cap mushrooms had been seen.<\/p>\n Rogers told the court Patterson\u2019s visit to the reserve was part of her plan to seek out and locate death cap mushrooms<\/a>, and then dehydrate, blitz and hide them in the individual beef Wellingtons she cooked for her guests.<\/p>\n Jurors were also shown images obtained from Patterson\u2019s devices of dehydrated mushrooms sitting on the trays of the appliance, and CCTV footage of her dumping the dehydrator four days after the lunch, on August 2, 2023.<\/p>\n Great help or a wild goose chase?<\/p>\n In the police interview, as Eppingstall tells Patterson investigators are trying to understand what made her guests so ill, she looks down at the table and nods.<\/p>\n \u201cConversely, we are trying to understand why you\u2019re not that ill,\u201d Eppingstall adds.<\/p>\n \u201cHmm,\u201d Patterson responds.<\/p>\n Asked by the homicide detective about whether she understands why she is being interviewed by the police, Patterson gets slightly agitated, almost confrontational.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. I do. But I am sure you understand, too, that I\u2019ve never been in a situation like this before, and I\u2019ve been very, very helpful with the health department through the week because I wanted to help that side of things as much as possible because I do want to know what happened. So I\u2019ve given them as much information as they\u2019ve asked for and offered up all the food and all of the information about where the food came from,\u201d Patterson says.<\/p>\n This is a line that Patterson would return to during the trial. But the prosecution painted a different picture for the jury.<\/p>\n The prosecution\u2019s argument was that while Patterson\u2019s lunch guests fought for their lives in the hospital<\/a>, she sent the Department of Health on a wild goose chase to search 14 Asian grocery stores for any evidence of potentially contaminated batches of mushrooms. And how despite having worked and lived in the Monash City Council area years earlier and possessing a remarkable memory, she seemed unable to remember where exactly she bought the dried mushrooms used in the meal.<\/p>\n Unconditional love<\/p>\n
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