Erin Patterson murder trial: Court hears video evidence from mushroom cook's daughter — as it happened

Thank you for joining us for Thursday's proceedings in the Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial.

To catch up on all the day's events in court, ABC court reporter Kristian Silva has produced this wrap with all the major moments from the trial.

Join us tomorrow for more coverage from the Supreme Court trial.

1. 1.The Leongatha hospital had run out of the medication used to counteract death cap mushroom toxin by the time Erin arrived, having used up all of its supplies to treat Ian and Heather Wilkinson.
2. 2.A police officer said Erin was "quite cooperative" as she gave him information over the phone to help him find beef Wellington leftovers in a bin at her home. The officer was double-gloved and had to put the brown bag containing the leftovers inside another plastic bag as liquid was seeping out of the bottom.
3. 3.Erin’s sister-in-law Tanya Patterson said she was present when a toxicologist gave Erin her blood test results and told her that her potassium levels weren’t as low as would be expected for someone who had had diarrhoea.
4. 4.A doctor working in the toxicology unit at Austin Hospital feared there could be a public health risk when he was told Erin had bought the mushrooms from a store. He feared there could be more cases in the community and that they needed to identify which store she bought them from.
5. 5.He told the court he had offered to read to Erin the names of all the Chinese food stores in Oakleigh but she had insisted she would not remember its name.
6. 6.The doctor told the court Erin told him she had thrown out the packaging for the mushrooms and wouldn’t be able to find the packets again.
7. 7.A nurse told the court that Erin did not look as sick as Ian and Heather Wilkinson. She said Erin was sitting up in bed, while Ian couldn’t lift his head from the pillow.
8. 8.A paramedic who travelled with Erin in the ambulance from Leongatha to Melbourne said Erin didn't need to use the toilet once during the trip, which lasted one hour and 40 minutes. The paramedic said Erin was "calm and nonchalant" during the journey.
9. 9.In a recording of an interview with police, Erin’s daughter — who was nine years old at the time — said her mother told her she was having Don, Gail, Ian and Heather over for lunch because they needed to talk about "adult stuff".
10. 10.Her daughter said her mum was too sick to take them to church the next morning, and that she went to the toilet about 10 times.

As the video comes to a stop and the jury is led out of the room, Erin Patterson stands in the dock and is visibly upset.

She takes a deep breath and looks up, quietly saying a few words to herself.

The video evidence will resume tomorrow. 

Justice Beale interrupts the video and says we will watch the rest of Erin and Simon Patterson's daughter's testimony tomorrow.

Court is adjourned.

Erin's daughter says she, her mother and her brother ate leftovers from the lunch.

"We had some of the steak that they had, we had some mashed potatoes and some beans," Erin's daughter says.

The interviewer asks Erin's daughter to describe the steak, but she cannot.

"Did it have anything else on it?" he asks.

"No," she answers.

The interviewer asks about the plates the children ate from.

"There's a black-and-red one and there's some white ones and I think that's all the colours we have," she says.

She says Erin did not finish her meal of leftovers and told her children she still felt ill.

"She wasn't very hungry so she didn't eat that much, so [my brother] ate the rest of hers," Erin's daughter says.

Erin's daughter says she did not go anywhere the day following the lunch.

She says in the middle of the day, they played Monopoly together and had dinner.

"We were going to go to church but Mum was feeling too sick," Erin's daughter said.

When asked if she went for a drive with her Mum and brother, she says she can't remember.

At about 9pm, Erin's daughter returned to her mother's Leongatha home.

"How was mum that night?" the interviewer asks.

"She ... umm ... I don't remember when she started to feel sick," Erin's daughter says.

"But I think she started feeling sick the next day."

Erin's daughter says the next morning, her mother needed to go to the toilet a lot and told her daughter she had diarrhoea.

"How many times do you think she went to the toilet?" the interview asks.

"I saw her go like 10 times," Erin's daughter says.

The interviewer asks her about what else happened on the day of the lunch.

Erin's daughter says she doesn't really remember.

She says she was taken to a McDonalds in Leongatha at about 12pm that day, describing eating lunch and playing on the playground before walking to the cinema.

After the movie, she says her father picked her, her brother and a friend up and drove her brother back to Erin Patterson's house.

He then dropped the friend off in Korumburra.

She stayed with her father and spent the afternoon with him.

Erin's daughter tells the interviewer that she had been told that she and her brother would be out of the house on the day of the lunch.

