Australian woman Erin Patterson, who was found guilty of murdering three of her estranged husband’s relatives by deliberately serving them poisonous mushrooms for lunch, allegedly tried to murder her husband by using poisoned pasta, chicken curry and a sandwich wrap.
New evidence was released on Friday after a gag order on pretrial evidence was lifted. The evidence included the suspicions of Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, that she had previously attempted to kill him.
Simon Patterson, who had been estranged from his wife since 2015, testified at a pre-trial hearing that he declined the invitation to the fatal lunch out of fear.
“I thought there’d be a risk that she’d poison me if I attended,” he told the court months before the trial.
He also said he had stopped eating food prepared by his wife but he didn’t think others would be at risk.
Justice Christopher Beale previously ruled that the charges should be split into two separate trials before the prosecutors dropped the attempted murder charges relating to Simon Patterson before the trial began in April.
That meant details of the alleged attempts on her husband’s life in 2021 and 2022 were never heard by the jury.
After Erin Patterson was found guilty last month, Beale ordered the suppression of the pretrial material to protect Patterson’s appeal rights.
But on Friday, the judge ordered the restrictions lifted and rejected an argument by Patterson’s defence team, who said the release of the material combined with media interest could jeopardize any potential appeal in the case.
“Open justice is a fundamental concern of our criminal justice jurisdiction,” Beale said.
In the newly released evidence, Simon Patterson revealed that he began keeping a spreadsheet of his illnesses that happened after eating his estranged wife’s cooking, including a penne bolognese, a chicken curry and a sandwich wrap.
“After the first time I got sick, I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food,” Simon Patterson told a pretrial hearing in Melbourne in October 2024.
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He alleged that the poisonings took place during family camping trips and claimed the incidents left him close to death.
In one instance, Simon Patterson said he felt sick after eating chicken curry.
“At first I felt hot, especially in my head, and that led to feeling nauseous and then that led to me quite suddenly needing to vomit,” he said.
He said he became so sick he was temporarily paralyzed and had part of his bowel removed. Doctors were reportedly unable to conclusively determine the cause of his illnesses.
He said he raised his suspicions that his estranged wife had poisoned him with his doctor and his family, including his father, Don, who died after attending Erin’s lunch.
Evidence from a computer seized from Erin Patterson’s home showing searches for other kinds of poisons was also excluded from the trial.
Last month, a jury found Patterson lured her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, her father-in-law Don Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, to lunch at her home and poisoned them with servings of beef Wellington that contained death cap mushrooms.
They also found the 50-year-old woman guilty of the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the 2023 meal at Erin Patterson’s home.
Patterson was initially charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder in 2023, with the four additional counts relating to her estranged husband.
The guilty verdicts, which were required to be unanimous, indicated that jurors rejected Patterson’s defence that the presence of the poisonous mushrooms in the meal was a terrible accident, caused by the mistaken inclusion of foraged mushrooms that she didn’t know were death caps.
Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive for the killings, but during the trial highlighted strained relations between Patterson and her estranged husband and frustration that she had felt about his parents in the past.
The case focused on whether Patterson planned the murders or if she accidentally killed three people, including her children’s only surviving grandparents.
Her lawyers claimed she had no reason to commit the murders as she had recently moved into a new home, was financially comfortable and had sole custody of her children. They also said that she was due to begin studying for a degree in nursing and midwifery.
Beale said Friday that any appeal by Patterson was unlikely to succeed but it could not be ruled out.
She pleaded not guilty to the counts of attempted murder against her husband and the court will hear the case on Aug. 25 during a two-day plea hearing.
— With files from Reuters
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