ERIN PATTERSON SOLITARY CONFINEMENT CHRISTMAS

The mushroom murderer is facing a bleak festive period locked up alone

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When Erin Patterson wakes up on December 25, there'll be no Christmas tree. No gifts from loved ones, no family members to embrace and no festive meal.

Instead, the “mushroom murderer” will open her eyes and see only the four walls of her toilet-sized prison cell within the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Ravenhall, Victoria, where she will stay cooped up for most of the day.

It will be loud. Not from Christmas excitement but the yelling and screaming of fellow inmates also held in solitary confinement inside the state’s largest women’s prison.

SOUL DESTROYING

This isn’t Patterson’s first Christmas behind bars, because she has been in custody since 2023. But it will be her first as a convicted killer.

So what will the day be like for the notorious triple murderer?

Woman's Day asked prison advocate Ashleigh Chapman, who spent 10 years at the same prison, with two of them in solitary confinement, to share her own experience of being locked up there.