Jury deliberates for 2nd day in the triple murder trial of Australian accused of mushroom poisonings

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A jury was deliberating for a second day Tuesday in the triple murder trial of an Australian woman accused of killing her estranged husband’s relatives by deliberately serving them poisonous mushrooms for lunch.

The jurors who began deliberating Monday are sequestered, a rarity in Australia that reflects public and media fervor about the case against Erin Patterson, with several news outlets publishing live blogs that covered every moment of the two-month trial. The jurors will remain secluded until they reach a unanimous decision on the charges of murder and attempted murder.

Three of Patterson’s four lunch guests — her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson — died in the hospital after the 2023 meal, at which she served individual beef Wellington pastries containing death cap mushrooms. The fourth, Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson, became gravely ill but survived.

Patterson, 50, told the trial she didn’t deliberately poison her guests and must have accidentally mixed up store-bought and wild mushrooms, which she had foraged herself without knowing they were death caps. She also said she ate the mushrooms but didn’t get as sick because she threw up soon after the lunch due to an eating disorder.

Prosecutors in the case, which has gripped Australia for two years, said the accused woman researched, foraged and served the mushrooms deliberately and lied to investigators to cover her tracks. Patterson accepted she had disposed of a food dehydrator after the fatal meal and reset her phone multiple times.

The prosecution said she lied about having a dire medical diagnosis to ensure her guests attended the lunch, cooked individual pastries to avoid poisoning herself, and faked symptoms to make it look as though she fell ill, too.

Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive but suggested a deteriorating relationship between the accused and her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, as well as her exasperation with her former in-laws. Simon Patterson was invited to the fatal lunch but didn’t go.

Patterson would face life in prison if she is convicted.