"She told us that we were going to go to the movies in the morning," she says.

Erin's daughter recalls the morning of the lunch, and seeing her mother preparing the lunch.

She says she doesn't know what her mum made for lunch, but remembers eating it.

"It was in the oven and there was some ... I don't know what kind of meat it is," she says.

"I know that [my brother] and me had some of the leftovers the next day."

Erin's daughter described a previous meal she shared with her grandparents, her brother and her mother.

The interviewer begins to ask about Simon and Erin Patterson's relationship

"Are they separated?" he asks.

"I don't understand," she says.

"Are they still in a relationship?"

After a clarification, she answers.

"They're husband and wife."

Erin's daughter says her mother told her about hosting the lunch on the day before it occurred.

"My mum told me that she wanted to have a lunch with my grandparents and Heather and Ian," she says.

"She said she was going to have just at the dining table."

She tells the interviewer her mother explained she "just wanted to talk to them about adult stuff".

The court is being shown a video of Erin Patterson's daughter's police interview.

Erin, in the court dock, has begun crying as she watches on.

The footage, taken at the Morwell Police Station, shows the then-nine-year-old being interviewed by a police officer. She is seated on a green armchair, her legs so short they don't even touch the ground.

A police officer sits opposite the girl, across from a small wooden table where a tissue box and coloured pencils are placed.

The daughter of Simon and Erin is speaking with an interviewer, who explains how the interview will work to the young girl.

The interview goes over the definition of truth and lies with the Pattersons' daughter.

The girl becomes emotional and says she doesn't know why she is being interviewed.

She eventually says she thinks she is being interviewed to talk about the lunch at her mum's house.

"I wasn't there so I don't know what happened," she says.

We will next hear from the daughter of Erin and Simon Patterson.

Her testimony is played to the jury via a video recording.

The statement was recorded August 16, 2023.

Paramedic Eleyne Spencer says Erin told them she had had diarrhoea up to 30 times before going to hospital.

But during the one hour and 40 minute trip from Leongatha to the Monash Medical Centre, she did not need to use the toilet.

Ms Spencer said during the trip, Erin complained of a headache that she rated as being 7 out of 10 on the pain scale.

She says her partner called the Poisons Information line to see if paracetamol would interact with the liver medication she'd already taken.

She says they were advised to give Erin fentanyl, and it was administered to her.

She described Erin as being “calm and nonchalant” during the trip, and that it was an uneventful journey.

Dr McDermott has finished giving evidence and the court is now hearing from Leongatha paramedic, Eleyne Spencer.

She and her partner were dispatched to Leongatha hospital to  transfer Erin Patterson to Monash Medical Centre.

She says they were also told they were to transport a sample of the mushroom meal.

She says she was told Erin's vitals and blood results were normal, and when she first observed Erin she was alert, had good skin colour and no respiratory distress.

While all of this evidence has been given today, a large contingent of the extended Wilkinson/Patterson family have been watching on.

Pastor Ian Wilkinson and his daughter Ruth Dubois are in the back row of the court, in view of Erin Patterson.

Erin is in the back of the courtroom in the dock, flanked by two security officers.

In an attempt to narrow down which store Erin bought the mushrooms from, Dr McDermott says he offered to list all the Chinese food stores in Oakleigh.

But he says she told him she wouldn’t be able to recall even if he named each shop.

He says she then told him she'd bought the mushrooms several months before, in April, so wouldn't remember the name.

He says he again offered to name the stores and she then replied that the store may have been in Glen Waverley.

After the initial phone call, Dr McDermott says he called back the doctor at Leongatha because he thought it might be a public health issue if the mushrooms had been sold through a store so there might be more cases in the community.

He asked for more information about where Erin got the mushrooms.

He says she told him they were unbranded, pre-sliced button mushrooms from Leongatha Safeway and a Chinese food store in Oakleigh.

She told him she no longer had the packaging and wouldn’t be able to find them.

Doctor Conor McDermott is now appearing via video link.

He was working in the toxicology unit at the Austin Hospital, including dealing with people who call the Victorian Poisons Information Centre.

He says he received a call from a doctor working in Leongatha seeking advice about Erin Patterson and was told she was stable and looked well but had a high heart rate.

He says he was told her blood results had a slightly high pH reading, but everything else was normal.

He says her potassium levels were slightly low.

He says he was told she'd complained about having diarrhoea for 36 hours but that it hadn’t been observed by staff at Leongatha.