Erin Patterson is likely to spend the rest of her life behind bars after her bid to overturn her conviction failed and prosecutors succeeded in having her non-parole period removed.
On Friday, Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal judges Stephen McLeish, Lesley Taylor and Peter Kidd dismissed Patterson’s appeal.
Supreme Court of Victoria Justice Christopher Beale sentenced Patterson to life in prison on September 8, 2025, after she was convicted of murdering Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. The three victims became ill after eating a poisonous beef Wellington.
Justice Beale initially set a non-parole period of 33 years. However, prosecutors successfully appealed the sentence, prompting the appeal panel to impose life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Patterson appeared by video link wearing a blue prison-issued jumper, glasses and her long brown hair tied in a ponytail. She showed no emotion as the judges delivered their decision.
Her lawyers have indicated that she will take the case to the High Court, the final legal avenue available to challenge both her conviction and sentence.
Patterson’s victims died after consuming death cap mushrooms served in beef Wellingtons at a lunch held at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.
Pastor Ian Wilkinson, who was not present at Friday’s hearing, survived after becoming critically ill. Patterson was also convicted of his attempted murder.
Erin Patterson is likely to die in prison after her appeal against her conviction failed
Patterson challenged her murder convictions on seven grounds, arguing that a series of errors had caused a substantial miscarriage of justice and that the convictions should be quashed.
A central part of her appeal was the claim that a ‘fundamental irregularity’ occurred because jurors were sequestered in the same hotel as police and prosecutors during their deliberations. Patterson argued the arrangement may have affected the verdicts, but the judges found the claim had ‘no basis’.
The courtroom was filled with true crime followers, journalists and Simon Patterson’s brother, Matthew.
The brief hearing was livestreamed on the court’s website, while a television crew was permitted inside to record what could be the final stage of Patterson’s legal battle.
Patterson also argued that some evidence should never have been admitted, while other material was wrongly excluded. This included mobile phone tower data connected to death cap mushroom sightings, Facebook messages, evidence from ‘friends’ and photographs and videos of mushrooms stored on an SD card that she said supported her foraging account.
She further claimed that the prosecution’s lengthy cross-examination was ‘unfair and oppressive’. Patterson also alleged that the prosecutor’s closing address contained numerous errors or misstatements and improperly suggested that she had a motive to kill.
Following the failed appeal, Patterson will be returned to the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, where she is expected to spend decades in custody.
Because she is so despised inside the prison, Patterson is held in near-solitary confinement in the restrictive Gordon Unit.
She spends up to 23 hours a day there crocheting, watching television, using a computer and reading books or magazines.
She is confined to a small cell with a tiny attached courtyard, receives food and medication through a slot in the door, has very little contact with other inmates and must be escorted by two officers whenever she moves within the prison.
Don and Gail Patterson were among those killed by Erin Patterson
Heather Wilkinson was also murdered atthe deadly lunch
Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Brendan Kissane KC (right) leads his team out of court after Patterson’s appeal hearing in August
They are conditions imposed for her own protection due to the notoriety of her crimes.
The end of the drawn-out legal saga might now provide some semblance of peace for the surviving victims.
Lone survivor Ian Wilkinson had attended practically every day of Patterson’s ten-week trial in Morwell last year and was there during her appeal hearing in August.
During a pre-sentence hearing, Wilkinson condemned Patterson for the ‘callous and calculated disregard’ for the lives of people who had only good intentions toward her, and questioned the ‘foolishness’ of believing murder could solve problems.
During that hearing he carefully limited his forgiveness, offering it only for the harms done to him and not for the murders of Heather, Gail and Don.
He encouraged Patterson to accept that offer ‘with full confession and repentance’, adding that he bore her no ill will and prayed she would use her time in prison wisely to become a better person.
‘I am no longer Erin Patterson’s victim. She has become the victim of my kindness,’ he said.
Little has been seen recently of Patterson’s former husband Simon, who believed she had repeatedly tried to murder him in the years before she killed his family.
Patterson had black plastic erected outside her home to hide her from media in anticipation of her return in July last year
Patterson at the conclusion of her interview with Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall
Mr Patterson alleged his wife tried to poison him on multiple occasions in 2021-2022 with meals she prepared, including a Tupperware of penne bolognese, a chicken korma curry during a camping trip, a beef stew while he was recovering at her home and a curry wrap on another outing.
Each time he became seriously ill, requiring hospitalisation; one episode left him in a medically induced coma for more than two weeks and required emergency bowel surgery.
Police charged Patterson with three counts of attempted murder based on those incidents, and investigators noted research on her devices into barium carbonate (rat poison) around the time of one illness, but no specific poison was ever forensically confirmed.
Those charges were discontinued before her main trial and never went to a jury.
In April, it was revealed Mr Patterson would pen his memoir with a publishing deal already agreed.
