An Australian judge on Monday sentenced triple-murderer Erin Patterson to life in prison with a non-parole period of 33 years for poisoning four of her estranged husband’s relatives with death cap mushrooms. Justice Christopher Beale told the Victoria state Supreme Court that Patterson’s crimes involved an enormous betrayal of trust.
Patterson was convicted in July 2023 of murdering Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, with a lunch of beef Wellington pastries laced with that paste containing death cap mushrooms, which are among the most poisonous in the world. Patterson was also convicted of attempting to murder Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson, who spent weeks in a hospital.
Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, was invited but did not attend the July 2023 lunch served to her parents, Beale said Patterson had also intended to kill her husband if he had accepted his invitation to lunch.
Disturbingly, she had pretended to have been diagnosed with cancer as a reason to bring them together. She claimed to have wanted advice on how to break the news to her two children, who were not going to be present at the lunch.
All four guests were hospitalized with gastrointestinal symptoms the following day, and three of them died the following week from altered liver function and multiple organ failure due to Amanita mushroom poisoning. The sole survivor, Ian Wilkinson, recovered after weeks in intensive care and went on to testify against Patterson at her trial, which featured over 50 witnesses and eight days of testimony from Patterson herself.
Patterson lied about numerous things that ranged from faking a cancer diagnosis as a pretense for hosting the lunch to lying to medical professionals and investigators after the fact about how sick she had gotten from the lunch herself. They also accused her of lying to investigators about some key facts in the case, including that she had gone foraging for mushrooms and even owned a food dehydrator, which she did get rid of very quickly after the guests got sick.
Patterson herself admitted to lying about those things, but she maintained all along that the poisonings were accidental. She and her lawyers argued that she had done those things out of panic after seeing how sick people got from her food, and they reminded the jury over and over again that she wasn’t on trial for lying.
Beale accepted Ian Wilkinson’s account that the guests were served grey plates while Patterson ate from an orange-tan plate. This was to ensure she didn’t accidentally eat a poisoned meal.
So the jury faced this question: Did Patterson knowingly put death cap mushrooms in the dish with the intention of killing her guests?
Patterson denied that the poisonings were deliberate, arguing that some previously foraged mushrooms made it into the dish by accident. Her lawyers said she later tried to cover up her actions — including by lying to investigators about things like foraging for mushrooms, owning a food dehydrator and becoming ill herself after the meal out of fear after her guests’ deaths.
Patterson spends at least 22 hours a day in her cell and has never spoken to the only inmate she’s allowed to. That inmate, who has an adjoining exercise yard that shares a mesh wire fence, has been convicted of terrorism offenses and has attacked other prisoners.
Bye bye Erin Patterson
