Mushroom murderer tried to kill husband with pasta, cookies and curry, court was told.
Police release interview with Australian mushroom murderer
Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson allegedly tried to repeatedly poison her husband, including with cookies she claimed their daughter had baked him, a court was told.
The Australian woman was last month found guilty of murdering three relatives – and attempting to kill another – with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington.
The 50-year-old was originally charged with three counts of attempted murder against her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but these charges were dropped without explanation on the eve of her trial.
The details of the allegations, which Patterson denied, were suppressed to protect the proceedings, but can now be made public for the first time.
Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch on 29 July 2023: Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.
Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather’s husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.
In lengthy pre-trial hearings last year, Mr Patterson had detailed what he suspected was a years-long campaign to kill him with tainted food – including one episode which had left him so ill he spent weeks in a coma and his family was twice told to say their goodbyes.
Camping trips and packed lunches
In a quiet moment during the early days of Patterson’s trial, her estranged husband choked up as he explained his sorrow to a near empty courtroom.
Mr Patterson’s parents and his aunt had been killed, and his uncle almost died too, after eating the toxic meal prepared by his wife. He had narrowly avoided the same fate, pulling out of the lunch gathering the day before.
”I have a lot to grieve,” he said to the judge, sitting in the witness box as the jury prepared to return from a break.
”The legal process has been very difficult… especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that – or non-evidence now, I guess.”
”I’m sitting here, half thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about and… I don’t actually understand why. It seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is.”
What he wasn’t allowed to talk about – the elephant in the room throughout the trial – was his claim that Patterson had been trying to poison him long before the fatal lunch that destroyed his family on 29 July 2023.
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