Prosecutor tells Australian appeals court mushroom poisoning murderer should never be released

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Triple-murderer Erin Patterson should never be released from prison after she poisoned four of her estranged husband’s relatives with death cap mushrooms, a prosecutor told an Australian court on Thursday.

Prosecutor Brendan Kissane told three judges of the Victoria state Court of Appeal that a judgment that Patterson must serve 33 years of a life sentence before she can apply for parole was “manifestly inadequate,” in an appeal on the leniency of her sentence.

Kissane said Patterson should never be considered for parole but that if the judges did not agree, then they should impose a nonparole period longer than 33 years.

“That’s a harsh submission to make,” Kissane said of removing any possibility of parole.

“But … it’s demanded by the nature of the offending,” he added.

Patterson on Wednesday began her appeal against convictions on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder relating to a lunch of beef Wellington pastries she prepared at her rural home in Leongatha in July 2023.

Few Australian prisoners are sentenced without prospect of release on parole.

The judges reserved their decisions on both appeals until a date to be set.

Kissane said the 51-year-old would be around 82 years old before she could be considered for release under her current sentence.

Because of her notoriety, Patterson is held in the high-security Gordon Unit of Melbourne’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre women’s prison. The unit is for prisoners assessed as being at high risk from other inmates.

In sentencing her in September last year, trial judge Christopher Bale said there was a “substantial chance” that Patterson could be held in “solitary confinement for years to come.”

Kissane argued that the judge’s conclusion was not supported by evidence and that Patterson’s prison conditions were reviewed every month.

Her lawyer, Richard Edney, said Patterson was being held in solitary confinement as defined by the United Nations — confinement for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.

Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, was invited to the fatal lunch but did not attend.

His parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, died. Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, spent weeks in hospital, but survived.

Patterson argued during her trial that the poisoning was an accident.

Kissane described Patterson’s crimes as “pitiless behavior” and “truly dreadful.”

Prosecution court documents said “there is no factually comparable case to this.”

But they submitted that Melbourne man Osman Shaptafaj was set a nonparole period of 35 years in 2022 for murdering his own daughter and her husband, partly because he was not invited to their wedding.

They also submitted that Melbourne man Jaymes Todd was set a nonparole period of 43 years in 2019 for the rape and murder of comedian Eurydice Dixon in a city park.

Under state law, a judge must set a nonparole period for murder unless that judge considers the nature of the offense or the past history of the offender makes such a minimum sentence inappropriate.

Earlier on Thursday, prosecutor Jeremy McWilliams rejected Patterson’s lawyers’ argument that her five days of cross-examination during her trial had been “unfair and oppressive.” It was one of Patterson’s grounds for appeal against convictions.

Her cross-examination by prosecutor Nanette Rogers had been “thorough, fair and conducted in accordance with settled principles and the prosecutor’s overarching duty of fairness,” McWilliams said.

Patterson’s trial lawyer Colin Mandy had described his client in his closing address as a “pedantic witness,” McWilliams said, adding Rogers had been required to rephrase questions to “receive a responsive answer.”

In pretrial testimony only made public after her trial, Simon Patterson said he suspected his wife had deliberately made him seriously ill with dishes. No poisons were ever found.

Erin Patterson was initially charged with three counts of attempting to murder him three times between November 2021 and September 2022. She had denied all charges.

Prosecutors dropped all charges relating to the husband before her trial began in April 2025.