Australian woman Erin Patterson, who was found guilty of murdering three of her estranged husband’s relatives by deliberately serving them poisonous mushrooms for lunch, allegedly tried to murder her husband through the use of poisoned pasta, chicken curry and a sandwich wrap.
Latest evidence was released on Friday after a gag order on pretrial evidence was lifted. The evidence included the suspicions of Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, that she had previously attempted to kill him.
Simon Patterson, who had been estranged from his wife since 2015, testified at a pre-trial hearing that he declined the invitation to the fatal lunch out of fear.
“I assumed there’d be a risk that she’d poison me if I attended,” he told the court months before the trial.
He also said he had stopped eating food prepared by his wife but he didn’t think others could be in danger.
Justice Christopher Beale previously ruled that the fees ought to be split into two separate trials before the prosecutors dropped the attempted murder charges regarding Simon Patterson before the trial began in April.
That meant details of the alleged attempts on her husband’s life in 2021 and 2022 were never heard by the jury.
After Erin Patterson was found guilty last month, Beale ordered the suppression of the pretrial material to guard Patterson’s appeal rights.
But on Friday, the judge ordered the restrictions lifted and rejected an argument by Patterson’s defence team, who said the discharge of the fabric combined with media interest could jeopardize any potential appeal within the case.
“Open justice is a fundamental concern of our criminal justice jurisdiction,” Beale said.
Within the newly released evidence, Simon Patterson revealed that he began keeping a spreadsheet of his illnesses that happened after eating his estranged wife’s cooking, including a penne bolognese, a chicken curry and a sandwich wrap.
“After the primary time I got sick, I had the thought I got sick from Erin’s food,” Simon Patterson told a pretrial hearing in Melbourne in October 2024.
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He alleged that the poisonings took place during family camping trips and claimed the incidents left him near death.
In a single instance, Simon Patterson said he felt sick after eating chicken curry.
“At first I felt hot, especially in my head, and that led to feeling nauseous after which that led to me quite suddenly needing to vomit,” he said.
He said he became so sick he was temporarily paralyzed and had a part of his bowel removed. Doctors were reportedly unable to conclusively determine the reason for his illnesses.
He said he raised his suspicions that his estranged wife had poisoned him along with his doctor and his family, including his father, Don, who died after attending Erin’s lunch.
Evidence from a pc seized from Erin Patterson’s home showing searches for different kinds of poisons was also excluded from the trial.
Last month, a jury found Patterson lured her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, her father-in-law Don Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, to lunch at her home and poisoned them with servings of beef Wellington that contained death cap mushrooms.
Additionally they found the 50-year-old woman guilty of the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the 2023 meal at Erin Patterson’s home.
Patterson was initially charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder in 2023, with the 4 additional counts regarding her estranged husband.
The guilty verdicts, which were required to be unanimous, indicated that jurors rejected Patterson’s defence that the presence of the poisonous mushrooms within the meal was a terrible accident, attributable to the mistaken inclusion of foraged mushrooms that she didn’t know were death caps.
Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive for the killings, but throughout the trial highlighted strained relations between Patterson and her estranged husband and frustration that she had felt about his parents previously.
The case focused on whether Patterson planned the murders or if she unintentionally killed three people, including her children’s only surviving grandparents.
Her lawyers claimed she had no reason to commit the murders as she had recently moved right into a recent home, was financially comfortable and had sole custody of her children. Additionally they said that she was because of begin studying for a level in nursing and midwifery.
Beale said Friday that any appeal by Patterson was unlikely to succeed but it surely couldn’t be ruled out.
She pleaded not guilty to the counts of attempted murder against her husband and the court will hear the case on Aug. 25 during a two-day plea hearing.
— With files from Reuters
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