By ROD McGUIRK
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The husband of a woman convicted of killing three people with a meal laced with deadly mushrooms suspected his wife had been poisoning him more than a year before the fatal meal, an Australian court has heard.
A judge on Friday lifted a gag order on pretrial evidence that triple murderer Erin Patterson, 50, had wanted kept secret while she attempts to overturn her convictions.
The evidence included the suspicions of Patterson’s estranged husband Simon Patterson that she had previously attempted to kill him.
Husband says he feared estranged wife would poison him
Simon Patterson testified at a pretrial hearing that he had declined the lunch invitation out of fear.
“I thought there’d be a risk that she’d poison me if I attended,” the husband told the court months before the trial in testimony that was not presented to jurors.
Simon said while he had stopped eating food prepared by his wife, from whom he had been estranged since 2015, he never thought others would be at risk.
Erin Patterson was convicted by the Victoria state Supreme Court last month of murdering her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson at her home in Leongatha with a lunch of beef Wellington pastries containing toxic death cap mushrooms.
She was also found guilty of attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the meal but spent weeks in the hospital.
Erin Patterson was initially charged with attempting to murder her husband by inviting him to the lunch in July 2023. He had accepted the invitation then cancelled.
She was also initially charged with three counts of attempting to murder him on three occasions around Victoria between November 2021 and September 2022. She had denied all charges.
Prosecutors dropped all charges relating to the husband before her trial began in April.
Simon Patterson testified before the trial that he suspected his wife had deliberately made him seriously ill with dishes including penne bolognese pasta, chicken korma curry and a vegetable curry wrap. No poisons were ever found.
The three alleged poisonings occurred during family camping trips. Simon shared his poisoning suspicions with his doctor, who encouraged him to create a spreadsheet listing what he had eaten around the time he became sick.
The court on Friday also released video of Erin Patterson’s police interview, recorded a week after the fatal lunch.
In the interview, Detective Stephen Eppingstall told her that both her female victims were dead and their husbands were critically ill. Eppingstall asked her why she had invited them to lunch.
Erin Patterson replied that she wanted to maintain her relationship with the estranged husband’s parents because her own parents had died.
Don and Gail Patterson had remained supportive and had been the only grandparents to her two children, she said.
“I love them a lot. They’ve always been really good to me and they always said to me that they would support me with love and emotional support, even though Simon and I were separated, and I really appreciated that,” Erin Patterson said.
Disclosures come as Patterson plans to appeal
Justice Christopher Beale ruled for lawyers representing media who sought to overturn the gag order, ordering that the evidence that jurors had not seen would be made public.
Erin Patterson’s lawyers wanted all the evidence that was not deemed admissible at her trial kept secret until an appeals court decided whether to overturn her convictions.
Their reasons included that media interest in the case was unprecedented. Defense lawyer Colin Mandy argued that reporting of the suppressed evidence as well as references to it in books, podcasts and a planned television mini-series would “leave an indelible impression on the minds of potential jurors in the event that there is a retrial.”
A hearing will begin on Aug. 25 to determine what sentence she will get. She faces a potential life sentence for each of the murders and 25 years for attempted murder.
Prosecutor Jane Warren told Beale on Friday “a lot” of victim impact statements would be presented at that two-day sentencing hearing.
Once Erin Patterson is sentenced, she will have 28 days to lodge an appeal against the sentence, the convictions, or both.
Her lawyers say they will appeal against her convictions.
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