‘Now their mother is a convicted murderer … How do you cope with that?’

Erin Patterson’s grey and white timber home stands at the end of a muddy track in Gippsland, marking the point where the town ends and farmland begins.

Gibson Street, Leongatha, is effectively a private, unsealed road, used only by residents, delivery drivers and, infamously now, lunch guests.

This week, a jury unanimously decided this regional property played host to an intentionally wicked crime.

It’s here Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, the parents of Erin’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, as well as his aunt, Heather Wilkinson, 66, and her husband, Ian, parked in the driveway for a midwinter family meal on July 29, 2023.

They walked across the wooden deck and through the front door as a healthy, trusting, high-spirited group.

After being served individual beef Wellington parcels with mashed potatoes and green beans, they walked back out destined for agonising illness, desperate medical intervention and enforced comas.

Only Ian, a Baptist pastor, would survive beyond the following week.

It was never in dispute the four guests were poisoned with the death cap mushrooms found in the leftovers of the meal.

Yet Patterson, who initially told police she’d never foraged for mushrooms, said it was a “terrible accident” and strongly denied the triple murder charges against her and the attempted murder charge in relation to Ian, now 71.

After a trial involving 50 witnesses, lasting nearly three months, the mother of two was emotionless as a female jury foreperson said the word “guilty” four times on Monday afternoon. The verdict was delivered in a clear, clipped and steady tone. Then all hell broke loose.

“Cooked”, screamed the Herald Sun front page. “Fungi Fatale”, The West Australian said. “Killer in the kitchen”, thundered The Australian.

In the background of all of this, living quietly amid the threadbare winter ash and maple trees, is a regional community shattered by the crime.

Steven Lodge, who lives just a few houses from Patterson in Leongatha, tells The Saturday Paper the verdict wasn’t surprising to many, but there was still shock when it was handed down.

“Residents generally believed she was guilty from the start, but hearing the news of the verdict was still a huge moment,” he says.

“People agree that justice was served, but it will take time to bring peace back to such a tight-knitted community.”

The 57-year-old, who works as an IT specialist for a water company, would often be greeted with a wave from Patterson when he was out walking his two dogs.

“I was fairly new to the area when all this first happened,” he says, “but she seemed friendly enough, ferrying her children around.”

From the moment the news of the mass poisoning broke nearly two years ago, there has been a global fascination with this crime, the type of which was more familiar to Victorian England than modern-day Australia.

“It’s something Leongatha will be globally recognised for, sadly for the wrong reason, but I hope time will heal all wounds,” Lodge says.

A mother whose family members knew Patterson through Korumburra Baptist Church says she feels “great sadness” for the two children.

“None of the mums seemed to know her well. For example, at local sports with the kids Erin did not mix with the other parents, she just sat on her phone in the corner,” says the woman, who did not wish to be named.

“We all just keep thinking of the children who have not just lost their grandparents and great-aunt, but now their mother is a convicted murderer and likely to spend the rest of her life in jail. How do they cope with that? It’s such a sad case.”

A week before the verdict, Justice Christopher Beale completed his lengthy directions to the jury of 14 men and women, later reduced to 12 in a ballot.

These Victorians would not be involved in any sentencing, but still they were effectively being asked to decide if Patterson would live out her days at her regional home or live and die in prison.

As jury verdicts go, it was a heavy burden.

On the Monday they began their deliberations, the jurors said their goodbyes to loved ones and brought their suitcases to court, ready to be taken to a local hotel to stay each night until they reached a decision.

It’s not common for juries to be “sequestered” at a secret location overnight, but with the scale of public interest surrounding this case no chances were being taken.

They were closely guarded at their accommodation by “jury keepers”, most likely court staff or local police officers.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” Justice Beale told the jury before they went away, “the jury keepers have an important job to perform and they will be making sure nobody interferes with you.”

Jeremy Gans, professor of law at Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, who wrote a book on jury behaviour titled The Ouija Board Jurors, tells The Saturday Paper that the practice of taking jurors away from their usual lives has been the subject of fierce debate.

“Sequestration stopped being the norm decades ago, amid a lessening of fears that jurors will be influenced by outside parties and a heightening of fears that jurors may hurry their deliberations because they don’t want to be away from their ordinary lives,” he says.

“That being said, jurors operating under these conditions may well find it a relief to have time away from others, so they don’t have to watch their conversations so much.”

Gans’s book focused on a legal incident in the United Kingdom when, in 1994, some drunken members of a murder trial jury, staying at a hotel, decided to try to contact the murder victims via a makeshift ouija board.

The main instruction to the Patterson jury from Justice Beale, regarding their overnight stays, was that they were not to discuss the case while at the accommodation.

Instead, they were to be brought to court each day to work together in the jury room during normal court hours. It was reported by The Age that the jury were taken to lunch at a local winery last Sunday, their day off, but did not mix with any members of the public.

The masthead also reported the group had to change hotels because it emerged that members of the prosecution team and media were staying at the same venue.

