A woman in Australia was sentenced on Monday to life imprisonment for murdering three of her husband’s relatives and trying to murder a fourth by serving them beef Wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms.
The woman, Erin Patterson, 50, was convicted of the crimes in July after a two-month trial that captivated the nation. She will not be eligible for parole for more than three decades.
Prosecutors said that she had meticulously planned the poisonings, misled the authorities and attempted to conceal evidence. They argued that the crimes were so horrific that she deserved the highest possible sentence and should not be eligible for parole.
In his sentencing remarks, Justice Christopher Beale of the Supreme Court of Victoria said that Ms. Patterson’s offenses involved “substantial premeditation” and were followed by an “elaborate cover-up” of her guilt.
Addressing Ms. Patterson, he said, “Your failure to exhibit any remorse poured salt into all of the victims’ wounds.”
At the center of the case was a lunch that Ms. Patterson hosted more than two years ago at her home in Leongatha, a rural town in the state of Victoria. She had invited Simon Patterson, her estranged husband, but he declined. In attendance were his parents, Gail and Don Patterson, along with Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, and her husband, Ian Wilkinson.
Ms. Patterson served individual beef Wellingtons, which she had cooked herself. Within a week, three of her guests were dead, with symptoms indicative of poisoning by death cap mushrooms.
The only survivor was Mr. Wilkinson, who fell critically ill but survived. He was one of more than 50 witnesses who took the stand during the trial, telling jurors that Ms. Patterson’s plate had been a different color and size from the ones her guests had used. Other witnesses said that Ms. Patterson had discarded a dehydrator, in which investigators later found traces of the poisonous mushrooms, and had lied to the authorities about doing so.
Three months after the lunch, Ms. Patterson was charged with murder and attempted murder. She testified at length at the trial, saying the deaths had been the result of a tragic accident. She said she might have inadvertently mixed dried, foraged mushrooms with store-bought ones, not realizing that the foraged ones were deadly.
To explain why she had not gotten sick after eating a beef Wellington herself, Ms. Patterson said that she had binge-eaten cake after the lunch and then vomited. She said she had disposed of and lied about the dehydrator in a panic after her relatives fell ill.
The lead prosecutor, Nanette Rogers, did not specify a motive for the crimes, although she presented evidence of some tension between Ms. Patterson and her husband over child support and other matters. But Ms. Patterson’s guilt was clear in the layers of her deception, Ms. Rogers said. Ms. Patterson had invented a cancer diagnosis as a reason for hosting the lunch, faked symptoms to make it seem that she had also eaten poisonous mushrooms and worked hard to cover her tracks later, Ms. Rogers said.
The contrast between the banality of the lunch and its lethal outcome seemed to generate more public fascination than any other Australian murder trial in recent memory. Multiple podcasts about the case have been produced, and news outlets described every development in detail. Helen Garner, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, is coauthoring a book about the case.
In a nod to the public’s intense interest in the case, the Supreme Court of Victoria, which is in Melbourne, allowed television stations to broadcast the sentencing live, a rarity in Australia, where publishing photos or videos of proceedings is generally prohibited.
Yan Zhuang is a Times reporter in Seoul who covers breaking news.
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