Erin Patterson’s surprise reaction to guilty verdict

The mushroom cook who killed her in-laws with a beef wellington expressed little emotion as she was condemned in the courtroom.

There are no tears and little theatre.

Erin Patterson, the mushroom cook who killed her in-laws with a beef wellington, stares blankly, her head turned to the right side, as she is condemned.

She offers a slight twitch in the right shoulder before the first guilty finding is read out.

A flurry of blinks follow each of the four “guilty” findings.

It’s clear that the jury has not bought her story of panicked responses after a “terrible mistake”.

Yet Patterson expresses neither disappointment nor shock.

There was no compromise explanation in this case: Patterson was either desperately unlucky or a diabolical murderer.

Erin Patterson offered a slight twitch in the right shoulder before the first guilty finding was read out. Picture: Paul Tyquin / SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA / AFP

And so we now consider the gaze of a diabolical murderer.

The dark hair over her right shoulder. The shiny paisley shirt which she wore on the first day of giving evidence.

She couldn’t feel more alone, this mother who faces a lifetime apart from the two kids she dedicated her time to.

Said to be engaging and funny offstage, Patterson has offered little throughout the trial, bar some dabbing at her eyes when the subject turned to her children.

And the verdict itself feels oddly muted, in keeping with her careful persona.

It’s over in under a minute. At its conclusion, Patterson has still offered no hint of any turmoil within.

The police officers in court maintain their braced postures.

A small band of Patterson’s supporters hold hands.

One is openly crying, like a kind of proxy reaction for the defendant herself.

Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor of Patterson’s poisoned beef wellington, is not in the Morwell courtroom for the verdict.

Also elsewhere is her estranged husband, Simon Patterson.

Patterson, from start to finish of a trial that went into an 11th week, has been a solitary figure.

No family turned up to watch on as she spent eight days in the witness box.

Lead barrister Colin Mandy (R) is approached by members of the media as he leaves the Latrobe Valley Magistrates' Court with Barrister Sophie Stafford (C) and Lawyer Ophelia Holloway (L) in Morwell. Picture: WILLIAM WEST / AFP

She looked and sounded mostly unflustered as she answered 4267 questions.

But the nagging sense at the end of this trial is not what we learned, but what we still do not know.

Yes, Don and Gail Paterson, as well as Heather Wilkinson, were officially murdered, and it seems that the evidence of Heather’s husband Ian may have been critical to that finding.

The prosecution successfully argued that Patterson murdered her guests because no other explanation was plausible.

But what was Patterson thinking when she invited her husband’s family to lunch in July, 2023?

Why were death cap mushrooms stored in her Leongatha pantry?

What was she thinking when, after her guests ingested their final meal, they prayed for her good health?

And how did Patterson think she would avoid justice?

Her convictions are a legal resolution, obviously, but they are far from satisfying for the international forum of morbid fascination.

Patterson is a confessed liar and now convicted murderer.

Of gaze and of nature, she is also a keeper of secrets.

She decided to kill three people she claimed to have loved.

And we still don’t know why.

Originally published as Erin Patterson’s surprise reaction to guilty verdict