With the appeal over, that book is now expected to finally see the light of day.
Patterson even had black plastic sheeting erected over the entry to her Leongatha home, to hide her from the media when she walked free from court after her trial.
Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall upon leaving court on Friday. He made no comment, but his face told the story
Patterson’s only supporter Ali Rose Porter was mobbed by reporters outside court
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That home will now be officially stripped from her and sold to compensate the victims of her crime.
Her plot to get away with murder had been foiled by Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall, who formally took over the investigation around August 3, 2023 after the mass poisoning.
Det Eppingstall had attended every single day of Patterson’s pre-trial, trial and subsequent appeal.
On Friday, he maintained a dignified silence as he left the court in respect for those victims he had worked to represent.
Eppingstall had been a long-respected member of the force who in 2024 received a Prince of Wales Award for his service as a Defence Force reservist.
He conducted Patterson’s first formal police interview on August 5, 2023, in which she denied owning a dehydrator or foraging for mushrooms.
At her trial, he gave extensive evidence as the Crown’s final key witness and was cross-examined at length by the defence.
After bringing Patterson to trial, he also recently brought to justice the teenage killer who murdered 16-year-old Oscar Hamilton.
Crown prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, who grilled Patterson for days in the witness box, has all but called it quits as a Victorian prosecutor.
Patterson’s barristers Sophie Stafford and Colin Mandy, SC in Morwell during the epic trial
Lawyer Bill Doogue (right) had complained about Patterson’s jury being briefly housed alongside police, prosecutors and reporters
Patterson’s appeal had been doomed from the start.
The main push had hinged on the claim that the court’s decision to house the jury in the same hotel as police and prosecutors was a ‘catastrophic failure’.
In August, Patterson’s barrister Richard Edney claimed the jury’s placement in a hotel alongside journalists, police and prosecutors was unfair.
‘We would describe the sequestration and what occurred during it as catastrophic, and in our submission, what has occurred here is that there has been a fundamental failure to comply with the dictum already referred to,’ he said.
‘So what?’ was the short response by Justice Peter Kidd.
The Daily Mail reporters from across the globe had been staying in the same hotel.
The Age’s Chris Vedelago later wrote an article that revealed her lawyer Bill Doogue had complained to the court that the Daily Mail had potentially tainted the jury.
‘There was also an article published by the Daily Mail that can only be based on discussions with the jurors, either directly or indirectly, including mention of one of the jurors being allowed to watch an AFL game separately with a jury keeper,’ Mr Doogue claimed.
Simon Patterson has vanished from the spotlight, but is expected to release his memoir now the appeal is over
Pastor Ian Wilkinson told Patterson: ‘I am no longer Erin Patterson’s victim. She has become the victim of my kindness.’
His claim referred to a Daily Mail article reporting that the jury had watched the Carlton and Collingwood game after being sequestered. The article was sourced from someone in no way associated with the jury.
The jury in the high-profile death cap mushroom trial was sequestered at a hotel in the Morwell area while deliberating.
Members of the prosecution team, reporters and a key police witness were also staying there for a period.
Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane KC shot down the claim by Patterson’s barrister Richard Edney at appeal.
‘Far from being some sort of catastrophic failure, to use the words that Mr Edney used, there’s no evidence in our submission to support this ground,’ he said during the August hearing.
Mr Kissane argued the evidence showed the system worked exactly as intended.
Mr Edney had raised 35 complaints about the prosecution’s closing address at Patterson’s trial.
At trial, she had been represented by Colin Mandy SC, who tried every avenue to exonerate Patterson.
The Patterson trial will be Crown prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers’ last major trial
‘The defence counsel was very alive to the complaints that you’re now making under ground six. So alive was he to them that he raised most of them in his final address,’ Justice Lesley Taylor told Mr Edney.
‘When one looks at the final address delivered by a very experienced trial counsel, the complaints that you are now raising, they were on the table at the time.
‘Nothing was being overlooked here.’
Mr Kissane argued Justice Beale should not have set a non‑parole period at all and Patterson should have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
He said that if a non-parole period was to be fixed, 33 years was manifestly inadequate given the gravity of her offending.
As it stood before the appeal, Patterson would be aged 81 when she became eligible for parole.
Mr Kissane said Justice Beale’s reliance on prison conditions to justify a 33‑year non‑parole period was legally and factually flawed.
‘If somebody’s in their 80s and commits an offence that requires a significant non-parole period, then the court is sentencing somebody in effect, albeit that they may well impose… a non-parole period by the statute, the court is still in effect sentencing somebody beyond what one would normally expect to be the term of their natural life,’ Mr Kissane said.
‘It has its harsh aspect about it, of course, but we accept that. But in our submission, that is not a matter that’s outweighed by the seriousness of the offending… that’s a harsh, harsh submission to make.
‘But we submit that it’s demanded by the nature of the offending in this case.’