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By the time Erin Patterson’s guilty verdicts were read, doctor Chris Webster had lived with a months-long “generalised tremulous”.
The condition – an intense, unsettled feeling, or a tremble or quiver – was brought on by the sheer enormity of what he had to do: tell the world about his pivotal interactions with the now-confirmed triple-murderer, he said.
Dr Chris Webster, who gave evidence in the murder trial of Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South
The burden was enormous from the moment he got his subpoena. So, after the verdicts, speaking to a “compassionate” and “gentle” Herald Sun reporter on a Saturday morning, it felt cathartic to speak truthfully about how he felt when he realised Patterson’s guilt.
His comments – he called Patterson a “crazy bitch” and a “disturbed sociopathic nut bag” – have come under intense scrutiny.
He was explaining to the reporter his initial reaction upon learning from Dandenong Hospital doctor Beth Morgan that four people had been poisoned, potentially with death cap mushrooms.
“To be perfectly honest, they were words that I said in the bathroom out loud after the phone call from Dr Beth Morgan,” Webster told The Age.
“I was freaking out. I was completely freaking out. Those thoughts and words were completely private; they were never documented, they were never broadcast until after the verdict.”
Complaints about the comments – which Webster defends – have flooded in against the doctor, with the public and patients of his Leongatha Healthcare clinic calling for him to be punished.
Webster was working at Leongatha Hospital when he received the call from Morgan – a registrar at Dandenong Hospital – who told him they suspected Don and Gail Patterson, who arrived at the hospital the previous night, were suffering from toxic mushroom poisoning.
However, he was not directly employed by the hospital’s operating Gippsland Southern Health Service at the time. Instead, he was a visiting medical officer.
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Calls for his employment to be terminated at the hospital are therefore useless. A spokesman for the health service said Webster last worked at Leongatha Hospital in February 2024. The service has since ceased its partnership with the local practice under which he was contracted.
Webster has genuine fear, though, complaints could cost him his registration and jeopardise his position at his own health clinic in country Victoria, where he says he provides compassionate, non-judgmental and desperately needed care.
He expects that Australia’s medical regulator, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, will investigate him.
“Anybody in Leongatha knows that all of the mental health patients come to me,” Webster said. “All of the patients with drug problems come to me … all of the people who identify as [non-binary] or transgender come to me,” Webster said.
“I’ve made a big difference to a lot of these people’s lives, so it’s been absolutely crushing to be described as a misogynist, as an ableist.”
Webster said his intention behind the comments was to give people further insight – as a key witness traumatised by the events – into his experience with Patterson.
Webster spoke with Patterson when she arrived at Leongatha Hospital with gastro-like symptoms and was flabbergasted when she discharged herself after barely five minutes of medical attention.
Gravely concerned, he phoned triple zero and requested a police check on her wellbeing. When Patterson returned to the hospital later that morning, he sternly told her: “They can be scared and alive, or dead.”
Webster told The Age on Thursday: “[I told] my story, referring to public testimony in a public court trial, which has completed with a verdict, and can only be appealed on points of law.
“I feel that I was very professional in maintaining confidentiality with respect to all of the aspects of the trial that I was privy to.”
The doctor said he was previously the subject of an AHPRA complaint but was exonerated of those claims.
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Webster has no conditions on his medical licence, according to current AHPRA records.
Since his controversial comments, Webster has received love as well as the hate, he said.
“Love is great. It makes you feel good to be a part of the experience of being a human being,” Webster said. “But it only takes one person to go to AHPRA and your life becomes a f---king nightmare for six months.”
An AHPRA spokesperson said the regulator was aware of media commentary about Webster and “comments made in court and media interviews”.
“We are also aware of reports today that Dr Webster has been receiving complaints,” the spokesperson said.
“Confidentiality provisions of the national law under which we operate limit what we can say publicly about an individual practitioner or matter.”
Doctors are expected to follow the Medical Board’s code of conduct, which dictates that they maintain patients’ right to privacy and confidentiality.
John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.
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