MUSHROOM MURDERER'S SOLITARY CONFINEMENT CHRISTMAS

Erin Patterson is facing a bleak at festive period locked up alone

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When the triple murderer wakes up on 25 December, there'll be no Christmas tree, no gifts from loved ones, no family members to embrace and no festive meal. Instead, “Mushroom Murderer” Erin Patterson will open her eyes to see only the four walls of her bathroom-sized prison cell within the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne, 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 Victoria's largest women's prison.

This isn't Patterson's first Christmas behind bars - she's been in custody since 2023 - but it will be her first one as a convicted killer.

So what will the day be like for the notorious 51-year-old 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.