Mushroom murders: Jury finds Erin Patterson guilty of killing three with poisoned beef wellington
Erin Patterson, 50, was arrested in November 2023 after four people she hosted for a lunch of beef wellington at her house in Leongatha, a small town in Victoria about two hours outside of Melbourne, were hospitalized on suspicion of having been poisoned. Three of the guests – Ms. Patterson's in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson – later died, while Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, was only discharged after months in intensive care.
Doctors soon determined the cause of the poisoning was Amanita phalloides, or death cap mushrooms, which Ms. Patterson said she had served accidentally and prosecutors said were intentionally laced into the food eaten by her guests, but not Ms. Patterson herself.
The 'mushroom murders' quickly became a global media sensation, and when the trial finally began in the nearby town of Morwell this year, it was covered wall-to-wall by Australian broadcasters, while millions downloaded one of several daily podcasts covering the hearings. At least two true-crime books are in the works, and public broadcaster ABC is working on turning the case into a TV series.
In his directions to the 12-member jury late last month, Judge Christopher Beale acknowledged the case 'has attracted unprecedented media attention and excited much public comment' and urged jurors not to let it sway their opinions.
'You and you alone are best placed to determine whether the prosecution have proved their case beyond reasonable doubt,' he said.
While much of Australia had long ago decided Ms. Patterson was guilty, it was not a sure thing that the jury would agree. Despite damning evidence introduced against her in trial – including searches on her phone for the best place to find death cap mushrooms and records of her travelling to one such location – prosecutors never presented a motive for the murders.
Ms. Patterson had been estranged from her husband, Simon, son of victims Don and Gail, for a long time, and texts presented at trial showed her to be resentful of their lack of support as the marriage broke down. But she barely knew the Wilkinsons, and it was unclear why they were included in the fateful meal, given Ms. Patterson's easy access to her children's grandparents.
'Why on Earth would anyone want to kill these people?' Ms. Patterson's barrister Colin Mandy said in court. 'There's no possible prospect that Erin wanted in those circumstances to destroy her whole world, her whole life.'
Across eight days of testimony and cross-examination, Ms. Patterson continually protested her innocence, though she admitted to buying a food dehydrator on the same day phone signal data put her in the vicinity of death cap mushrooms, and to later dumping the device, which was recovered and found to bear both her fingerprints and traces of the deadly fungi.
According to Ms. Patterson, she believed the death cap mushrooms were contained in a pack of assorted dried mushrooms she bought from an unspecified supermarket in Melbourne, something Australian food chain experts have said was impossible. No other poisonings have emerged that could be linked to such an oversight in food safety. She later changed her testimony to suggest she had made a mistake while foraging for harmless mushrooms.
Prosecutors pointed to Ms. Patterson's decision to serve individual beef wellingtons for each guest as proof of her intention to poison them. A dish of steak baked in pastry, a beef wellington is traditionally served whole and then carved up into portions. Mr. Wilkinson, the survivor, also testified that Ms. Patterson used a different colour and size of plate to her guests.
In summarizing the case against Ms. Patterson, prosecutor Nanette Rogers said 'she alone chose what to cook, obtained the ingredients and prepared the meal.'
'That choice to make individual portions allowed her complete control over the ingredients in each individual parcel,' she said.
Ms. Rogers accused Ms. Patterson of a 'sinister deception' to use a 'nourishing meal as the vehicle to deliver the deadly poison,' while giving the 'appearance of sharing' the same dish while ensuring she ran no risk of eating the toxic mushrooms.
The jury deliberated for a week before finding Ms. Patterson guilty on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder. Just how they reached their unanimous verdict will remain a mystery: unlike in some jurisdictions, Australian jurors are forbidden to disclose any discussions or voting that took place behind closed doors, and can be fined or even jailed if they do.
According to the ABC, Ms. Patterson 'did not express any obvious outward emotion' as the verdict was delivered Monday.
She will be sentenced at a later date, and faces up to life in prison.
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Globe and Mail
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