Australia's mushroom murderer loses appeal and will never be released from prison

Erin Patterson, the Australian woman convicted of murdering three relatives with a toxic mushroom-laced meal, has lost her bid to overturn her convictions, and the Court of Appeal has also ruled that she must never be released from prison. In a hearing on Friday, three judges of Victoria's Court of Appeal dismissed Patterson's appeal against her convictions and upheld the prosecution's argument that her original sentence was inadequate because it allowed for the possibility of eventual freedom. Patterson, 52, was found guilty after a high-profile trial last year of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, by serving them individual portions of beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms. She was also convicted of the attempted murder of Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, a local pastor who ate the same lunch at Patterson's home in rural Victoria. Wilkinson survived after weeks in hospital and continues to experience health problems from the poisoning. Her original life sentence, handed down last September, included a non-parole period of 33 years. The trial judge set that period partly due to the "harsh prison conditions" Patterson was expected to face. On Friday, the appeal judges agreed with the prosecution that this was insufficient. Patterson's crimes were "extraordinarily cold and calculated" and had to be "denounced in the strongest terms," the judges said. "We have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a non-parole period," Justice Stephen McLeish told the court on behalf of the panel. Patterson's legal team had argued seven grounds of appeal at a hearing in August. Among their claims was that a hotel booking mishap, which resulted in the jury staying at the same accommodation as the prosecution, a key police witness and the media, was "catastrophic" and undermined the integrity of the trial. The defence also argued that certain evidence shown to the jury was irrelevant and prejudicial, including cell tower data suggesting Patterson had visited areas where death cap mushrooms might be found, and Facebook posts in which she complained about her in-laws. They said the trial judge had wrongly blocked other evidence that would have demonstrated Patterson's long-time hobby of mushroom foraging. Further grounds claimed that the prosecution's five-day cross-examination of Patterson was "unfair and oppressive", and that the Crown had been inconsistent in its arguments about a motive. The appeal judges dismissed all seven grounds on Friday. Simon Patterson, Patterson's estranged husband, had been expected to attend the fatal lunch but cancelled at the last minute, in part because of his belief that his wife had repeatedly tried to poison him over several years. Patterson now has 28 days to decide whether to seek permission from the High Court of Australia to hear a further appeal.