One of the key parts of Beale’s charge to the jury focused on the number of lies Patterson admitted to when she took to the stand to give evidence.

She conceded that as her lunch guests became dangerously ill she failed to tell medics, family members and police she’d previously foraged for mushrooms and may have placed them in a pantry container with others she claimed she bought at an Asian grocer. 

Realising she may have accidentally picked death caps, she said she’d panicked, fearing child protection could take away her children. She dumped her dehydrator at the local tip, with the police retrieving it shortly after.

“It was a stupid, kneejerk reaction to dig deeper and keep lying,” she told the court during her eight days on the witness stand. “I was just scared, but I shouldn’t have done it.”

She admitted she’d falsely suggested to her lunch guests she may be needing cancer treatment, telling the jury she was “too embarrassed” to tell them she’d actually made an appointment for gastric bypass surgery following years of binge eating and bulimia. When checks were made it emerged the private clinic she mentioned did not offer such services.

Justice Beale told the jury they could certainly use the fact the accused “lied about something” in helping decide whether or not they believed the other things she said. However, he said, Patterson’s lies alone did not warrant a conviction.

As a reminder to the jury, Beale summarised the main allegations – the “four calculated deceptions”, as outlined by crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, in her closing speech.

“One, the cancer claim,” he said. “Two, the lethal doses in the beef Wellingtons. Three, pretending she got death cap mushroom poisoning, too. And four, the sustained cover-up.”

They also had to consider Patterson’s denials that she’d visited the hamlets of Outtrim and Loch, shortly after death cap mushrooms had been listed on the website iNaturalist.

While the jury was tasked with deciding whether Patterson had intentionally tried to kill or seriously injure her in-laws, they weren’t being asked to decide her motive.

There was certainly evidence, however, that Patterson had been angry with her in-laws the year before the lunch because they had supported her estranged husband, Simon, in a disagreement regarding child support and non-payment of school fees.

Simon, who turned down an invitation to the beef Wellington lunch the day before it was to happen, said in the witness stand his once “amicable” relationship with his estranged wife, a former air traffic controller, had soured in the year before the poisonings.

Was this relatively normal fallout from a separation a reason to kill?

“If someone tries to kill someone they know, there could be a few mental health issues at play,” Dr Marny Lishman, a health and community psychologist, tells The Saturday Paper.

“These kinds of acts usually involve a mix of mental, social and situational factors, which make these cases incredibly complex.”

Lishman says lying seemed to be a predominant feature of Patterson’s behaviour.

“People who lie a lot can be pathological liars, which is a symptom of personality disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder,” she says.

“This can mean a need for control, perhaps manipulation, intent to harm and lack of empathy.”

This week it was reported that Patterson sent text messages to friends saying her mother, Heather Scutter, was a “cold alcoholic”, leaving her devoid of affection.

She spent her childhood reading books in her room, she said, perhaps explaining her “loner” tendencies and an inability to cope with the weakening ties with the Patterson family following her break-up with Simon.

Only Patterson herself, of course, can explain what was driving her to plot to kill her in-laws.

When the jury first began their deliberations it was noticed a ribbon of black plastic “privacy” awnings, almost two metres high, had been suddenly wrapped around the lower part of Patterson’s property in Leongatha.

Was this her optimistic hope of a not-guilty verdict and a belief she would need extra protection from prying eyes?

Either way, it would turn out to be a wasted exercise.

Shortly after the verdict was handed down, Patterson was taken on the 170-kilometre drive back to the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum security women’s prison in Ravenhall. She has been held at the Corrections Victoria facility since her arrest in November 2023.

Her fellow high-profile inmates include gangland matriarch Judy Moran and former principal of an Orthodox Jewish school Malka Leifer.

“If any inmates are in the headlines, they are kept in a separate cell for their own safety, rather than living in a unit with other female inmates,” a former prison officer at the centre tells The Saturday Paper.

“They don’t mix with any other prisoners, only staff, for their own safety.”

Patterson’s barrister will now be discussing with his client whether they will launch an appeal. If they cannot find something technically amiss with the trial and conviction, they may apply to appeal against the sentence.

As yet, however, a date for the first plea hearing, a term used for a pre-sentencing hearing, has not been set. During this hearing, Patterson’s barrister will likely submit extensive reasons for her sentence to be shorter.

In the meantime, life for Ian Wilkinson goes on. Every Sunday he leads the service at the pretty, pale-yellow, timber Baptist church, on a hill overlooking Korumburra and the fields beyond.

Following the verdict, a statement attributed to the church’s leadership team was pinned to the noticeboard outside.

“We all greatly miss Heather, Don and Gail, whether we were friends for a short time or over 20 years,” the statement said.

“They were very special people who loved God and lived to bless others … it’s been a long journey, and we continue to lovingly support Ian, Simon and all the Wilkinson and Patterson family members through this difficult time.”

Detective Inspector Dean Thomas, head of the homicide squad, also ensured the victims were remembered in a statement after the verdict.

“I ask that we acknowledge those people,” he said, “and not forget them.” 

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