Erin Patterson, an Australian woman, received a life sentence for poisoning her estranged husband’s family with a mushroom-laced meal.
In July 2023, she hosted a lunch at her home in Victoria and served a beef wellington containing death cap mushrooms, one of the most lethal fungi known. Within a day, her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, along with her aunt-in-law, Heather Wilkinson, became gravely ill and later died in the hospital.
A fourth guest, her uncle-in-law Ian Wilkinson, survived but required weeks of treatment and a liver transplant.
Following her conviction for murder at a July trial, Patterson must spend at least 33 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.
