By Alasdair Pal
SYDNEY, Oct 30 (Reuters) – An Australian woman convicted of murdering three of her estranged husband’s relatives with a meal laced with deadly mushrooms lost an attempt on Friday to appeal her conviction, with a court also quashing her chances of parole.
Erin Patterson, 51, was found guilty last year of murdering her three elderly in-laws by serving them Beef Wellington contaminated with poisonous death cap mushrooms, in a case that captivated Australia.
She was sentenced to life in prison with a 33-year non-parole period, among the longest terms ever handed to a woman in the country.
Patterson has always denied wrongdoing, saying the deaths were accidental.
She had appealed on multiple grounds, arguing that certain evidence should have been kept from the trial, that her cross-examination was unfair, and that a mistake placing the jury in the same hotel as other parties to the case compromised the result.
A panel of three judges on Friday said those grounds were insufficient for an appeal.
A separate appeal by the prosecution, which argued giving Patterson a non-parole period was inadequate in light of the seriousness of her crimes, was successful.
“This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated, and stands to be denounced in the strongest terms,” Justice Stephen McLeish, speaking on behalf of a panel of three judges hearing the appeals, told the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne.
“In all the circumstances, after anxious consideration, we have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a non-parole period.”
Patterson’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A jury last year found Patterson invited her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Donald Patterson and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson to a 2023 lunch at her home in Leongatha, a town of about 6,000 people, some 135 km (84 miles) southeast of Melbourne, and fed them the poisoned lunch.
She was also convicted of the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the meal.
The 11-week trial, held in the nearby country town of Morwell, attracted worldwide attention, and the case has since spawned several podcasts and books.
American streaming service Paramount+ this week announced New Zealand actor Melanie Lynskey would play Patterson in a six-part series dramatising the case.
(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Jamie Freed)
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