Testimony fails to convince in mushrooms murder case

Jury finds mother of two guilty of deliberate lunch poisoning

- ALASDAIR PAL

A month into the trial of the Australian woman accused of murdering three of her estranged husband’s elderly relatives with poisonous mushrooms, her barrister Colin Mandy stood and delivered one of the case's pivotal moments.

“The defence will call Erin Patterson,” Mandy told the court. Patterson, who was convicted yesterday of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, was the only witness for her defence in a 10-week trial that gripped Australia. She told the court she had a loving relationship with the three people who died, including her mother and father-in-law, saying they were all she had in a frequently troubled life.

In fact, she murdered three of them and attempted to kill a fourth by slipping lethal death cap mushrooms into individual beef wellingtons she served at a July 2023 lunch, a jury found.

An alleged murderer testifying as a witness in their own defence is a rare strategy and normally a last resort, said Nicholas Papas, a veteran criminal barrister based in Melbourne who frequently acts in murder trials.

“The risk is that when you call your client, then suddenly people start focusing on your client,” he said.