Australian woman Erin Patterson was found guilty on Monday of murdering three of her estranged husband’s relatives by deliberately serving them poisonous mushrooms for lunch.
The jury in the Supreme Court trial in Victoria state returned the verdict after six days of deliberations, following a nine-week trial. Patterson faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.
Patterson, 50, showed no emotion but blinked rapidly as the verdicts were read while she sat between two prison officers.
Three of Patterson’s four lunch guests — her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66 — died in the hospital after eating the poisonous meal at her home in the rural town of Leongartha on July 29, 2023.
Patterson was also found guilty of attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the meal.
Patterson served individual meals of beef Wellington pastries containing death cap mushrooms, mashed potatoes and green beans.
Patterson had pleaded not guilty to the four charges, arguing the deaths were accidental.
The jury was required to decide whether Patterson knew the lunch contained death cap mushrooms and if she intended for her guests to die. It wasn’t disputed that Patterson served the mushrooms or that the beef Wellington pastries killed her guests.
The guilty verdicts, which were required to be unanimous, indicated that jurors rejected Patterson’s defence that the presence of the poisonous mushrooms in the meal was a terrible accident, caused by the mistaken inclusion of foraged mushrooms that she didn’t know were death caps.
Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive for the killings, but during the trial highlighted strained relations between Patterson and her estranged husband and frustration that she had felt about his parents in the past.
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The case focused on whether Patterson planned the murders or if she accidentally killed three people, including her children’s only surviving grandparents.
Her lawyers claimed she had no reason to commit the murders as she had recently moved into a new home, was financially comfortable and had sole custody of her children. They also said that she was due to begin studying for a degree in nursing and midwifery.
But prosecutors suggested Patterson had two faces — the woman who publicly appeared to have a good relationship with her parents-in-law, while her true feelings about them were kept hidden.
Her relationship with her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, who was invited to the fatal lunch but didn’t attend, deteriorated in the year before the deaths, the prosecution said.
The day after the meal, all four of Patterson’s guests were hospitalized with poisoning from death cap mushrooms, also known as amanita phalloides, that were added to the beef and pastry dish. Ian Wilkinson survived after a liver transplant.
“I had felt for some months that my relationship with the wider Patterson family, and particularly Don and Gail, perhaps had a bit more distance or space put between us,” Patterson previously said during the trial. “We saw each other less.”
Wilkinson previously told the courtroom that Patterson had plated “all of the food” and appeared “reluctant” for her lunch guests to go into her pantry.
“Each person had an individual serve, it was very much like a pasty,” Wilkinson said. “It was a pastry case and when we cut into it, there was steak and mushrooms.”
He said they all ate from four grey plates and Patterson ate from an “orangey tan” plate.
“Erin picked up the odd plate and carried it to the table. She took it to her place at the table,” he told the court.
Wilkinson also said his wife told him the next day that she “noticed the difference in colours” of the plates.
He said he and his wife “ate the entire meal,” while Don ate his meal and half of the beef Wellington that Gail did not finish.
“There was talk about husbands helping their wives out,” he said.
Justice Christopher Beale previously told jurors that prosecutors had dropped separate charges against Patterson alleging she had also attempted to murder her estranged husband with the poisonous mushrooms.
Death cap mushrooms are present in many of B.C.’s forests but may also be found in city environments associated with many species of imported trees. According to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, the mushrooms have been spotted on Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland.
Death cap mushrooms look similar to common puffball mushrooms, but should never be eaten. If you suspect you may have consumed a death cap mushroom, you should seek emergency medical care immediately.
Symptoms of being poisoned by a death cap mushroom include low blood pressure, nausea and vomiting.
—With files from Global News’ Michelle Butterfield and The Associated Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
