Women's process: Australian poisoned guests with beef fillet Wellington

media attention and negotiation transparency

When it was announced that the jury had made a judgment, dozens of media representatives flocked to the court. This case has attracted attention worldwide and produced four podcasts that are devoted to the incoming analysis of the daily evidence.

The circumstances of the deadly lunch

During the several weeks of testimony, Patterson was accused of deliberately contaminating lunch with deadly toadstools, a highly toxic mushroom type, which she had checked after their location was published on a public website. In the days after lunch, her former in -laws, Don and Gail Patterson, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson died. The husband of Heather, Ian, survived after a week -long hospital stay.

The defenders of Patterson argued that it was a "terrible accident" who appeared when Patterson tried to improve the taste of the court. They also claimed that she was repeated by panic when she realized that he could have added mushrooms.

The evidence and the jury decision

Patterson listened in the court, while the prosecutors called witnesses to witnesses, the statements of which they explained as a convincing story of a triple murder, which the jury finally found. According to Australian law, the jury may not be publicly identified and are obliged to disclose no consultations in the jury room even after the process ended. It will never be known which evidence influenced the decision of every jury, but all 12 had to agree to the judgment.

Details about the fateful lunch

The proven facts state that Patterson invited five people for lunch on July 29, 2023, including her estranged husband Simon Patterson, who canceled the day before. Within a few hours after eating, the four guests - Simon's parents Don and Gail as well as his aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson - fell ill and complained of vomiting and diarrhea. They were hospitalized where they were put into an artificial coma while the doctors tried to help them.

gail and Heather died on August 4th of multi -organ failure, followed by Don on August 5, since he did not respond to a liver transplant. Ian Wilkinson survived and was finally released from the hospital at the end of September, after almost two months of intensive treatment.

The toxic mushrooms and the theory of the indictment

toxic mushrooms contain amanita toxins that inhibit the production of proteins in liver cells, which leads to cell death and possibly liver failure about two days after taking it. These fatal mushrooms are native to Europe and were found in several Australian states. At the time of lunch they were spotted near Patterson's place of residence in rural Victoria. During the trial, the indictment argued that Patterson had the opportunity to collect fatal mushrooms after seeing their location on the citizens' science website.

allegations of the indictment and defense

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC claimed that “four calculated illusions” would be the focus of the case. "The first deception was the invented cancer diagnosis with which she founded the invitation to lunch," she said. "The second deception was the fatal doses poison, which the accused hid in the homemade beef Wellington." The third deception was her attempt to give the appearance that she was suffering from poisoning through toadstushes, and the fourth deception is the continuing cover -up that it undertaken to hide the truth.

Patterson admitted that on April 28, the day on which her cell phone signals they were located near toadstools, she bought a dehydrator that she later disposed of in the recycling center on August 2, when her guests were in the hospital. This had her fingerprints and included the remains of toadstools.

The judgment and the upcoming sentence

The indictment claimed that Patterson had faked an illness in the days after lunch and tried to blur her traces by disposing of the dehydrated machine and resetting her devices to factory settings in order to delete evidence. Patterson's defender, Colin Mandy SC, accused the indictment of selectively dealing with the evidence and showing “four ridiculous, nested hypotheses”. One argument was that Patterson would do this “without any motif”.

He pointed out that there were several reasons why Patterson didn't want to kill her guests. "She had no financial difficulties, lived in a big house and almost had the full custody of her two small children, who were very closely connected to her grandparents," he said.

The indictment did not have to prove a motive. Rogers accused Patterson of having two faces: one that she showed the world and made it appear as if she had a good relationship with the Pattersons, and a hidden thing that only revealed her Facebook friends and wore the hint that "she wanted nothing to do with them." In Facebook messages that were sent in December 2022, Patterson expressed her anger and frustration about Dons and Gails to interfere with her son's marriage problems.

One of the news was: "I have the snout full of this crap, I don't want to have anything to do with them." Another message was: “This family, I swear by God.”

On the eight days of hearing, including cross -interpretation, Patterson consistently asserted her innocence and claimed that she had accidentally added mushrooms to the court. In his instructions to the jury, judge Christopher Beale said that Patterson's admission of lying and disposed of evidence should not make them biased against them. "This is a court of law, not a court of morality," he said. "The question is not whether it is responsible for the tragic consequences of lunch in any way, but whether the indictment has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it is responsible for these consequences."

The jury came to the conclusion that Patterson intended to kill all four guests at lunch, and repeatedly led under oath to say that she hadn't done it. Patterson will be convicted at a later date.