The mushroom-foraging claim at the heart of Erin Patterson’s appeal

Death cap mushroom killer Erin Patterson’s interest in picking and eating wild mushrooms was at the centre of her appeal on Thursday, after her legal team argued she was effectively forced to enter the witness box during her trial to explain why she had lied to police.

On the second day of Patterson’s appeal hearing, on Thursday, three judges were taken back to the killer’s 2023 police interview, in which she denied ever foraging for wild mushrooms, and her estranged husband’s evidence that he’d never known the 51-year-old to forage for wild fungi.

An accused person is not required to provide evidence in their own criminal trial, but Patterson spent eight days in the witness box during her 2025 trial. The jury ultimately found Patterson guilty of murdering three people and attempting to murder a fourth by serving them a lunch of beef Wellington laced with poisoned mushrooms at her Leongatha home in July 2023.

Crown prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams on Thursday rejected the suggestion Patterson was forced to give evidence, and argued there was no evidence before the trial of any “innocent interest in foraging for wild mushrooms”. He said it was Patterson’s own defence team that first raised that explanation in its opening address to the jury.

“The only reference to the concept of innocent interest … came from counsel for the application’s opening to the jury, where he told the jury that the applicant lied to police in her record of interview about this fact and asserted that she did have an innocent interest in foraging, including foraging and eating wild mushrooms,” McWilliams told the Court of Appeal.

“It must be the case that it was anticipated the applicant would have to give evidence [about that fact] ... to both overcome the lie and the suit of evidence that tended to support the lie.”

The Court of Appeal heard that at her 2025 trial in Morwell, the prosecution had sought to rely on photographs found on an SD card at Patterson’s Leongatha home, and her posting of one picture on a poisons page on Facebook to prove she had an enduring interest in poisons.

In pretrial arguments, the trial judge ruled the evidence inadmissible in the form in which the prosecution sought to use it.