WELLINGTON – On Tuesday, a jury was in its second day of deliberations in the triple murder trial of an Australian woman accused of killing her estranged husband’s relatives by intentionally serving them poisonous mushrooms at lunch.
The jurors began their deliberations on Monday and are sequestered, which is uncommon in Australia and highlights the public and media interest in the Erin Patterson case. Several news outlets are providing live blog coverage of every moment of the two-month trial. The jurors will remain in isolation until they reach a unanimous verdict on the charges of murder and attempted murder.
Three of Patterson’s four lunch guests — her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson — passed away in the hospital following the 2023 meal. They were served individual beef Wellington pastries that contained death cap mushrooms. The fourth guest, Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson, fell critically ill but survived.
Patterson, 50, told the trial she didn’t deliberately poison her guests and must have accidentally mixed up store-bought and wild mushrooms, which she had foraged herself without knowing they were death caps. She also said she ate the mushrooms but didn’t get as sick because she threw up soon after the lunch due to an eating disorder.
Prosecutors in the case, which has gripped Australia for two years, said the accused woman researched, foraged and served the mushrooms deliberately and lied to investigators to cover her tracks. Patterson accepted she had disposed of a food dehydrator after the fatal meal and reset her phone multiple times.
The prosecution said she lied about having a dire medical diagnosis to ensure her guests attended the lunch, cooked individual pastries to avoid poisoning herself, and faked symptoms to make it look as though she fell ill, too.
Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive but suggested a deteriorating relationship between the accused and her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, as well as her exasperation with her former in-laws. Simon Patterson was invited to the fatal lunch but didn’t go.
Patterson would face life in prison if she is convicted.
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