Toxic mushroom meal was 'terrible accident', says woman on trial for murder

An Australian woman accused of cooking a fatal mushroom meal its to picking wild funghi, lying to police and disposing of evidence, a court has heard, but will argue the "tragedy" was a "terrible accident".

The Supreme Court trial of Erin Patterson, 50, began in the small Victorian town of Morwell on Wednesday and is expected to last six weeks.

She is charged with the murder of three relatives and the attempted murder of another, with the case centring on a beef wellington lunch at her house in July 2023.

Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty and her defence team says she "panicked" after unintentionally serving poison to family she loved.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson's former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived - local pastor Ian Wilkinson - after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The fact that the lunch of beef wellington, mash potatoes and green beans contained death cap mushrooms and caused the guests' illnesses is not in contention, the court heard.

"The overarching issue is whether she intended to kill or cause very serious injury," Justice Christopher Beale said.

Opening the trial on Wednesday, prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC said this case was "originally thought to be a mass food poisoning event".

But she alleges Ms Patterson "deliberately poisoned" her guests "with murderous intent", after inviting them for lunch "on the pretence she'd been diagnosed with cancer".

Dr Rogers said the jury would hear evidence that Ms Patterson had travelled to a location, near her home in Leongatha, where death cap mushroom sightings had been logged on a naturalist website.

And in the days after the lunch, she took a number of steps to "conceal" what she had done, the prosecution alleged.

There'd be evidence that she lied to investigators about the source of the mushrooms in the dish - saying some had come from Asian grocery in Melbourne and she'd never foraged wild ones. And she made a trip to a local dump to dispose of a food dehydrator prosecutors say she used to prepare the toxic meal.

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