The detective in charge of the investigation into the deadly beef wellington lunch served by Erin Patterson has denied police made several errors in the case, including failing to seize electronic items during a search of her house and wrongly identifying her son on CCTV footage, a court has heard.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to poisoning her four lunch guests – relatives of her estranged husband, Simon Patterson – with a beef wellington served at her house in Leongatha, Victoria on 29 July 2023.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.
Lawyers for Patterson say the death cap mushroom poisoning was a tragic and terrible accident.
Det Leading Sen Const Stephen Eppingstall, the informant or officer in charge of the investigation, continued his evidence on Thursday. He is the last prosecution witness in the trial.
Under cross-examination from Colin Mandy SC, for Patterson, Eppingstall was asked to expand on several pieces of evidence already shown to the jury, including message exchanges between Patterson and Don and Gail, the exchanges Patterson shared with her friends on Facebook, CCTV purportedly showing Patterson’s son attending Subway in the hours after the lunch, and images taken during the police search of her property on 5 August.
Eppingstall was shown photos taken by police inside Patterson’s home which Mandy said appeared to show laptop computers and a phone that he said were not seized by police.
Mandy said a USB at the home was also not seized.
Eppingstall said a large number of items had been seized, and that police had taken everything they considered relevant. A phone allegedly used by Patterson, known as phone A, has never been recovered by police, the court has previously heard.
Mandy also had messages shown to the court between Patterson and her Facebook friends that he said provided context to other messages sent by Patterson that were already in evidence about her relationship with Simon and his parents.
The messages shown to the court on Thursday revealed the Facebook friends making comments like “what morons”, “it’s pathetic”, “you are human”, “so sorry Erin it’s so fucking hard” and “I went through similar with my ex in-laws, she was wonderful until we split up”.
“This was a chat where a number of the participants were talking like this, that is venting to each other about various issues in their lives,” Mandy asked Eppingstall.
“Yeah that’s fair to say, sir, yes,” Eppingstall replied.
Mandy said the chat was also used for “random conversation” about pets, children, and other issues in their lives, referring to a discussion “about the fact that Kirstie Alley was dead”.
Stills taken from CCTV footage of Leongatha Subway were also shown to the court, and compared with separate images of Patterson’s son, including one of him with Don, and another taken from the footage of his police interview.
Mandy suggested to Eppingstall that the CCTV footage of Subway previously shown as part of the prosecution case did not depict Patterson’s son.
“I believe that’s [him], but I guess that’s a matter for the jury,” Eppingstall said.
When Mandy said he was “not suggesting there’s not a visit to Subway”, simply that the footage did not show Patterson’s son, Eppingstall said: “I’ve got the wrong one, is what you’re saying. I don’t think so, but that’s a matter for you, sir.”
Eppingstall’s evidence is set to continue for a fourth day on Friday.
