Australian mushroom murderer loses appeal and gets harsher sentence

Australia’s mushroom killer has failed to overturn her murder convictions on appeal, with the court also ruling that she will never be released from prison. Erin Patterson, 51, was found guilty of murdering three relatives and attempting to kill another when she served them a toxic mushroom-laced meal in 2023. Her life sentence included a non-parole period of 33 years.

In Victoria’s Court of Appeal on Friday, three judges rejected her appeal against her convictions and agreed with the prosecution that her sentence was inadequate because it allowed for the possibility of freedom. Patterson’s crimes were “extraordinarily cold and calculated” and had to be “denounced in the strongest terms,” they said. “We have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a non-parole period,” Justice Stephen McLeish told the court, on the panel’s behalf.

After a high-profile trial last year, a jury found Patterson guilty of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, by serving them individual portions of beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms. Patterson was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson, a local pastor, who also ate the toxic lunch at Patterson’s home in rural Victoria.

He survived after spending weeks in hospital and has ongoing health issues due to the poisoning. Simon Patterson, the host’s estranged husband, was meant to attend the lunch but cancelled at the last minute, in part due to his belief that his wife had repeatedly tried to poison him over several years. Patterson was sentenced last September, with the trial judge allowing a non-parole period of 33 years due to the “harsh prison conditions” she would likely face.

Erin Patterson will spend the rest of her life in jail after a court threw out her chance to apply for parole in 2056 She promptly launched an appeal against her convictions, with her legal team in August arguing seven grounds for her appeal. They claimed a hotel booking mishap – which saw the jury stay in the same place as the prosecution, a key police witness and the media – was “catastrophic” and undermined the integrity of her trial.

They also argued certain pieces of evidence shown to the jury were irrelevant and prejudicial – such as cell tower data suggesting Patterson visited areas where death cap mushrooms might be found and Facebook posts where she complained about her in-laws. Meanwhile, the judge wrongly blocked other evidence that would have demonstrated the mother-of-two’s long-time hobby of mushroom foraging, they said.

The defence team also asserted that the prosecution’s five-day cross-examination of Patterson was “unfair and oppressive”, and that the Crown was inconsistent in its arguments about a motive. On Friday, the appeal judges dismissed all seven grounds. Patterson has 28 days to decide if she will seek to convince the High Court of Australia to hear another appeal over the case.