Doctors who alerted on Australian mushroom murderer Erin Patterson

Within minutes of Erin Patterson walking into a small rural Victoria hospital, Chris Webster realized he was a cold-blooded killer.

“I know,” he told the BBC.

“I thought, ‘Well, yes, you did, you’re outrageous people. You poisoned them all.”

Dr. Webster frantically treated two of four on the jury this week and found Erin intentionally fed poisonous mushrooms – hiding at the hearty beef Wellington lunch at her home in July 2023.

She was convicted of murder for in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66.

But initially, when Heather and Ian introduced to Leongatha Hospital with strong gastrointestinal symptoms, Dr. Webster and his team thought they were dealing with a large-scale food poisoning case.

The doctor told the trial that Heather described a “lovely” afternoon for Erin’s home.

“I did ask Heather’s beef at one stage what tasted Wellington, and she said it was delicious,” Dr. Webster said.

His suspicion fell on the meat, so the doctor took some blood samples as precautions and sent them to a small town with better medical facilities for analysis, then linked the Wilkinsons to the liquid.

But soon, he would receive a call from a doctor to treat Don and Gail at Dandenong Hospital, about 90 minutes’ drive away, his stomach fell off.

She told him that it was not meat, but mushrooms. His patient is on an irreversible slide towards the cliff of death.

He immediately changed the nails, began treatment to save the failed liver, and was ready to transfer it to a larger hospital that could receive professional care.

It was at this point that someone rang the bell in front of the hospital.

Through an organic safety safety window is a woman telling him that she thinks she has a stomach.

“I thought, ‘Oh, wait, what’s your name?’ She said, “Eileen Patterson,” Dr. Webster said.

“A penny is lost…it’s the chef.”

He takes Erin to the hospital and tells her he suspects that both she and her guests are in danger of life threatening poisoning due to poisonous mushrooms. He asked her about the fungus he contained in her home-cooked dishes.

“Her answer is one word: Woolworth,” he said.

“It all suddenly merged into my brain.”

Dr. Webster explained that there were two things that made him guilty at that moment.

First, this is a far-fetched answer. Acknowledging that she had forage for wild mushrooms like many locals in the area would not cause alarm. On the other hand, they say they come from a major grocery chain whose grocery stores have strict food safety standards, which is suspicious.

The mother of two, the mother of two, had no response to any attention—although the distance between Ian and Heather, she said she loved relatives, she lay in the bed desperately.

“I don’t know if she even acknowledges their existence,” he said.

After briefly leaving Erin and the nurse for some basic health checks, he went to Wilkinsons to go to Dandenong Hospital. He recalled watching the elderly couple being loaded into an ambulance, and Heather called for thanks for his care because the doors were closed.

“I know,” he said, delaying.

“It’s actually hard to talk about without being emotional.”

“She could have done it very easily the exact opposite and screamed… ‘Thank you’.”

It may be easier to accept than her sincere gratitude, he said. “You know, I haven’t encountered (poisoned).”

But he didn’t have time to deal with the gravity of their last interaction and rushed back to the emergency care room only to find that Erin had objected to medical advice.

After desperately calling her cell phone, Dr. Webster decided to call the police.

“This is Dr. Chris Webster from Lungatha Hospital. I have a concern about a patient who was introduced earlier, but has left the building and has the potential to be exposed to deadly toxins from mushroom poisoning,” he could hear him at the trial.

He spelled her name for the operator and gave them her address.

“Has she just got up?” they asked. Dr. Webster replied: “She only stayed here for five minutes.”

During the trial, Erin said she had been caught off guard by the information and went home to feed the animals and pack a bag, stopping to return to the hospital before “lying down”.

“After you were informed by the medical staff, you might have consumed life-threatening poison. Isn’t that the last thing you have to do?” the prosecutor asked her in court.

“It might be the last thing you have to do, but it’s what I do,” Erin replied provocatively from the witness stand.

But before police arrived at her home, Erin volunteered to return to the hospital. Dr. Webster then tried to convince her to bring her children – she claimed to have eaten leftovers.

“She was worried they would be scared,” he said in court.

“I say they might be afraid, alive or die.”

Erin told the jury that she didn’t want to, but was overwhelmed by the doctor she thought was “screaming” at her. She added: “Since then, I learned that this is his internal voice.”

Dr. Webster started soon after, but the trial heard a medical test on Erin that her children would not return signs of death cap poisoning and after 24 hours of precautions, they were sent home.

Two years later, Dr. Webster began to tremble when news of the jury’s verdict flashed on his phone on Monday.

He is one of the main witnesses of the prosecution and struggles with the “desired weight.”

“If the picture makes sense to the jury, if a small puzzle is out of place, it can disturb the whole outcome of the trial…I really don’t want to crack it under review.”

He played his role in holding Erin Patterson (what he called the “definition of evil”) as a “liberation.”

“It does feel like a reward of justice.”

However, the greatest sense of closure for him started with Ian Wilkinson, the only surviving patient, since sending him and his sick wife ambulance.

“The memory of Heather was taken away in this way and is now booked by seeing Ian standing on his feet again.”

“That brought some comfort.”