Erin Patterson began the day with hope. Now Australia’s mushroom murderer knows she’s likely to die in jail
Erin Patterson raised her chin and stared out on the brilliant blue promise of a mid-spring morning. To the east, Victoria’s grandest court room was
Erin Patterson raised her chin and stared out on the brilliant blue promise of a mid-spring morning. To the east, Victoria’s grandest court room was filled with people she had brought together, yet she was there only on a screen. Patterson watched on, clad in prison-issued blue, from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre. Soon, three justices of the court of appeal would enter the Banco court, and Patterson would learn whether she would walk under that sky again as a free woman. Patterson, 52, was last year sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 33 years, for the murders of her estranged husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, after she hosted them for lunch. View image in fullscreen A court sketch of Erin Patterson as she appeared during a hearing via video link in August. Photograph: Anita Lester/AAP She was also convicted of the attempted murder of Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived the beef wellington laced with death cap mushrooms after spending weeks in hospital. Anyone who sat through her appeal hearings in August considered her prospects to be slim. She argued on seven grounds that her conviction should be set aside, but there was little thrust to her arguments, little sense that the justices were for turning. Indeed, they appeared more receptive to an appeal by the director of public prosecutions that Patterson’s non-parole period of 33 years was manifestly inadequate.
Even if the status quo remained, with Patterson’s appeal against her conviction failing and the DPP’s bid for her sentence to be increased also falling short, there was little to look forward to – she would be in her early 80s before she could apply for parole. View image in fullscreen Ian Wilkinson survived the beef wellington lunch. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP It took only 15 minutes for Justice Stephen McLeish to stifle even that breath of hope. McLeish said the court dismissed all but two grounds of Patterson’s appeal, granted leave to appeal on the final two but dismissed those too, and agreed with the DPP that Patterson should be resentenced. It was not just that her non-parole period was too short, McLeish said: it was that she should not have any prospect of ever being released. McLeish said Patterson sustained an intent to murder all four people for three weeks, from the time they were invited to the lunch, during the meal, and during the “protracted suffering and ultimate deaths that resulted”. The offending was “carefully planned and deliberate”, he said, and involved an “elaborate series of deceptions” – including claims that she had cancer, denying she had foraged mushrooms, and lying about the source of the mushrooms. 1:21 Erin Patterson appeal: judges reject mushroom murderer’s bid to overturn convictions – video In the plain language of the courts, McLeish said that under the sentencing act he and his fellow justices had found that the nature of Patterson’s crimes meant that fixing any non-parole period was inappropriate.
skip past newsletter promotion Free newsletter | When needed Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks Enter your email Sign up after newsletter promotion “This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated, and stands to be denounced in the strongest possible terms,” McLeish said. There was a sense in the court at this point of time standing still, of the import of the decision lingering, its weight being felt on the shoulders and in the balls of the feet. But it was hard too not to think back to the day in Ian Wilkinson’s church when Patterson invited her in-laws to lunch, to them sitting at her table less than a fortnight later, and saying grace. View image in fullscreen The Leongatha home where Erin Patterson served four in-laws a meal containing death cap mushrooms in July 2023. Photograph: James Ross/AP To the individual beef wellingtons in front of them, her own plate a different colour to theirs. To her sitting with them, watching them eat what she hoped would be their last meals. And then the frantic search for answers when they fell unwell, and Patterson appearing dumbfounded, denying she had foraged, suggesting Asian grocers in far-flung suburbs as the source of the mushrooms, her lies mounting as her victims slipped ever closer to death. As she stared blankly at the camera in front of her, there was no sense of how Patterson felt.
She maintains the beef wellingtons were accidentally laced with death cap mushrooms, that she too fell sick after eating them, that her lies after the lunch were caused by panic. Patterson may see the inside of a court room again – she has 28 days to seek leave to appeal to the high court. Should fresh and compelling evidence emerge – a high bar rarely cleared – she could also seek a fresh court of appeal hearing. Even should she do so, there remains little prospect that a question at the heart of the case will ever be resolved. It is a question that has not been answered by the millions of words spoken and written and broadcast about murders covered perhaps more ghoulishly than any other in Australian history. That question is why Erin Patterson murdered people who loved her and showed her kindness, who loved her children, who she invited into her home and looked in the eye as they ate the meal that killed them. When McLeish finished speaking and the judges left court, Patterson also stood, took a book from beside her, turned her back on the window and that brilliant blue, and walked off-screen.
The BriefWire