How the Erin Patterson mushroom trial caught the world's attention

The "mystery" of "what happened at Erin Patterson's dining table" in rural Australia on 29 July 2023 has "gripped the world" for two years, said the BBC.

Of the four relatives who were served beef wellington in her home on that "fateful Saturday", three subsequently died and one was left "fighting for his life".

Today, Patterson has been found guilty of murdering her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson and her husband's aunt Heather Wilkinson (Gail Patterson's sister), and attempting to murder her husband's uncle, Ian Wilkinson, by lacing their meal with powdered death cap mushrooms.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'Lies caught up with her'

The lunch was reportedly planned to "reconcile an increasingly fractured relationship" between Patterson and her estranged husband, Simon, said The Times, but he pulled out the day before. Patterson denied purposefully putting the deadly mushrooms in the food but "exposed herself to cross-examination" by choosing to take the witness stand.

The prosecution accused her of a succession of deceptions, including lying to her guests about having cancer, pretending to suffer the effects of poisoning and concealing the truth that "lethal doses of poison" were hidden in the home-cooked meal. After denying she even owned a food dehydrator to prepare the mushrooms, she was caught on CCTV dumping it at a local rubbish tip in the town of Leongatha, 85 miles southeast of Melbourne, days after the lunch. "In the end the lies caught up with her."

Patterson has been remanded in custody while awaiting a date for sentencing. She will "likely spend most – if not all – of the rest of her life behind bars", said The Australian, although she still has 28 days to appeal.

The 'final word'

So why has this tragedy seized the public consciousness? Perhaps because the "mushroom murder trial" had "the feel of a Shakespearean drama: multiple deaths within one family, death by poison, and a female protagonist", said criminologist Xanthe Mallett on The Conversation. The case has "prompted worldwide headlines, multiple daily podcasts, and even YouTube videos of self-proclaimed 'body language experts'" assessing the defendant's "every move".

But now that the verdict is in, the "final word" should really be saved for the families, who have lost their loved ones and must come to terms with what Patterson has done. "Amid the spectacle," said Mallett, "it's easy to lose sight of the humanity at the centre."