MELBOURNE, Australia — The Victoria Court of Appeal ruled Friday that Erin Patterson must remain behind bars for life, citing the “shocking criminality” of poisoning four of her estranged husband’s relatives with deadly death cap mushrooms.
A three-judge panel of the Victoria Court of Appeal dismissed Patterson’s appeal against her convictions and supported prosecutors’ argument that her 33-year non-parole period was too lenient. She will now remain imprisoned for life; under the previous sentence, she would have been eligible for consideration at age 82.
“This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated and deserves the strongest condemnation,” Justice Stephen McLeish said on behalf of the court.
“After careful consideration, we have concluded that the shocking nature of this criminality makes it inappropriate to set any non-parole period,” McLeish added.
Patterson is only the second woman in Australian history to be imprisoned for life without any possibility of parole. The first was Katherine Knight, a meatworker sentenced in New South Wales in 2001 for the 2000 murder of her partner, John Price, whom she stabbed at least 37 times.
Her convictions stem from a family lunch she hosted at her rural home in Leongatha in July 2023.
Patterson may still apply to Australia’s High Court to challenge both her convictions and sentence, though that would be her final avenue of appeal.
Patterson has maintained that she accidentally added death cap mushrooms to the beef Wellington dishes she served.
Last year, she received three life sentences for murder and a 25-year term for attempted murder.
The deaths of her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, shortly after the lunch drew intense global media attention.
The case has inspired podcasts, books, and planned screen adaptations.
Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, survived the meal after weeks in hospital. Patterson was convicted of attempting to murder him.
During an August appeal hearing, prosecutors argued that Patterson should never become eligible for parole.
They contended that the minimum prison term failed to reflect the case’s “calculated criminality.”
McLeish said Patterson’s intent to kill all four guests was sustained for nearly three weeks, beginning when she invited them to lunch.
Her crimes involved an “elaborate series of deceptions,” including a false claim that she had cancer to explain why her two children were absent from the lunch, according to the judge.
Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor, testified that Patterson told the guests she wanted their advice on how to explain her diagnosis to her children.
McLeish noted that Patterson destroyed evidence, denied foraging for mushrooms, and repeatedly gave false accounts of their origin.
“The offending was carefully planned and deliberate,” McLeish said. “It represented a cruel breach of trust.”
Patterson did not attend court in person and watched the verdicts by video link from prison.
Due to her notoriety, Patterson is held in the high-security Gordon Unit at Melbourne’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre women’s prison, a unit reserved for inmates assessed as being at high risk from other prisoners.
At her sentencing in September 2025, trial judge Christopher Bale said there was a “substantial chance” Patterson could be held in solitary confinement for years.
Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, had been invited to the lunch but declined the day before.
Following her conviction, pretrial evidence was released detailing Simon Patterson’s suspicion that Erin had previously attempted to kill him.
Simon Patterson testified at a pretrial hearing that he declined the invitation because he was afraid.
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