Erin Patterson accused of tampering with prison food and making inmate sick while in maximum security waiting for trial
The mother-of-two on Monday afternoon was found guilty by a jury of murdering her three relatives of her estranged husband - Don and Gail Patterson and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson - by serving them a poisonous beef wellington lunch in July 2023.
She was also found guilty for the attempted murder of Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, a local church pastor who survived following a lengthy stint in hospital.
Patterson spent her first night behind bars as one of the worst female Australian killers.
According to The Herald Sun citing sources, the mushroom cook, 50, is not liked among other inmates inside Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum security jail for women.
The source claimed prisoners had fallen out with Patterson, with one inmate alleging a meal prepared inside the prison had been tampered with which made her sick.
After the complaint, Patterson was placed in the "slot", a cell where she was isolated for up to 22 hours a day with minimum contact as the allegation was investigated.
No further action was believed to be taken over the incident, which happened as she was awaiting trial, but could not be reported on, The Herald Sun said.
Supporters of Patterson had hoped for a different outcome.
Photos outside the family in Leongatha, a small Victorian town in the state's south-east, showed black tarp set up, a likely move to shield the mother-of-two from the media if she was found not guilty by the jury and allowed to return to the family home.
A "legal notice" was also attached with cable ties to the gate.
"Please be advised the owner of this property hereby gives notice to all members of the media or any person employed or contracted to any media organisation, that you are not permitted to enter any part of this property as marked by the boundary fence," it read.
The prosecution during the trial argued Patterson's lunch was intentionally laced with death cap mushrooms, but the defence denied the poisonings were intentional.
Patterson's estranged husband Simon was invited to the lunch, but pulled out of the gathering the day before.
The prosecution said Patterson concocted a cancer diagnosis to lure her guests over for lunch as she needed advice on how to break the medical news to her children.
The court heard from various witnesses during the trial, including the killer herself, as well as members of the Patterson family, police officers and medical experts.
On Monday afternoon, Patterson's friend Ali Rose Prior briefly spoke to the media as she left the courthouse following the guilty verdict.
"I'm saddened, and it is what it is," Ms Prior told reporters.
Asked if she was anticipating that Ms Patterson would be found not guilty, Mr Prior said she "didn't have any expectations".
"The justice system has to be what it is," she said.
Asked how she thought Patterson would have felt in that moment the verdict was delivered, Ms Prior said "I don't know" adding she would see her friend "soon".
The court previously heard that Patterson maintained a good relationship with her former in-laws even after her separation from Simon in 2015.
However, Patterson and Simon's relationship deteriorated around 2022 when the pair began disputing over child support and other expenses.
About a week after the lunch, police conducted a search of Patterson's Leongatha home and seized a number of items, including a computer.
Digital forensic experts told the trial an analysis of the seized computer showed the device had accessed an online social science network in 2022 called iNaturalist, where people have previously shared sightings of death cap mushrooms.
During her testimony, Patterson claimed she bought the fresh mushrooms used in the beef wellington from Woolworths, as well as dried ones from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east. She had stored the dried mushrooms in a Tupperware container.
Patterson told the court she had dehydrated and foraged for mushrooms in the past, and feared some may have mistakenly been mixed into her beef wellington meal.
The mushroom cook and her legal team have 28 days to appeal the verdict, but if she chooses not to then the next court appearance will be for her sentencing.
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Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
A photographer made a bizarre contraption to catch Erin Patterson. The gamble paid off
In news photography, getting 'the shot' is partly down to planning and good luck. On Monday, May 12 – two weeks into Erin Patterson's trial in the usually quiet Victorian country town of Morwell – most of the photographers and journalists covering the murder trial were taking the opportunity of a jury-free day to get some well-earned rest. Martin Keep, though, ventured out into the bitter cold, a custom rig mounted to his body with studio flashes twisted around his camera. It was something that Keep, who was photographing the trial for Agence France-Presse, his colleagues, and Age photographer Jason South had never seen before – a bizarre creation, born out of a chance find at former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn's trial almost a year before. For years in Melbourne, photographers haven't bothered chasing police vans, thinking they couldn't capture the scene inside. 'But the Greg Lynn case changed all that,' South said. '[ Age colleague] Joe Armao got a picture inside [Lynn's] van without anybody in it, and he showed me. He said: 'You can see in there.' I spent days and days, and got Greg Lynn in that van. 'Martin was on the [Patterson] job with me, and he was asking how, and what, and where. On the first day, he did actually get a really dark, soft and grainy photo of [Patterson] in the van. 'He went home and thought on how he could make it better, and he built this whole rig to go around the camera … then he had the most amazing luck.' Patterson also wasn't expecting any media to bother showing up at Morwell Police Station on May 12; she thought they'd spare themselves the boring legal argument, South suggested. Photographers had two chances a week to capture her in the van – when she was en route to and from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne's west. On May 12, Keep thought he'd test out his rig for the first time, and caught her staring dead-eyed through the window of the police van. In his images, her shock at being photographed is visceral. Her face falls before she turns away from the camera, covering her face with her hands, in a now-iconic set of photographs. 'After that series of flashes through the window, [photographers] never saw her again,' South said. 'She would dive underneath the window, or … [sit with] the back of her head on the window, so there's no chance of seeing her. She'd ride like that all the way to Melbourne – 165 kilometres back.' A stakeout and Erin Patterson's only interview About nine months before Keep captured Patterson in the police van, the news first broke that three people died after a family lunch in Leongatha, about 60 kilometres south-west of Morwell. The Age crime reporter Marta Pascual Juanola, based in Melbourne, grabbed her camera gear and raced down to South Gippsland to begin what then became an eight-day reporting trip to cover the biggest crime story of the year. On August 7, she'd spent most of the morning trying to figure out who the victims were, and who had cooked the fateful meal, before she landed the tip that gave her their names. She managed to track down Patterson's address, where she knew the lunch was held, and parked outside her house for hours, waiting for the mother of two to emerge and engage with the waiting media pack. When Patterson finally came outside, Pascual Juanola was there, waiting with her DSL camera to capture the moment. Holding her phone with one hand to record her comments and using the other to shoot her portrait, the reporter captured an emotional Patterson as she told journalists she loved the people who had attended the lunch. Looking up into the sky as if searching for answers, Patterson dabbed at her eyes with a tissue – but did not appear to have any tears. The result was a Quill Award-nominated series of compelling portraits, which captured Patterson's emotional appeal for sympathy in what would become her only interview with the media. A 'lesson in patience' For Jason South, covering Patterson's triple-murder case was one of the most difficult jobs of his decades-long career, for one reason alone. 'There's so little variety to shoot,' South said. 'You're shooting the same people, at the same place, for 10 weeks straight. Trying to make interesting pictures in the ninth and tenth week was a real lesson in patience. 'Then you add having to get there in the early morning to get people queuing up, and trying to grab a frame of the prosecutor, who would always try and sneak in before the media. 'You'd have early mornings in the sometimes sub-zero temperatures, and then be there at 4.30pm in the afternoon, when they come out.' South and other media initially thought the trial would go for about a month. He ended up having to tell his family, repeatedly, 'just one more week'. His 18-year-old and 22-year-old children caught onto the delay, and it became a running joke. 'When I came home, they quipped, 'are you my daddy?',' South says with a laugh.
