Shocking new details have emerged about Erin Patterson, the Australian woman convicted of murdering three of her in-laws with a meal of toxic death cap mushrooms, revealing she allegedly tried to kill her estranged husband years earlier with multiple poisoned meals.
A Victorian jury last month found Patterson, 50, guilty of murdering her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Don Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, and of attempting to murder Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived the fatal July 2023 lunch in Leongatha, southeast of Melbourne.
The court heard Patterson served her guests Beef Wellington laced with deadly mushrooms. Don Patterson, so certain he had been poisoned, arrived at hospital with a container of his vomit for testing.
Newly released pre-trial evidence, previously suppressed to protect Patterson’s appeal rights, alleges she had made earlier attempts to murder her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, in 2021 and 2022 by serving him a penne bolognese, a chicken curry, and a sandwich wrap laced with toxins.
Simon Patterson testified in a 2024 pre-trial hearing that after repeated bouts of severe illness, he began keeping a spreadsheet linking each episode to meals cooked by his wife. The alleged poisonings, which occurred during two camping trips and a walk, left him close to death, temporarily paralysed, and requiring part of his bowel to be removed.
Doctors never confirmed the cause of his illnesses, but Simon raised his suspicions with family, including his father Don, one of the later mushroom victims.
Evidence showing Patterson’s alleged online searches for other types of poisons was also excluded from the trial.
A general view of Erin Patterson’s house in Leongatha, Australia, June 24, 2025. REUTERS/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/File Photo
Justice Christopher Beale, who previously ordered the suppression, ruled on Friday that the public interest in open justice outweighed the defence’s concerns about jeopardising a potential appeal. Patterson has 28 days from her sentencing, expected after a two-day plea hearing beginning August 25, to lodge an appeal, though she has not indicated whether she will.
Throughout the high-profile case, Patterson has maintained her innocence, claiming the mushroom deaths were a “terrible accident” and pleading not guilty to the charges of attempting to murder her husband.
This case has gripped Australia, not only for its extraordinary details but for the chilling suggestion that the fatal lunch may have been part of a longer pattern of suspected poisoning attempts.
Written By Rodney Mbua
