Erin Patterson has lost her appeal against convictions for murdering three relatives of her estranged husband, with an Australian court also ruling that she should never become eligible for parole. A panel of three judges at the Supreme Court of Victoria announced the decision in Melbourne on Friday, October 30.
The ruling removes the possibility of release after the 33-year minimum term imposed when Patterson was originally sentenced to life imprisonment. That sentence was already among the longest given to a woman in Australia. Patterson, who has consistently denied wrongdoing, has maintained that the deaths resulted from an accident.
Patterson was 51 when she was convicted last year of killing her mother-in-law, Gail Patterson, her father-in-law, Donald Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. All three had eaten a beef wellington lunch she served containing poisonous death cap mushrooms. Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, survived the meal, and Patterson was also found guilty of attempting to murder him.
Speaking for the panel, Justice Stephen McLeish described the crimes as “extraordinarily cold and calculated” and said they warranted the strongest condemnation. He told the court that, after careful consideration, the judges had determined that the gravity of the offending made it inappropriate to set any period after which Patterson could seek parole.
McLeish also pointed to the deceptions surrounding the lunch. These included Patterson’s false claim that she had been diagnosed with cancer, which she used to explain why her two children were absent. In his testimony, Ian Wilkinson said Patterson had told the guests that she wanted their guidance on how to speak to the children about the purported diagnosis.
Her legal team challenged the trial on several grounds. The lawyers argued that some evidence should have been excluded, that Patterson had faced unfair cross-examination, and that accommodating jurors in the same hotel as other parties involved in the case had compromised the outcome. The appeal judges found those arguments insufficient.
Patterson’s remaining avenue of appeal is Australia’s High Court, where she can apply to challenge the decisions concerning both her convictions and her sentence. She becomes only the second woman in Australia sentenced to life without parole. The first, meatworker Katherine Knight, received that punishment in New South Wales in 2001 for killing her partner, John Price, the previous year by stabbing him at least 37 times.
