Erin Patterson mushroom murder trial LIVE updates: World waits on verdict as jury enters seventh day of deliberations
Victoria Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale concluded his address to the jury - or 'charge' - last Monday afternoon before the jury retired to deliberate on the verdict.
Two jurors were balloted out, leaving 12 to decide Patterson's fate.
The five women and seven men will resume their deliberations at 10.30am, meaning there is a possibility today of a verdict in the murder trial which has garnered worldwide attention.
Patterson, 50, is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, after allegedly serving them a beef Wellington lunch made with death cap mushrooms.
Patterson is also accused of attempting to murder Heather's husband, pastor Ian Wilkinson, who survived the lunch after spending several weeks in an intensive care unit.
The court heard Patterson's estranged husband, Simon (pictured), was also invited to the gathering at her home in Leongatha, in Victoria's Gippsland region, but didn't attend.
Witnesses told the jury that Patterson ate her serving from a smaller, differently-coloured plate to those of her guests, who ate the meal on four grey plates.
Patterson told authorities she bought dried mushrooms from an unnamed Asian store in the Monash area of Melbourne, but health inspectors could find no evidence of this.
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We were told by the prosecution of the coldness and calculation with which she researched, accessed and concealed the deadly mushrooms, going so far as to dehydrate and blitz them in a blender. There was, they argued, a conceited lie constructed to make the victims come to the lunch. Stringent physical measures taken to ensure only her victims, and not herself or her children, fell ill. It seemed that Erin risked her own life, and those of her kids, to make this murder plot come to fruition. She apparently wanted her in-laws dead that badly. What then did we make of Erin's lack of any real plan to explain why three people had suddenly died after attending the lunch? Erin's accounting for her actions in court seemed half-hearted and ham-fisted. I lied. I panicked. I was mistaken. I don't remember. TikTok-trained psychoanalysis of Erin's explanations was bandied around WhatsApp group chats and office lunch rooms. She's a narcissist. She's a sociopath. She's an idiot. 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Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion I'm guilty of wandering that line myself, as a crime fiction author who keeps a close eye on court cases as a means of research. I've wondered many times during the mushroom trial how I'd fictionalise something like this, where I'd set it, whose perspective I would write it from. I worry that the true crime and crime fiction industry, of which I am a maker and a consumer, is making a professional crime-solver of all of us. Candice Fox is a bestselling Australian crime novelist based in Sydney
