MELBOURNE, Australia — An Australian appeals court on Friday ordered triple murderer Erin Patterson to spend the rest of her life in prison for poisoning her estranged husband’s relatives with death cap mushrooms, CBS News reported.
The three judges of the Victoria Court of Appeal dismissed Patterson’s appeal of her convictions and upheld prosecutors’ challenge to her 33-year nonparole period. She would previously have been eligible for release at 82.
“This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated and stands to be denounced in the strongest terms,” Justice Stephen McLeish said for the court. “The case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a nonparole period.”
Patterson is only the second woman in Australia sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Her convictions stem from a family lunch at her home in Leongatha in July 2023, where she served beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms. Patterson has insisted the mushrooms were added accidentally.
She can still ask Australia’s High Court, her last avenue of appeal, to review the case.
Sources: CBS News. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: George Chernilevsky / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
