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At Erin Patterson’s sentencing hearing, the judge outlined why the triple murderer will not be eligible for parole until 2056. By Lucie Morris-Marr.

A ‘pitiless’ crime: The Erin Patterson sentencing

Erin Patterson leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday.

Credit: Joel Carrett / AAP

In a historic first, the Supreme Court of Victoria this week broadcast a sentencing hearing live and in its entirety – the culmination of a 10-week trial that ultimately found Erin Patterson guilty of murdering three relatives and attempting to kill a fourth.

As Justice Christopher Beale prepared to hand down his decision, the question was whether Patterson – who served her four guests a beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms at her Leongatha home in July 2023 – would receive any leniency.

In a packed courtroom on Monday morning, the one surviving lunch guest, Ian Wilkinson, a 71-year-old pastor, sat listening with many other family members on the wooden benches as the judge sentenced Patterson to 25 years’ jail for his attempted murder. Patterson also received three life sentences for the fatal poisonings of Wilkinson’s wife, Heather, 66, as well as Don and Gail Patterson, both 70. The latter were the parents of Erin Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, and Heather was his aunt.

“All sentences are to be served concurrently,” Justice Beale said, explaining that Patterson, 50, would have a 33-year non-parole period.

“The prosecution submits … that you should receive the maximum penalties for your crimes. I agree,” Justice Beale said.

Having already served 676 days in prison, the mother of two will be 82 years old when she may apply for release from the maximum security women’s prison.

This is close to the longest sentence imposed on a woman in Australia. The only one who has been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole is Katherine Knight. In the Hunter Valley, 25 years ago, she stabbed and skinned her partner, before cooking his head and parts of his body with the intention of feeding them to his children – police managed to intervene in time.

The fact Patterson is spending at least 22 hours a day in her cell within the understaffed “management unit”, known as the Gordon unit, in Victoria’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, was one of the factors in Beale’s decision to allow parole. Forthcoming documentaries and books will serve to only increase her prison profile.

“There is a substantial chance that for your protection, you will continue to be held in solitary confinement for years to come,” he said. “The harsh prison conditions that you have experienced already and the likely prospect of solitary confinement for the foreseeable future are important and weighty considerations which should count for something.”

Patterson and her defence barrister, Colin Mandy, SC, have 28 days from the day of sentencing if they wish to launch an appeal. At time of press, no announcement had been made.

The judge spent much of his 45-minute speech castigating Patterson for the “horrendous nature” of her crime. His speech covered the cunning and elaborate planning deployed to pull off the noxious meal.

“Your offending, which resulted in the death of three people and near death of another, involved substantial premeditation,” he told Patterson as she sat emotionless in the dock.

Patterson, he said, had been “familiar” with the iNaturalist website for more than a year before hosting the beef Wellington lunch.

She’d navigated to its worldwide map to track sightings of death cap mushrooms.

A few months before she hosted the lunch, Patterson’s phone pinged from a tower near the small town of Loch in Gippsland, where the possible presence of death cap mushrooms had been recorded on the website.

“That afternoon, you purchased a food dehydrator in Leongatha,” Justice Beale said, explaining how Patterson then photographed foraged mushrooms on the trays of the machine.

In May 2023, her phone pinged at a tower near the small town of Outtrim, after a mushroom expert posted pictures of a possible death cap sighting.

The motive of the killings may never be known, Justice Beale conceded, but he pointed out that Patterson had spoken critically of her in-laws, Don and Gail, in a chat group of online friends she met through a true crime Facebook page.

The former air traffic controller had been upset that the couple refused to help in a dispute with her estranged husband regarding child support.

Justice Beale said Patterson had “derided” Don’s suggestion she get together with Simon and pray for their children. He quoted from a message to her friends, which read, “This family, I swear to fucking God.”

Justice Beale reiterated key evidence from the lengthy trial, which stretched over nearly three months earlier this year at Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court in Morwell. It revealed that both couples were surprised to be suddenly invited to Patterson’s new home for lunch.

The judge noted that she also invited her ex-husband, Simon: “You told him you had some important medical news, which you wanted to discuss at the lunch and that you did not want the children to be present.”

The civil engineer, who told a pre-trial hearing he suspected his estranged wife had poisoned him with meals on several occasions, initially accepted the invitation and informed his parents of the purpose of the lunch.

However, on the evening before the meal he sent a message to Patterson saying he was “too uncomfortable” to attend.

“That’s really disappointing,” she replied. “I’ve spent many hours this week preparing lunch for tomorrow, which has been exhausting in light of the issues I’m facing and spent a small fortune on beef eye fillet to make beef Wellingtons, because I wanted it to be a special meal as I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time.”

At the lunch itself, Justice Beale said, Patterson served the four guests individual beef Wellingtons, which were “deliberately poisoned with death cap mushrooms”.

He also said he accepted Ian Wilkinson’s evidence she served guests their meals on four grey plates while her own was on a “smaller, orangey-tan coloured plate”. This issue had prompted extensive arguing between the Crown and defence during the trial.

“I find that you did this to ensure that you did not mistakenly consume a poisoned meal,” Justice Beale declared.

The judge said he also accepted Wilkinson’s recollection that at the conclusion of the meal Patterson claimed – falsely – she’d been diagnosed with cancer and sought their advice as to “whether and how” she should break the news to her children.

Patterson had only organised the lunch “with the intention of killing them all”, Justice Beale said.

Amid “great anger” among the extended families at the “callousness” of Patterson’s actions, the judge quoted Ian Wilkinson’s sister Dorothy Dicker. “How anyone could sit there and watch those four kind and caring people eat that meal?” she asked in her victim impact statement.

Upon learning from her ex-husband the next day that the guests had become very unwell, Erin Patterson “showed no pity”, the judge added.

“Instead of informing those treating the Pattersons and Wilkinsons that you had used foraged mushrooms … you repeatedly denied foraging, insisting that the mushrooms for the beef Wellingtons were sourced solely from Woolworths and an Asian grocery.”

It will never be known whether revealing the use of foraged mushrooms earlier would have made a difference for the victims, he added. A specific antidote for death cap poisoning and a special medication to protect the liver was initially withheld because medics didn’t have enough evidence regarding the type of toxin involved.

“The prosecution submitted that I should infer from your pitiless behaviour that your intention to kill was ongoing and that this constitutes an additional aggravating circumstance,” the judge said. “I accept that submission.”

He quoted from the victim impact statement of Ruth Dubois, the daughter of Ian and Heather Wilkinson, in which she told Patterson, “you ‘follow[ed] through’ on your lethal plan”.

During the trial, medics explained how the lunch guests all suffered severe gastrointestinal illness before being sedated and ventilated.

“Their suffering was protracted,” Justice Beale said. “And Ian Wilkinson suffers ongoing health issues … you must have anticipated that your victims would suffer in the way they did.”

David Wilkinson witnessed his father Ian’s “tortured experience”, the judge said, including “black lips, gaunt face, pained and serious expression”.

It was this miraculous survivor who fronted the media on the steps of the court after the judge finished his speech. Two weeks previously, he’d read his victim impact statement in the same courtroom, offering Patterson his forgiveness.

Thanking police, lawyers, medical professionals and his local community for their help, he also made an appeal to the wider public.

“I’d like to encourage everybody to be kind to each other,” he said.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 13, 2025 as "A ‘pitiless’ crime".

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