The Australian woman accused of murdering three people with poisonous mushrooms has been found guilty on all charges.
Pictures of the deadly meal Erin Patterson used to kill three members of her husband’s family have been released by Victoria’s Supreme Court.
The triple-murderer, 50, was found guilty of poisoning Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson with a beef wellington lunch she hosted on July 29,2023.
Only Ian, the Korumburra Baptist Church pastor, survived the lunch after spending about a month and a half in hospital.
The first photos of the beef wellington leftovers taken from Erin Patterson’s bin after the deadly meal have been released by Victoria’s Supreme Court. Photo / Brooke Grebert-Craig
After seven days of deliberations, jurors unanimously found Patterson guilty of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder on Monday afternoon.
Patterson had pleaded not guilty, arguing at trial she did not intentionally poison the meal with death cap mushrooms and did not want to harm her family members.
After the verdict, Victoria’s Supreme Court released a series of photos, videos and exhibits presented to the jury over the nine-week trial.
Mushroom lunch leftovers taken from Erin Patterson's home. Photo / Supplied
This included pictures of leftovers from the meal taken from the rubbish bin outside Patterson’s Leongatha home two days after the lunch.
The jury heard the existence of leftovers was first raised when Patterson attended Leongatha Hospital complaining of gastro on July 31, 2023.
Later the same day they were located by police and taken, first to Leongatha Hospital, before being transported alongside Patterson by ambulance to the Monash Medical Centre.
The mushrooms inside were finely chopped. Photo / Supplied
Leongatha Hospital’s Dr Chris Webster told the jury during the trial he had placed Patterson on the phone with Senior Constable Adrian Martinez-Villalobis and she gave him permission for the officer to enter her property.
Martinez-Villalobis said Patterson was “co-operative throughout the exchange” and instructed him that leftovers would either be in her indoor or outdoor bin.
The leftover food was located at the bottom of her outdoor red-lidded bin in a “seeping” brown paper Woolworths bag, the officer said.
The table where the deadly lunch occurred at Erin Patterson’s home. Photo / Supplied
“It was primarily maybe one-and-a-bit beef wellingtons,” he said.
“I used another one of the bags that were in the bin … because it was seeping a bit from the bottom and I didn’t want to get dirty.”
Martinez-Villalobis then took the bag to Leongatha Hospital where he handed it over to a nurse about 10.19am.
The jury heard Patterson prepared six individually-portioned beef wellington serves, five for her lunch guests and one spare.
Prosecutors alleged the sixth was earmarked for her husband Simon Patterson should he have changed his mind and attended the lunch.
Patterson, on the other hand, claimed she served the meat from the sixth, with the pastry and mushrooms scraped off, to her two children for dinner on July 30.
The jury was told a sample containing a small portion of beef located in the leftovers was later found to contain traces of the toxins found in death cap mushrooms.
Patterson will return to court for a pre-sentence hearing at a later date.
