Australian court removes chance of parole for 'mushroom murderer' Erin Patterson

Appeal dismissed, sentence made harsher

Erin Patterson, convicted of murdering three relatives with a poisoned lunch, has lost her appeal and received a harsher sentence — AFP and BBC News reported on Friday, October 30, 2026. The Court of Appeal of the state of Victoria, sitting with three judges, rejected the challenge to the convictions and at the same time agreed with the prosecution that the original sentence did not match the gravity of the crimes.

From life with parole to life without it

In July 2025, a jury found Patterson, aged 51–52 (AFP gives her age as 52, BBC as 51), guilty of murdering her husband's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, as well as Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, whom she served a beef Wellington laced with deadly poisonous death cap mushrooms. She was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Heather's husband, pastor Ian Wilkinson, who survived weeks in hospital but has ongoing health problems from the poisoning. In September 2025, the judge imposed a life sentence with the possibility of applying for parole after 33 years — partly because of the 'harsh prison conditions' the convicted woman would, in his view, face. The prosecution deemed the term 'manifestly inadequate', arguing that the judge had erred in assuming a significant likelihood of years of solitary confinement, and that this had 'influenced' his parole decision. The appeal panel agreed: Justice Peter Kidd stated on behalf of the panel that 'the criminality of this case is so shocking that setting a non-parole period would be inappropriate.' Patterson now has no right to parole and, as AFP notes, will likely die in prison.

Seven defence grounds — all rejected

In August, the defence put forward seven grounds for appeal. Among them was what the lawyers called a 'catastrophic' hotel booking error, as a result of which the jurors stayed in the same place as the prosecution, a key police witness and the press; irrelevant and prejudicial evidence, including cell tower data about visits to places where poisonous mushrooms could have grown, and Facebook posts complaining about relatives; evidence of Patterson's years-long mushroom-foraging hobby being wrongly excluded; an 'unfair and oppressive' five-day cross-examination; and inconsistency in the prosecution's arguments about motive. On Friday the judges rejected all seven grounds, describing the murders as 'carefully planned and deliberate' and the crime as 'extraordinarily cold and calculating', deserving 'condemnation in the strongest terms' (Justice Stephen McLeish's quotes are cited by AFP). Patterson, who took part in the hearings by video link from a maximum-security prison near Melbourne, now has 28 days to decidewhether to ask the High Court of Australia to hear the case.

A case left without a motive

The trial in the Victorian town of Morwell attracted podcasters, film crews and true crime fans, and was followed by an audience 'from New York to New Delhi' — the case is now simply called the 'mushroom murders'. Patterson's husband Simon was supposed to attend the lunch but cancelled at the last moment — partly because of his belief that his wife had repeatedly tried to poison him over several years. The motive for the murders, as AFP notes, remains a mystery.