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The leftovers of a poisonous mushroom beef Wellington that police suspect killed three people have been given to authorities to test as the cook who made the dish claims she bought the mushrooms it contained from an Asian grocer.

Erin Patterson has given a sworn written statement to police, seen by The Age, documenting her side of the incident, in a bid to answer the questions of homicide investigators and refute what she claims has been wildly inaccurate media reporting.

Erin Patterson, seen here speaking to media outside her house last week, cooked the beef Wellington.Credit: Marta Pascual Juanola

Patterson’s in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson died after eating the dish at Erin Patterson’s house in Leongatha in South Gippsland on July 29. Korumburra Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson has been fighting for life in hospital since the lunch.

In the statement to police, Patterson claimed she kept the beef Wellington leftovers for investigators to collect as evidence.

Patterson, 48, said she was voluntarily providing a statement because she now believed it had been a serious mistake to provide a “no comment” interview to investigators, which she said was based on advice provided by a lawyer who no longer represented her.

In the statement, Patterson strenuously denied any wrongdoing and said she could not explain how the meal caused the group’s illnesses and deaths.

Left to right: Don Patterson, Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson all died after ingesting poisonous mushrooms. Ian Wilkinson remains in a critical condition at a Melbourne hospital.

Erin Patterson’s statement mirrors comments she made to the media outside her Leongatha home last week, when she told reporters she could not “fathom what has happened”.

“I can’t believe that this has happened, and I am so sorry that they have lost their lives,” she said last week.

But the police statement also includes a concession from Patterson that she intentionally disposed of the food dehydrator that police found in a skip bin at the Koonwarra Transfer Station. In the statement, she claimed she had panicked and dumped the appliance after she says people began accusing her of intentionally poisoning the meal.

Patterson has also claimed the media reporting on the incident has been wildly inaccurate and selective, which she says has intentionally but mistakenly portrayed her as a perpetrator, rather than an innocent party.

Patterson’s statement to police provides a detailed explanation of how she obtained the suspected poisonous mushrooms, how the beef Wellington dish was cooked, and what happened to the remnants of the meal, which is now considered evidence.

Patterson has told police she purchased a package of dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in Mount Waverley at least three months before the lunch. The package of mushrooms she bought was hand-labelled, she said.

For the meal, the rehydrated mushrooms were mixed with other mushrooms purchased from a supermarket and cooked into the beef Wellington dish.

Contrary to media reporting and information initially provided by homicide investigators, Patterson said her two young children were never at the lunch, but had instead gone to the movies.

Her son and daughter later ate part of the leftover beef Wellington, but the mushrooms had been scraped off the dish before it was served. Neither child got sick.

But Patterson says she did fall ill with intestinal problems on July 31 – two days after eating the lunch herself – and was admitted to the hospital in Leongatha before an ambulance transferred her to a hospital in Melbourne. During her hospital stay, Patterson said she was given a treatment to protect her from liver damage.

Patterson’s lunch guests had been taken to the local hospital on July 30 after what they thought was a bad bout of gastro worsened overnight. They, too, were eventually taken to hospital in Dandenong, before being transferred to the Austin Hospital, Victoria’s premier toxicology hospital.

The statement says that when her four guests were hospitalised, Patterson told the Department of Health where she had purchased the dehydrated mushrooms, and confirmed that samples recovered from the Asian grocery store in containers with hand-written labels were the same as the type she had purchased months before.

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