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Erin Patterson, the Australian woman accused of killing three relatives with a meal of death cap mushrooms baked in a Beef Wellington lunch, has been found guilty of three counts of murder and the attempted murder of the lone survivor.
A 12-member jury reached the verdict after around sixdays of deliberation following a 10-week trial in Morwell, a tiny town about an hour’s drive from the suburban dining room in Leongatha, Victoria, where the lethal lunch was served in July 2023.
During weeks of testimony, Patterson was accused of deliberately tainting the lunch with death cap mushrooms, highly toxic fungi that she picked after seeing their location posted on a public website.
In the days after, her former parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, died along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson. Heather’s husband Ian, their local pastor, survived after a weeks-long stay in hospital.
The agreed facts were that Patterson asked five people to lunch on July 29, 2023, including her estranged husband Simon Patterson, who pulled out the day before.
Within hours of the meal, the four lunch guests – Simon’s parents Don and Gail, and his aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson – became ill with vomiting and diarrhea. They went to hospital where they were placed in induced comas as doctors tried to save them.
Gail and Heather died on August 4 from multi-organ failure, followed by Don on August 5, after he failed to respond to a liver transplant. Ian Wilkinson survived and was finally discharged from hospital in late September, after almost two months of intensive treatment. (CNN)
