Piece of evidence that convinced jury Erin Patterson was guilty

An expert on the mushroom murder trial has revealed which single piece of evidence convinced the jury to convict Erin Patterson.

An expert on Erin Patterson’s murder trial has revealed which single piece of evidence he believes led to her conviction.

Earlier this year, a jury found Patterson guilty of murder and attempted murder after she served individual beef Wellingtons laced with toxic death-cap mushrooms to four guests during a lunch at her house on July 29, 2023.

Three people died as a result.

The triple murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years, but is set to appeal her conviction.

Author Greg Haddrick knows the trial better than most.

Erin Patterson (left). Top right: Don and Gail Patterson who both died after eating the beef wellington. Bottom right: Heather and Ian Wilkinson. Ian survived but Heather did not.

He’s released a book called The Mushroom Murders which is written from the perspective of a juror.

Every detail in the book comes directly from the evidence the real jurors heard and saw during the trial.

Speaking to news.com.au’s From the Newsroom podcast, Mr Haddrick explained which piece of evidence he believes sealed Patterson’s fate, saying, “ you cannot find a reason why an innocent Erin would have done that”.

The author was referring to what happened the night after Patterson hosted the lunch at her house.

By this stage, she knew that at least two of her guests had been hospitalised with gastroenteritis, and Patterson too claimed she had been suffering from similar symptoms.

It didn’t take a genius to determine they were probably all sick as a result of what they ate during the lunch.

“Anytime that people eat a meal and then within hours are suffering gastro, they look back at that lunch and if there’s leftovers in the fridge, the first thing you do is just chuck it out,” Mr Haddrick said. “That’s just an instinctive human reaction.”

Yet on Sunday night, more than 24 hours after the lunch, Patterson served her two children some of the leftover beef wellington, albeit after scraping off the pastry and mushroom mix.

“You could sort of feel that the jury were finding this impossible to believe,” Mr Haddrick told news.com.au. “That ‘innocent Erin’, knowing that that lunch had created that many health issues, without a second thought would serve it to her children.

The Mushroom Murders by Greg Haddrick.

Convicted murderer Erin Patterson. Picture: Martin Keep/AFP

“There’s no other explanation I feel for doing that than that she knew that those beef wellingtons did not contain death-cap mushrooms,” he continued.

“A mother and a woman who does that, for me, will only do it if she’s guilty of knowing exactly which wellingtons were poisoned and which weren’t, and I think that’s the one piece of evidence that you cannot find a reason why an ‘innocent Erin’ would have done that.”

Of course, there were several other pieces of evidence that convinced the jury Patterson was guilty.

There was the fact she was caught on camera ditching her food hydrator at the tip, which when recovered by police, was found to contain traces of death-cap mushrooms.

There was the fact that two days after the lunch, Patterson chose to leave hospital just five minutes after being told by doctors that she may have been exposed to potentially fatal mushroom poisoning.

And there was also the fact that Patterson lied to her guests about the reason for throwing the lunch in the first place.

You can hear Mr Haddrick discuss those points and more in the video at the top of this article.

Originally published as Piece of evidence that convinced jury Erin Patterson was guilty