EXCLUSIVE: Mushroom deaths: Cops are investigating ‘death wall’ in the home of Erin Patterson – after a tradesman found strange graffiti
A wall graffitied with a series of messages about death in the former home of mushroom chef Erin Patterson is being investigated by police, Daily Mail Australia can reveal.
A tradesman took a photo of the wall – desecrated by Ms Patterson’s children – while painting Erin’s Korumburra home following her split from husband Simon Patterson last year.
The wall had been daubed with scrawled images of daggers and decapitated heads.
It featured scribbles and dark quotes, including the words: ‘You are dead by the sword’.
The tradie was being paid to remove the graffiti, prior to the property, being sold, when he snapped the image.
On Friday, the tradesman, who asked to remain anonymous, told Daily Mail Australia detectives had been keen to get their hands on the image in the days following their raid on Ms Patterson’s current home in Leongatha.
Word of the strange graffiti, which had been scribbled by Erin’s children on a dining room wall, had quickly spread throughout the area – situated in Victoria’s east.
‘The police were inquiring about it. They wanted to see it. They had heard about it,’ the tradesman said.
The tradesman arranged to meet a detective to hand over the image, which he had already supplied to a news organisation.
‘I said “yeah we can catch up and you can have a look at it”. That was about 3pm and I reckon by 4pm it went live,’ the tradie said.
‘It appeared online within an hour after they rang me.’
The tradesman told Daily Mail Australia he was tasked with removing the imagery and words last year because the couple was preparing to sell the home, which fetched a price of $545,000 last August.
The images include pictures of grave stones and bizarre scribbles with themes of death and destruction drawn in black and red ink – the latter used to symbolise blood.
‘It was disturbing. We called it the death wall,’ the tradie said.
‘They were done by their (the Pattersons’) daughter. It is pretty disturbing for mum to let the kids draw on their dining room wall.’
The poster-sized drawings featured two tombstones.
Another had the date ‘August 1, 2021’ with the words ‘you will die within a year’ written underneath.
The tradesman said it took six coats of paint to cover the scrawlings. Another person who saw the images described them as ‘satanic’.
The revelations came a day after Simon Patterson made his first public appearance since the tragic deaths of his parents Don and Gail Patterson.
Simon paid tribute to his parents before up to 450 mourners who gathered at the Korumburra Recreation Centre.
His estranged wife was nowhere to be seen among the sea of mourners who braved cold and wet conditions to attend.
He told the packed hall his father had been known for his fitness, even in his final years of life.
‘His good fitness at age 70 – this year – also enabled him to successfully survive an emergency liver transplant a few weeks ago,’ Simon said.
‘Although sadly the rest of his body was all too sick to go anywhere past that point.’
The private funeral for the Pattersons was held last week, while the funeral for Mrs Wilkinson is yet to happen.