Erin Patterson has been accused of tampering with prison food and making an inmate sick while working within the jail kitchen, it’s reported.
The allegation was allegedly made by the inmate who said they became in poor health after eating the food she prepared at Melbourne’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Australia where she’s being held.
Patterson was found guilty earlier today of three counts of murder and one in every of attempted murder today after serving a beef wellington lunch containing poisonous death cap mushrooms she had foraged.
The inmate says she fell in poor health after having a dispute with Patterson and believes the 50-year-old was in charge, the Herald Sun reports.
Based on a Corrections Victoria source who spoke to the Day by day Mail Australia, Patterson had been given a job within the prison kitchen despite the character of the crime she was charged with.
Her supporters say the inmate’s poisoning accusation is baseless.
Following her conviction on the Supreme Court in Melbourne, Patterson faces life in prison and will probably be sentenced at a later date.
In 2023 the mother-of-two served the individually cooked beef wellingtons at her home in Leongatha to her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and Heather’s husband pastor Ian Wilkinson.
All 4 guests became in poor health, with all but Wilkinson dying.
During a nine-week trial the jury was asked to come to a decision if she knew the lunch contained death caps, and if she intended for her guests to die.
Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive for the killings but had identified strained relations between Patterson and her estranged husband, and frustration that she had felt about his parents previously.
The defence claimed there was no reason why she would need to kill the couples, as she had just moved to a phenomenal latest home, was financially comfortable and was as a consequence of begin studying for a level in nursing and midwifery.
But prosecutors suggested Patterson had two faces – the lady who publicly appeared to have a superb relationship together with her parents-in-law, while her private feelings about them were kept hidden.
Her estranged husband Steven Patterson was also invited to the deadly lunch but decided to to not go.
Police have previously said she could have attempted to poison Simon on three separate occasions between 2021 and 2022.
Patterson claimed she didn’t change into in poor health after eating the wellington because she threw up afterwards due to an eating disorder.
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