Jury starts deliberations in mushroom murder trial

The jury of the highly publicized murder trial of an Australian woman accused of having prepared a fatal lunch of mushrooms for relatives retired to decide on her fate.

Erin Patterson, 50, pleaded not guilty to four counts – three of murder and one of the attempted murder – above the Wellington beef in his regional Victorian house in July 2023.

The accusation said that Ms. Patterson knowingly put the toxic mushrooms for death in the homemade meal, before lying to the police and eliminating evidence.

But the defense says that Ms. Patterson accidentally included the poisonous mushrooms in the dish and lied only because she panicked after having injured the people she loved.

The in-laws of Mrs. Patterson, Don and Gail Patterson, both of 70 years old, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, all fell ill and died a few days after lunch in Leongatha.

Heather’s husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, recovered after weeks in the induced coma. Simon Patterson, the husband far from the accused, was also invited to lunch, but retired the day before.

On Monday, judge Christopher Beale gave his last instructions to the jury of 14 members, summarizing the evidence of the accusation and the only witness to discharge, Ms. Patterson.

After almost two months and more than 50 witnesses, the last 12 jurors were decided by a ballot before the group’s retirement for deliberations.

In his closing arguments, prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC said that Ms. Patterson had “told so many lies that he was difficult to follow them.”

The accusation allegedly alleged that Mrs. Patterson lied to her loved ones about a cancer diagnosis to convince them to attend the deadly lunch, to poison them, then to fake a disease to cover her traces.

Ms. Patterson is further than the police and medical staff on the search for food for wild fungi, as well as her decision to throw a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, were proof of her guilt, they argued.

“She said lies on lies because she knew that the truth would imply it,” said Nanette Rogers.

“When she knew that her lies had been discovered, she found a story carefully built to adapt to evidence – almost.”

There was no “particular reason” for the alleged crime, said Dr. Rogers in court, but the jury should always have “no difficulty” to reject the argument “all of this was a horrible food for food.”

However, the defense argued that the lack of reason was essential. Ms. Patterson had no reason to kill her guests, they said.

During the evidence of Ms. Patterson, she told the jury that she was very close to her parents-in-law and had never intended to harm them.

While she was preparing lunch, Ms. Patterson said she added mushrooms from a container to her pantry who, she said, may have understood both mushrooms bought in store and fed.

She also declared in court that she had suffered from bulimia for years and had vomited after the meal of the Wellington beef – something that her defense team says explains why she did not become as sick as the others who ate her.

The lie about having cancer was because it was embarrassed by the plans to undergo weight loss surgery, said Ms. Patterson, and she did not tell the authorities the truth about her hobby of mushroom research because she feared to blame her to make her parents sick.

“She is not tried to have lied”, “Defense of the Defense Colin Mandy SC,” it is not a moral court “.

He accused the pursuit of trying to force the “puzzle pieces” of evidence together “, stretching interpretations, ignoring alternative explanations because they do not align themselves perfectly with the story”.

In his latest instructions, judge Beale told the members of the jury that they were the only “judges of the facts in this case”.

He said that they should not condemn Ms. Patterson simply for lies, because there are “all kinds of reasons why a person could behave in a way that makes the person guilty”.

He added that if “any reasonable person would feel great sympathy” for the Patterson and Wilkinson families, the jurors should not afford to be influenced by emotions.

The jury has now been kidnapped, which means that even if they deliberate, they will remain in supervised accommodation where they will have little or no contact with the outside world until they have made a decision.