Australian woman Erin Patterson has been found guilty of murdering three elderly relatives of her estranged husband with a meal laced with death cap mushrooms.
Erin Patterson, 50, was charged with the murders of her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Donald Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, along with the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband.
The jury in the Supreme Court trial in Victoria state returned a verdict after six days of deliberations, following a nine-week trial that gripped Australia.
Patterson faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.
The four had gathered at Erin Patterson’s home in Leongatha, a town southeast of Melbourne, where the mother of two served them a meal of individual beef wellingtons accompanied by mashed potato and green beans, which were later found to contain death cap mushrooms.
All four guests were hospitalised the next day with poisoning from death cap mushrooms, also known as amanita phalloides, which were added to the beef dish.
Three of the guests died several days after the meal. Mr Wilkinson, who required a liver transplant, survived.
Patterson had pleaded not guilty to all charges, saying the deaths were accidental.
It wasn’t disputed that Patterson served the mushrooms or that the pastries killed her guests. The jury was required to decide whether she knew the lunch contained death caps, and if she intended for them to die.
The guilty verdicts, which were required to be unanimous, indicated that jurors rejected Patterson’s defense that the presence of the poisonous fungi 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.
The 10-week trial attracted huge global interest, with local and international media descending on Court 4 at the Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court in Morwell.
With agencies
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