Australian Erin Patterson was found guilty today of murdering three of her estranged husband’s relatives with a poisonous beef wellington.
The jury in the Supreme Court trial in the state of Victoria returned a verdict after six days of deliberations, following a nine-week trial that had gripped Australia.
Patterson faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date, but showed no emotion as the verdicts were read out loud.
Three of Patterson’s four lunch guests – her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson – died in the hospital after the 2023 meal at her home in Leongatha.
The meal of choice was individual beef Wellington pastries containing death cap mushrooms.
She was also found guilty of attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the meal.
It was not disputed that Patterson served the mushrooms or that the pastries killed her guests – the jury was tasked with deciding if she knew the lunch contained death caps, and if she intended for them to die.
Prosecutors did not offer a motive for the killings, but had pointed out strained relations between Patterson and her estranged husband, and frustration that she had felt about his parents in the past.
The case turned on the question of whether Patterson meticulously planned a triple murder or accidentally killed three people she loved, including her children’s only surviving grandparents.
Her lawyers said she had no reason to do so – she had recently moved to a beautiful new home, was financially comfortable, had sole custody of her children and was due to begin studying for a degree in nursing and midwifery.
But prosecutors suggested Patterson had two faces – the woman who publicly appeared to have a good relationship with her parents-in-law, while her private feelings about them were kept hidden.
Her relationship with her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, who was invited to the fatal lunch but did not go, deteriorated in the year before the deaths, the prosecution said.
Patterson acknowledged some lies during her evidence, including that she had never foraged mushrooms or owned a dehydrator.
But she said that those claims were made in panic as she realised her meal had killed people.
She said she did not become as ill as the other diners since she vomited after the meal because of an eating disorder.
Erin denied that she told her guests she had cancer as a ruse to explain why she invited them to her home that day.
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