Erin Patterson laced a beef wellington with poisonous mushrooms and served it up with mashed potatoes and green beans to four guests, while eating her own meal from a different coloured plate
Chilling new photos show the lethal meal a murderer dished up to kill three relatives.
Erin Patterson laced the ordinary looking beef wellington with poisonous mushrooms before serving it with mashed potatoes and green beans to her estranged husband’s parents, aunt and uncle, killing three of them.
During her nine-week murder trial jurors saw images of leftovers from the meal, which she laced with deadly death cap mushrooms, also known as Amanita phalloides.
The images show the dark coloured mushroom contents of the pastry spilling out onto the plate. In one image, a stray green bean can be seen clinging on to one of the pastry sections.
She had cooked the pastry until golden brown, and served it up on a large plates, which were a different colour to the one she ate from.
The prosecutors said the coloured plates were to ensure hers was not contaminated with the fatal dose.
Jurors were shown some of the food in evidence bags and laid out for testing at the police laboratory.
Patterson’s former parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, all died after she had invited the to lunch at her home in the town of Leongatha, Australia, the court heard.
Mrs Wilkinson’s husband Reverend Ian Wilkinson, who ate the food but survived, told the trial how all four guests fell ill after eating their meal off four large grey dinner plates, while Patterson ate hers off a smaller, tan coloured plate.
The prosecutions case alleged that she ate of a visibly different plate in order to ensure that there was no cross contamination.
Reverend Wilkinson said that straight after the meal, Patterson told the group that she had been diagnosed with cancer, suggesting that she was wanting their advice on the best way to tell her children.
The defence did not dispute his claims.
It wasn’t disputed that Patterson served the mushrooms or that the food killed her guests.
The jury was only required to decide whether she knew the lunch contained the poisonous mushrooms, and if she intended for them to die.
Prosecutors didn’t offer a motive for the killings, but during the trial highlighted strained relations between Patterson and her estranged husband, and frustration that she had felt about his parents in the past.
Patterson will be sentenced at a later date.