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
A photographer made a bizarre contraption to catch Erin Patterson. The gamble paid off
In news photography, getting 'the shot' is partly down to planning and good luck. On Monday, May 12 – two weeks into Erin Patterson's trial in the usually quiet Victorian country town of Morwell – most of the photographers and journalists covering the murder trial were taking the opportunity of a jury-free day to get some well-earned rest. Martin Keep, though, ventured out into the bitter cold, a custom rig mounted to his body with studio flashes twisted around his camera. It was something that Keep, who was photographing the trial for Agence France-Presse, his colleagues, and Age photographer Jason South had never seen before – a bizarre creation, born out of a chance find at former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn's trial almost a year before. For years in Melbourne, photographers haven't bothered chasing police vans, thinking they couldn't capture the scene inside. 'But the Greg Lynn case changed all that,' South said. '[ Age colleague] Joe Armao got a picture inside [Lynn's] van without anybody in it, and he showed me. He said: 'You can see in there.' I spent days and days, and got Greg Lynn in that van. 'Martin was on the [Patterson] job with me, and he was asking how, and what, and where. On the first day, he did actually get a really dark, soft and grainy photo of [Patterson] in the van. 'He went home and thought on how he could make it better, and he built this whole rig to go around the camera … then he had the most amazing luck.' Patterson also wasn't expecting any media to bother showing up at Morwell Police Station on May 12; she thought they'd spare themselves the boring legal argument, South suggested. Photographers had two chances a week to capture her in the van – when she was en route to and from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne's west. On May 12, Keep thought he'd test out his rig for the first time, and caught her staring dead-eyed through the window of the police van. In his images, her shock at being photographed is visceral. Her face falls before she turns away from the camera, covering her face with her hands, in a now-iconic set of photographs. 'After that series of flashes through the window, [photographers] never saw her again,' South said. 'She would dive underneath the window, or … [sit with] the back of her head on the window, so there's no chance of seeing her. She'd ride like that all the way to Melbourne – 165 kilometres back.' A stakeout and Erin Patterson's only interview About nine months before Keep captured Patterson in the police van, the news first broke that three people died after a family lunch in Leongatha, about 60 kilometres south-west of Morwell. The Age crime reporter Marta Pascual Juanola, based in Melbourne, grabbed her camera gear and raced down to South Gippsland to begin what then became an eight-day reporting trip to cover the biggest crime story of the year. On August 7, she'd spent most of the morning trying to figure out who the victims were, and who had cooked the fateful meal, before she landed the tip that gave her their names. She managed to track down Patterson's address, where she knew the lunch was held, and parked outside her house for hours, waiting for the mother of two to emerge and engage with the waiting media pack. When Patterson finally came outside, Pascual Juanola was there, waiting with her DSL camera to capture the moment. Holding her phone with one hand to record her comments and using the other to shoot her portrait, the reporter captured an emotional Patterson as she told journalists she loved the people who had attended the lunch. Looking up into the sky as if searching for answers, Patterson dabbed at her eyes with a tissue – but did not appear to have any tears. The result was a Quill Award-nominated series of compelling portraits, which captured Patterson's emotional appeal for sympathy in what would become her only interview with the media. A 'lesson in patience' For Jason South, covering Patterson's triple-murder case was one of the most difficult jobs of his decades-long career, for one reason alone. 'There's so little variety to shoot,' South said. 'You're shooting the same people, at the same place, for 10 weeks straight. Trying to make interesting pictures in the ninth and tenth week was a real lesson in patience. 'Then you add having to get there in the early morning to get people queuing up, and trying to grab a frame of the prosecutor, who would always try and sneak in before the media. 'You'd have early mornings in the sometimes sub-zero temperatures, and then be there at 4.30pm in the afternoon, when they come out.' South and other media initially thought the trial would go for about a month. He ended up having to tell his family, repeatedly, 'just one more week'. His 18-year-old and 22-year-old children caught onto the delay, and it became a running joke. 'When I came home, they quipped, 'are you my daddy?',' South says with a laugh.
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