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It was a gathering born of dread, not devotion. On August 2, 2023, the close-knit Patterson and Wilkinson clans converged at the Austin Hospital’s 24-hour chapel.
Just down the corridor, four of their loved ones lay desperately ill in hospital beds. Amid constant distressing updates from doctors, Simon Patterson had a secret to share – a chilling explanation and a story of hidden hate.
Don and Gail Patterson.
Simon wanted to apologise, too. He was sorry, he told them, that he’d let the people they loved break bread with a woman he now believed was capable of murder. A woman, he would soon reveal, who had tried to kill him before.
The hospital’s multi-faith prayer room, two floors above the bustling emergency department, offered a quiet, private space for the meeting. Inside, black chairs were arranged in a circle on the purple carpet, facing a wooden altar-like bench, with light green rugs laid out to the side for prayer.
Outside those walls, within the hospital, Don and Gail Patterson, along with Ian and Heather Wilkinson, fought desperately for their lives in intensive care.
Erin, Simon claimed, was a poisoner. She had tried to kill him, he told the adult children huddled in the prayer room. Now, he said, their family had become her target.
Heather and Ian Wilkinson and the Leongatha house where the deadly lunch was served.
“[Simon] wanted to tell us that he suspected his own illnesses had been a deliberate act – that he’d stopped eating food Erin had prepared because he suspected that she might have been messing with it,” Ruth Dubois, the Wilkinsons’ daughter, told a Supreme Court pretrial hearing.
“And that he was really sorry that he hadn’t told our family or our parents before this, but he thought that he was the only person that she was targeting and that they’d be safe.”
The next day, Simon emailed his medical records to the family as proof.
Shortly afterwards, Dubois said, members of the Wilkinson family went to police to detail their fears.
The untold story
The account of the meeting at the Austin Hospital chapel was never told to the jury – nor has it been publicly revealed before – kept secret by court orders finally lifted on Friday.
Simon’s allegations that his estranged wife had poisoned him on no less than three occasions in 2021-22 formed the basis of three counts of attempted murder laid against Erin Patterson in November 2023.
It had been alleged that Erin Patterson had cooked Simon a penne bolognese, chicken curry korma and curry wrap that left him hospitalised.
The prosecution had earlier alleged Patterson attempted to murder her estranged husband by using penne bolognese at Korumburra between November 16 and 17, 2021, chicken curry at Howqua between May 25 and 27, 2022, and a curry wrap at Wilson’s Promontory on September 6, 2022.
In his statement to police, Simon Patterson wrote: “after the first time I got sick I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought. In September 2022, my cousin Tim called to [talk about] whether Erin had been poisoning me. It was the first time I took it seriously.”
In one instance, Simon had to have part of his bowel removed and spent three weeks in intensive care, undergoing three emergency operations.
In mid and late 2024, scores of witnesses involved in Erin Patterson’s criminal case gave evidence in a series of court hearings in which the defence was allowed to probe and test the prosecution’s case before trial.
Some of those witnesses were never called to appear in Erin Patterson’s trial, and those who did appear were prevented from speaking about Simon’s allegations.
On the eve of the trial, the director of public prosecutions dropped the three attempted murder charges related to Simon.
No explanation was given, but the prosecution had suffered a blow when the Court of Appeal refused to allow all seven murder and attempted murder charges to be heard in a single trial.
Three near-death experiences
In February 2023 – five months before the fatal mushroom lunch – Simon Patterson held a consultation with his local doctor to air a disturbing theory about why he had been in and out of hospital four times in less than a year.
“I believe she’s tried to harm me,” he allegedly said.
A few months before, Dr Christopher Ford had suggested to his patient, friend and Bible study partner that he start a journal of what he was doing and what he was eating so they could track each time he got sick.
“I asked him to do that because I couldn’t understand why these things kept on happening to him,” Ford told the court. “Essentially, three near-death experiences [and they] did not fit into any of my medical models.
“His conclusion was that he thought Erin was trying to poison him. It was a long consultation.”
More worryingly, it seemed to be about to happen again.
Simon recounted how Erin had given him some cookies she said their daughter had baked, dropping them off before he took their two children to Sydney for a holiday.
“Simon was apprehensive about eating the cookies as he felt they may be poisoned. He reported to me [that] while they were away, that Erin called several times and inquired about whether he had eaten any,” the doctor said.
Erin Patterson; a beef Wellington.Credit: Marta Pascual Juanola, supplied
“Simon felt that this was odd that she would be so focused asking about the cookies. He eventually reported he took a small nibble and threw the rest out.”
In the pretrial hearing, Ford testified that Simon had been researching what possible poisons could have been put in the cookies, but there were “too many options”. Anti-freeze was one possibility, Simon allegedly said.
As a result of this conversation, Simon changed his advanced care directives and his power of attorney, cutting Erin out. He put his father, Don, and brother Matthew in charge.
Ford, despite being seriously concerned, never alerted any authorities about his suspicions, he told the court.
Simon’s brother and father gave the claims short shrift.
‘I suggest you don’t tell too many people about that’
Over two days in October 2024, Simon Patterson took the stand to explain what he thought had happened to him.
“After the first time I got sick, I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought,” he said.
“My cousin Tim called to [talk about] whether Erin had been poisoning me. It was the first time I took it seriously.”
