Court heard Australians accused of engaging in a mushroom murder case of “sincere deception”
Alasdair Pal
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian woman, accused of murder, suspected of deception, killed three elderly relatives of her estranged husband, who allegedly had a meal with poisonous mushrooms, heard of a state at the trial.
Erin Patterson is charged with murdering her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Donald Patterson and Gale's sister Heather Wilkinson, and in July 2023 Heather husband Ian Wilkinson.
Prosecutors accused her of foraging toxic death cap mushrooms, drying them, and deliberately serving them in various parts of Beef Wellington, her home in Leongatha, a town with about 6,000 people about 135 kilometers (84 miles) from Melbourne.
Patterson denied the charges to be sentenced to life imprisonment, and her defense called the death a “terrible accident.”
Sued barrister Nanette Rogers began to end the debate on Monday, accusing the defendant of hiring four major deceptions to murder guests.
Rogers said Patterson first made a cancer diagnosis to attract guests to lunch and then poison their meals while providing himself with an uncontaminated portion.
The defendant lied at the time that she was also sick from food to avoid suspicion, and then eventually covered up the cover up when police began investigating the death, prosecutors said.
“The sinister deception is a vehicle that uses nourishing meals as a delivery of deadly poison,” Rogers told the court.
Patterson decided to testify in his defense, including five days of cross-examination.
She was the only defense witness after prosecutors spent a month calling up dozens of witnesses, including estranged husband Simon Patterson and only surviving lunch guest Ian Wilkinson.
The court will hear the defence’s ending debate before the jury receives instructions from presidency Judge Christopher Beale and retires to consider the ruling.
The trial is now in its eighth week and is expected to end this month.
(Reported by Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Edited by Kate Mayberry)
