An Australian woman who murdered three of her in-laws with a meal of toxic mushrooms also allegedly tried to murder her husband using poisoned pasta, a chicken curry and a sandwich wrap, evidence showed on Friday after a judge allowed its disclosure.
A jury last month found Erin Patterson lured her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Don Patterson and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson to lunch at her home and poisoned them with servings of beef Wellington that contained death cap mushrooms.
They also found the 50-year-old guilty of the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the 2023 meal at Erin Patterson’s home in Leongatha, a town of about 6,000 people some 135 km southeast of Melbourne.
Patterson was initially charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder in 2023, with the four additional counts relating to her estranged husband, Simon Patterson.
Justice Christopher Beale previously ruled the charges should be split into two separate trials, before the prosecution dropped the attempted murder charges relating to Simon Patterson on the eve of the first trial. That meant details of the alleged attempts on her husband’s life in 2021 and 2022 were never heard by the jury.
“After the first time I got sick, I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food,” Simon Patterson told a pre-trial hearing in Melbourne in October 2024.
He eventually began keeping a spreadsheet of his illnesses that the court heard all happened after eating his estranged wife’s cooking, including a penne bolognese, a chicken curry and a sandwich wrap.
The alleged poisonings, on two camping trips and a walk, left him close to death, and he became so ill he was temporarily paralysed and had part of his bowel removed, the court heard at the time. In each case, doctors were unable to conclusively determine the cause of his illnesses.
Simon Patterson raised his suspicions with his doctor and with his family, including his father Don, who died at the lunch. Don Patterson was so certain he had been poisoned at the July 2023 lunch he arrived at hospital with a container of his own vomit for medical professionals to test.
Evidence from a computer seized from Patterson’s home showing searches for other kinds of poisons was also excluded from the trial.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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