About the same time Simon was coming to firm conclusions with his doctor, he shared his allegations with his brother Matthew.
A bouquet outside Ian and Heather Wilkinson’s home in Korumburra.Credit: Marta Pascual Juanola
The pair had gone to a Ben Harper concert at the Palais in St Kilda when Simon abruptly told Matthew his theory while they were waiting for the show to start.
“He shared that he had some concerns, and that he would probably need to be a little careful … about the types of interactions he had with Erin,” Matthew told the court.
“I shared that I’d assumed that his nervousness about catching up might have been the cause of the problems … going away on camping trips, and what that would be like. And so I said, ‘I assumed that your nervousness was the reason you weren’t feeling well, and you might, you know, throw up or have diarrhoea as a result of being nervous’ … my assumption was that his anxiety was probably the reason.”
Matthew said he had discussed these suspicions with his wife, Tanya, but did not share them with anyone else, including their father, Don, even after Simon asked them to sign the paperwork giving them power of attorney.
Simon Patterson’s sister, Anna Terrington, and his brother, Matthew Patterson.Credit: Jason South
It would be left up to Simon to raise it with his father, who laid down a pretty definite ruling on the allegation.
Simon was going through his new advanced care directives with Don when he explained why Erin could no longer oversee his care.
“He was very thoughtful,” Simon testified, tearing up and asking for a tissue.
“He said, ‘I suggest you don’t tell too many people about that.’”
But anxieties were growing among some family members who had heard the allegations.
Simon’s sister, Anna Terrington, told the court she felt anxious about her parents going to Erin’s place for lunch in light of Simon’s claims about his own poisonings.
Anna raised it with her father the night before the meal. “Dad said, ‘No, we’ll be OK,’” she said.
Matthew Patterson pays tribute to his parents at a memorial service.
Even as late as the day of the fateful lunch, Don was convinced that Erin was being maligned. Anna called her parents the afternoon after they returned home, and her mother had said the lunch “went well”.
“Mum says Dad had told her to stop catastrophising things,” Anna told the court.
Within 48 hours both parents would be in comas in intensive care, suffering multi-organ failure.
Little did the family know that Erin Patterson, a true crime fanatic who was known as a super-sleuth researcher online, was gathering books and looking up poisons online.
Korumburra Baptist Church.Credit: Joe Armao
Police had commissioned special studies into poisons like ricin and hemlock in a bid to understand what had happened to Simon. They never would figure it out.
On the eve of the trial, the prosecution also revealed it had discovered an article on a device linked to Erin Patterson, accessed around the time of her third alleged attempt to kill her estranged husband.
The article, the court heard, was on barium carbonate – also known as rat poison – which a medical expert believed was consistent with Simon Patterson’s sudden onset of illness.
A doctor’s hunch
Leongatha doctor Christopher Webster had been on shift on July 30, 2023, for only a matter of minutes before he received his first call claiming two patients, Ian and Heather Wilkinson, were on the way with what could be a case of “deliberate poisoning”.
On the other end of the call was Simon’s GP, Christopher Ford, who warned his colleague not to treat their cases as common food poisoning.
Dr Christopher Webster, who gave evidence in the murder trial of Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South
He also revealed fears the couple had been poisoned after eating a meal cooked by Simon’s ex-partner.
“I acknowledged his concerns and said, ‘When they get here I’ll deal with the situation.’ I thought, this is bizarre,” Webster told the court.
“I was with the nurse in charge, and I acknowledged to the nurse in charge that we might be getting a couple of patients from Dr Ford’s church congregation.
“I said to Corinne, ‘It looks like someone is trying to take out the church community.’”
Ford also called Korumburra Hospital to advise it about what could be wrong with Don and Gail Patterson. When no one answered, he was concerned enough to drive to the hospital to tell the doctor in person.
Later that day, all four lunch guests would be transferred to major hospitals for emergency treatment.
Anna Terrington said the first time she learnt her parents had likely suffered mushroom poisoning was on the Monday – July 31, 2023 – when toxicologists visited her parents in their hospital beds.
She recalled a doctor telling her they were aware this wasn’t an isolated case and that Simon Patterson had been hospitalised in similar circumstances.
Anna said that there, in the hospital room in front of her unwell mother, the doctor asked: “Do you believe Simon Patterson was poisoned?”
Anna’s reply was yes.
David Wilkinson, Ian and Heather’s son, recalled a “high level of concern” brewing at the hospital.
“I think the idea of mushrooms was well known at that point, but I don’t think anyone had any further detail than that,” he said.
“I think we’d all previously had conversations about Simon’s health and how he was recovering. From that conversation, [cousin] Tim [Patterson] might have had other ideas about what caused Simon to be sick.”
Tim Patterson would later act as wingman for Simon Patterson in the chapel as Simon outlined his life-altering revelations.
David Wilkinson recalled this being the first time he had learnt of Simon Patterson’s “theory”.
“Tim told me that he had concerns that Simon’s illness had been caused by Erin in the past as Simon had always got sick after eating her food,” he said.
The meeting in the hospital chapel soon followed.
For more than 50 days, the Patterson and Wilkinson families attended Erin Patterson’s murder trial – unable to hear the full story but now able to take solace that a conviction has finally come.