Source: Africa Publicity
An Australian woman, Erin Patterson, aged 50, has been jailed for life after being found guilty of killing her estranged husband’s father, mother, and auntie with death cap, one of the world’s most toxic and poisonous mushrooms. She had been accused of feeding her inlaws a beef wellington laced with the poisonous mushrooms.
She is to spend a minimum of 33 years in prison, according to multiple local media reports in Australia.
Reports say Erin lured her estranged husband’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, to lunch at her home in Leongatha, Victoria, on 29 July 2023.
Reverend Ian Wilkinson, the husband of the deceased Heather Wilkinson, also ate the meal, which was served alongside mashed potatoes and green beans, but survived after receiving a liver transplant and spending months in hospital, multiple news outlets reported.
Reports say the mother-of-two, Erin made the pastry dish with deadly death cap mushrooms, also known as amanita phalloides
.
Sentencing at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne, Justice Christopher Beale, says the high degree of planning of the murders and Erin’s lack of remorse meant her sentence should be lengthy.
The Australian judge told Erin at sentencing hearing that, “The devastating impact of your crimes is not limited to your direct victims. Your crimes have harmed a great many people.”
He says “Not only did you cut short three lives and cause lasting damage to Ian Wilkinson’s health, thereby devastating the extended Patterson and Wilkinson families, you inflicted untold suffering on your own children, whom you robbed of their beloved grandparents.”
Erin’s trial in Morwell, southern Australia, reports said, heard that she faked a cancer diagnosis to use as an excuse not to invite her children, pretending to want to discuss how to break the news to them after the meal.
The four inlaws fell ill immediately after eating her food. Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs Patterson died on August 4, 2023, and Mr Patterson a day later, according to reports.
Reports indicated that Reverend Wilkinson spent seven weeks in hospital but survived.
Following the ordeal, Reverend Wilkinson noted in his victim impact statement that the poisonous food meat he had a liver transplant and was left feeling “half alive.”
But reports say Erin maintained her innocence and told the court that she poisoned her inlaws by accident. She is reported to have also invited her estranged husband and father of her children, Simon Patterson, to the deadly meal.
