Australian mushroom murderer Erin Patterson loses appeal bid
What happened
Australia's Court of Appeal in Victoria rejected Erin Patterson's bid to overturn her convictions for poisoning relatives with a mushroom lunch, and ruled she can never be released.
Patterson, 52, was found guilty last year of murdering her husband's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt, Heather Wilkinson, with a beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms.
Her life sentence had carried a 33-year non-parole period; three judges agreed with prosecutors that this was inadequate because it left open the chance of freedom.
Her lawyers had argued seven grounds, including that the jury shared a hotel with the prosecution and media and that her five-day cross-examination was "unfair and oppressive".
“We have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a non-parole period”
BBC
Summary written by AI from 3 independent sources (Straits Times, BBC, MyJoyOnline) and checked automatically against them for copied text and numbers that are not in the sources. How we work
Open on the live globe →Who reported it
- 2026-10-29 19:36 UTCSky News · news.sky.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 00:16 UTCStraits Times · straitstimes.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 00:41 UTCSCMP via AFP · scmp.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 00:48 UTCNYT · nytimes.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 01:35 UTCBBC · bbc.co.uk ↗
- 2026-10-30 01:56 UTCMyJoyOnline · myjoyonline.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 02:14 UTCArab News · arabnews.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 02:39 UTCCBC same text as Arab News · cbc.ca ↗
- 2026-10-30 05:31 UTCGuardian · theguardian.com ↗
- 2026-10-30 05:43 UTCFBC News same text as Straits Times · fbcnews.com.fj ↗
- 2026-10-30 07:01 UTCIOL · iol.co.za ↗
- 2026-10-30 07:38 UTCAl Jazeera · aljazeera.com ↗
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