Barbara Eckersley trial: jury finds ‘loving’ daughter guilty of manslaughter in killing of Dr Mary White

The middle-aged daughter of an esteemed Australian scientist has been found guilty of killing her mum with “green dream”.

The middle-aged daughter of an esteemed Australian scientist has been found guilty of killing her mum by slipping a veterinary euthanasia drug into her soup.

A Supreme Court jury on Thursday morning found Barbara Eckersley, 69, guilty of manslaughter over the killing of her mother, Dr Mary White, at Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands in 2018.

The jurors had been deliberating since Monday afternoon.

During the three week trial, Eckersley admitted to twice drugging her mum in the days before her death, firstly by mixing crushed up sleeping pills into her custard, and then by adding a small dose of Pentobarbital to her soup.

Barbara Eckersley, 69, leaves the Goulburn Supreme Court with her husband during her murder trial. Picture: Craig Dunlop

Dr Mary White was a renowned scientist who worked well into her 80s. Picture: Supplied (White family)

The drug is commonly known as “green dream” and is used by vets to put down animals.

Eckersley said had been concerned about her mum’s treatment in the nursing home, and told the court she thought the drugs would help calm her mother ahead of her transfer to a new home near Coffs Harbour.

Dr White, a renowned palaeobotanist, was almost totally vegetative, and had been bedridden since suffering a major stroke.

The prosecution case was that Eckersley murdered Dr White, but the jury found her not guilty of that more serious charge.

The jury also rejected Eckersley’s main defence, which was that Dr White died coincidentally in the moments after Eckersley spoon fed her the poisoned soup.

Eckersley’s legal team argued that she did not intend to kill her mother, and that she in the depths of a major depressive disorder, meaning she had diminished responsibility.

Prosecutors said Eckersley was a “loving, caring and compassionate” daughter, and that the case was unusual.

“What she did was most likely done with love and compassion, and of course with pain and sorrow,” crown prosecutor Paul Kerr said in his opening address earlier this month.

Barbara Eckersley (right) has been found guilty of killing her mother, Dr Mary White. Picture: Craig Dunlop

Eckersley’s husband was in the room as his wife spoonfed Dr White the soup, but was unaware she had laced it with the drug.

He told the court his mother-in-law became “unresponsive and sort of floppy” in the moments after she swallowed the soup.

He also sat with his wife as she confessed to him what she had done in the days following, after she had been haunted by a dream about her mother being attacked by aliens.

Eckersley will be sentenced at a later date.