WELLINGTONTuesday was the second day of the jury’s deliberations in the triple murder trial of an Australian lady who is charged with killing her estranged husband’s family members by purposefully giving them poisonous mushrooms for lunch.
The jurors who started deliberating on Monday are sequestered, which is unusual in Australia and reflects the intense public and media interest in Erin Patterson’s case. Several news sites have posted live blogs that have followed the trial for two months. Until they get to a unanimous verdict on the murder and attempted murder charges, the jurors will be kept in seclusion.
After serving individual beef Wellington pastries with death cap mushrooms to her four lunch guests in 2023, Patterson’s parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, as well as Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, passed away in the hospital. The fourth, Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, fell very sick but lived.
The 50-year-old Patterson testified that she did not intentionally poison her visitors and that she must have unintentionally combined wild and store-bought mushrooms, which she had foraged without realizing they were death caps. She added that despite eating the mushrooms, she didn’t feel as ill because she had an eating disorder and puked shortly after lunch.
The accused woman allegedly lied to investigators to hide her activities and purposefully researched, foraged, and served the mushrooms, according to prosecutors in the case that has plagued Australia for two years. After the deadly lunch, Patterson acknowledged that she had thrown away a food dehydrator and repeatedly reset her phone.
According to the prosecution, she prepared individual pastries to prevent poisoning herself, fabricated symptoms to make it appear as though she became unwell, and lied about having a serious medical condition to make sure her visitors attended the meal.
Instead of providing a motive, the prosecution implied that the accused’s relationship with her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, was failing and that she was frustrated with her former in-laws. Despite being invited to the deadly lunch, Simon Patterson chose not to attend.
If found guilty, Patterson would be sentenced to life in prison.
