Australian Erin Patterson was found guilty Monday of murdering three members of her husband's family by serving them a beef Wellington lunch laced with death cap mushrooms.
Here is a timeline of key dates from a case that has enthralled Australia and spawned headlines around the world.
Lunch invitation
Keen home cook Erin Patterson hosted an intimate family meal on July 29, 2023.
Her lunch guests that afternoon were Don and Gail Patterson, the elderly parents of her long-estranged husband Simon.
Places were also set for Simon's maternal aunt Heather and her husband Ian, a well-known pastor at the local Baptist church.
Patterson forked out for expensive cuts of beef, which she slathered in a duxelles of minced mushrooms and wrapped in pastry to make individual parcels of beef Wellington.
Organs shut down
Within hours the guests' blood was coursing with deadly amatoxin -- a potent poison produced by the death cap mushrooms inside the meal.
Their symptoms initially mimicked a bad case of food poisoning, but doctors grew increasingly worried as their organs started to shut down.
Heather Wilkinson died first, in the early hours of August 4, followed later that day by Gail Patterson.
Don Patterson held on for another day before dying on August 5.
Murder charges
Patterson was charged with three counts of murder on November 2, 2023, just hours after detectives searched her home in rural Leongatha, southeast of Melbourne.
She was also charged with the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor of the meal.
The trial
Patterson's long-awaited trial opened on April 29, 2025 in nearby Morwell, drawing crowds of journalists, podcasters and true crime fans.
The 50-year-old pleaded not guilty to all four charges, her defense team insisting the poisoning was a "tragedy and a terrible accident".
The trial heard from doctors, detectives, computer experts and mushroom specialists as it picked apart the beef Wellington lunch in forensic detail across more than two months.
Verdict
Confronted with countless hours of intricate expert testimony, it took the jury a week to find Patterson guilty on all counts.
By AFP
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