Philip Dunn KC fears accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson won’t get a fair trial

The big shot barrister representing accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson says he doesn’t know “how on earth” she’s going to get a fair trial.

The lawyer for accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson says he doesn’t know how she is going to get a fair trial. Picture: Brooke Grebert-Craig.

“I don’t know how she’s going to get a fair trial,” celebrated trial lawyer Philip Dunn warned this week as he took up the case of accused mushroom murderer Erin Patterson.

The KC cited famous cases including former Western Australian premier Carmen Lawrence, who was acquitted of perjury charges, and Lindy Chamberlain, who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of baby Azaria Chamberlain in the Australian outback.

“They were persecuted, I think, because they were women,” Dunn told Page 13.

“If Carmen Lawrence had been a bloke, if Lindy Chamberlain had been a bloke, if Erin Patterson was a bloke, they wouldn’t be vilified in the way those women were and Erin Patterson is now.

“Vilified! I feel very strongly about that and I don’t know how on earth she is going to get a fair trial.”

Philip Dunn KC has represented a long list of Melbourne identities.

Dunn has worked – and continues to work – on some of the biggest criminal cases in Victoria’s history.

Across four decades, Dunn has represented a long list of Melbourne identities, including organised crime figures Carl Williams and Mick Hawi and sporting icons Gary Ablett Sr and Dani Laidley.

“But I don’t want to be remembered for the gangland stuff,” the veteran barrister said.

“They were just drug dealers and crooks.”

The celebrated barrister said he well remembered the trial of King and Lowery at the start of his career.

“Premier Henry Bolte promised to hang them and was seen holding a napkin tied up like a noose. It kind of burnt into me a strong desire to save them from the gallows.”

His latest client has been charged with three counts of murder and five of attempted murder. Five of the charges relate to a lunch the 49-year-old Patterson hosted in late July last year.

Four people became ill and three died in hospital from suspected toxic mushroom poisoning from a beef Wellington dish she cooked.

‘What would it be like to kill a chick’: Philip Dunn’s notorious first case

Two teenagers who wanted to “see what it would be like to kill a chick” were the last two murderers sentenced to death in Victoria.

Theirs was an appalling crime and the first major case to be taken on by young barrister Philip Dunn, who this week was named to represent alleged mushroom murderer Erin Patterson.

Dunn, now a KC who has defended the accused in some of Australia’s most celebrated cases, had just joined the bar more than 50 years ago when he and the late Philip Cummins, who became a Supreme Court justice, found themselves as juniors in a trial at Ballarat.

The case became an international sensation when one of the accused used an unprecedented defence of being under the influence of psychotic drug LSD.

Murder victim Rosalyn Nolte with her corgi, Jodie.

The case dragged on after a juror said he could not continue because of what he had heard. The evidence in which Christopher Russell Lowery and Charles Ian King described the torture and death of Hamilton schoolgirl Rosalyn Nolte saw trial judge Justice Tommy Smith don the then infamous black cap to deliver the death sentences.

Lowery, 18 and King, 19, lost an appeal and would have been hanged but for the intervention of then Victorian Governor Sir Rohan Delacombe.

Rosalyn Nolte was only 15 when she was walking along the main street of Hamilton with her beloved dog, Jodie, the corgi later leading police to the murder site on a lonely bush track at nearby Mt Napier, a long-extinct volcano.

What followed was an eruption of violence.

Lowery and King had enticed her to get in the back of Lowery’s panel van. They were looking for fun, they said, and a victim.

The young Phil Dunn and Phil Cummins then made the final addresses to the jury in place of the two Queen’s Counsel when they too appeared overwhelmed by the circumstances of the trial.

King and Lowery were “never to be released” but both walked free after serving 22 years when sentencing laws were changed.

Lowery has since died and King was to marry and lead an apparently uneventful life.

Rosalyn Nolte was never to have had that chance.