MELBOURNE, Australia — Triple-murderer Erin Patterson appealed her convictions Wednesday for poisoning four of her estranged husband’s relatives with death cap mushrooms. Three judges of the Victoria state Court of Appeal are hearing her appeal over two days against her convictions on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder relating to a lunch of beef Wellington pastries she prepared at her rural home in Leongatha in July 2023. Prosecutors are appealing the leniency of her sentence. The 51-year-old was sentenced in September last year to life in prison and must serve at least 33 years behind bars before she can apply for release on parole. Prosecutors will argue at the hearing Thursday she should be sentenced for life without possibility of parole, Prosecutor Brendan Kissane said. Defence lawyer Richard Edney’s first ground for appeal Wednesday was an error that resulted in jury members being sequestered in the same hotel as a police witness and members of the prosecution team. “This was a very serious breach of sequestration,” Edney told the court. Kissane said there was no evidence to support that ground. “There was no actual contact between any juror and any other person,” Kissane said. Another defence lawyer, Veronika Drago, said there was no evidence that Patterson had read online posts that reported death cap mushrooms had been seen near the towns of Loch and Outtrim. The trial heard evidence from a telecommunications expert that Patterson’s phone connected to towers near Outtrim and Loch. Drago said the evidence was that Patterson’s phone had possibly been in the area. “That in and of itself, in our submission, illustrates just how dangerous and unfair that evidence was” on Patterson’s trial, Drago said. Prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams said the evidence showed that Patterson had an opportunity to deliberately source death cap mushrooms shortly before the lunch. Another ground for appeal was that Prosecutor Nanette Rogers’ cross-examination of Patterson over five days had been “unfair and oppressive.” The defence team also argued that trial judge Christopher Bale had caused “unfair prejudice” by allowing evidence from Patterson’s Facebook “friends” into the trial. Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, was invited to the fatal lunch but did not attend. His parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, died. Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, spent weeks in hospital, but survived. Patterson argued during her trial that the poisoning was an accident. Drago argued a miscarriage of justice occurred when the prosecution opened their case saying there was no evidence of a motive for the poisonings, then closed the case suggesting Patterson’s animosity toward her husband’s parents and the broader Patterson family was the motive. Questioned by one of the three judges, Justice Lesley Taylor, Drago said she was not accusing prosecutors of deliberate professional misconduct. “It is certainly not a direct allegation or suggestion of that, but what is clear in our submission from the reading of all of the material is that where things started and where it finished by the end of the prosecution case were different,” Drago said. If Patterson’s appeal succeeds, the judges could overturn her convictions and order a retrial. Patterson did not attend court on Wednesday and watched the hearing by video in prison. In pretrial testimony only made public after her trial, Simon Patterson said he suspected his wife had deliberately made him seriously ill with dishes. No poisons were ever found. Erin Patterson was initially charged with three counts of attempting to murder him three times between November 2021 and September 2022. She had denied all charges. Prosecutors dropped all charges relating to the husband before her trial began in April 2025. ___ This story has corrected the lawyer’s name to Drago, not Vargo, throughout. Rod Mcguirk, The Associated Press
