An Australian mother has been found guilty of murdering her estranged husband’s parents and an aunt by serving them a beef wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms.
Erin Patterson, 50, invited her former parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, to the fatal lunch on 29 July 2023.
The mother-of-two, from the state of Victoria in southern Australia, has also been convicted of the attempted murder of Mrs Wilkinson’s husband Reverend Ian Wilkinson.
All four fell ill after eating a meal of beef wellington, mashed potatoes and green beans at Patterson’s home in the town of Leongatha, the court was told.
The poisoned mushroom murder trial has gripped the Australian public for almost two years and now they finally have a verdict. Guilty on all counts.
The case has all the characteristics of a classic true crime drama. The Australian media has fed the audience’s obsession with it.
There’s been a daily mushroom trial podcast and every media outlet in the country has covered it non-stop.
Australians can’t get enough of it. First there’s the setting – the poisoning took place in the small town of Leongatha in Victoria, with a population of around 6,000 people. An alleged murder in the middle of a bucolic country town set the stage for intense interest.
The fact that three guests died after a home-cooked meal, and a fourth became gravely ill, all added to the mystery. At its core this was also a family drama, all the victims were related.
The meal that was served with death cap mushrooms in it – the beef Wellington – sounds straight out of an Agatha Christie drama. It’s considered an old-fashioned dish in Australia, one with British roots (even though that’s up for debate).
Then there’s the death cap mushrooms. They are highly poisonous, even a tiny amount can kill you.
The jury has rejected Erin Patterson’s defence team’s argument that it was all a tragic accident and decided the poisoning was deliberate.
There’s been several inconsistencies and lies in Patterson’s testimony to the court. These include details about foraging, disposing of a food dehydrator and falsely claiming she had cancer.
This is the case everyone in Australia has been talking about it. Dinner invites now often include the line: “There’ll be no mushrooms.”
For two months local and foreign media have covered the trial in the town of Morwell, the public has watched with fascination. The next stage will be the sentencing. It could happen within weeks.
Prosecutors said Patterson, who was arrested in November 2023 and has been in custody ever since, knowingly laced the beef pastry dish with deadly death cap mushrooms, also known as Amanita phalloides, at her home.
A drawing of Erin Patterson, in court where she is accused of murdering her relatives2:46
Reverend Wilkinson spent seven weeks in hospital but survived.
Her estranged husband Simon Patterson, with whom she has two children, was also invited to the lunch and initially accepted but later declined, the trial heard.
The jury was told that prosecutors had dropped three charges that Patterson had attempted to murder her husband, who she has been separated from since 2015.
Reverend Wilkinson said that immediately after the meal, Patterson fabricated a cancer diagnosis, suggesting the lunch was put together so that she could ask them the best way to tell her children about the illness.
The death cap is one of the most toxic mushrooms on the planet and is involved in the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide.
The species contains three main groups of toxins: amatoxins, phallotoxins, and virotoxins.
From these, amatoxins are primarily responsible for the toxic effects in humans.
The alpha-amanitin amatoxin has been found to cause protein deficit and ultimately cell death, although other mechanisms are thought to be involved.
The liver is the main organ that fails due to the poison, but other organs are also affected, most notably the kidneys.
The effects usually begin after a short latent period and can include gastrointestinal disorders followed by jaundice, seizures, coma, and eventually, death.
The trial attracted intense interest in Australia – with podcasters, journalists and documentary-makers descending on the town of Morwell, around two hours east of Melbourne, where the court hearings took place.
A sentencing date is yet to be scheduled. The charges carry a maximum life sentence.
