An Australian appeal court has dismissed Erin Patterson's bid to overturn her murder convictions and ruled that she should spend the rest of her life in prison, removing the parole window she was given at her original sentencing. A three-judge panel of the Supreme Court of Victoria delivered the ruling on Friday.

Source: Reuters

Patterson was convicted last year of murdering three of her estranged husband's relatives — her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Gail and Donald Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66 — by serving them a lunch of beef wellington laced with death-cap mushrooms at her home in Leongatha in July 2023. She was also convicted of attempted murder over the same meal.

"This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated, and stands to be denounced in the strongest terms," Justice Stephen McLeish, speaking for the panel, told the Melbourne court. "In all the circumstances, after anxious consideration, we have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a non-parole period."

Two appeals, one courtroom — both decided against her

Patterson had originally been sentenced in September 2025 to life in prison with a 33-year non-parole period, among the longest terms ever handed to a woman in Australia. Her lawyers argued seven grounds of appeal, including that evidence should have been kept from the trial, that her cross-examination was unfair, and that housing the jury in the same hotel as other parties to the case compromised the result. The court granted leave on only two grounds — the jury accommodation and phone records placing her near death-cap mushroom sites — and dismissed the conviction appeal on all of them.

Source: Bars Across / Victoria Court of Appeal reporting

At the same time, prosecutors led by Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane KC had appealed in the opposite direction, arguing the 33-year minimum was manifestly inadequate. The panel of Justices Lesley Taylor, Stephen McLeish and Peter Kidd accepted that the original non-parole period failed to reflect the gravity of the offending, while rejecting the prosecution's challenge on how the trial judge had assessed Patterson's solitary confinement.

What happens next

Patterson, who is held at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, has one legal avenue left: she can apply to the High Court of Australia, the country's final appeals court, for special leave to challenge the verdicts on her convictions and sentence. Such applications face a high bar, and the Victorian court's dismissal does not automatically grant her a hearing.

The case transfixed Australia from the 2023 lunch onwards — a family meal, a rare and deadly poison, and a trial that tested how circumstantial evidence is weighed. Friday's ruling means that, unless the High Court intervenes, the sentence Australia debated for more than a year is now final in its harshest form: life, with no date on which release can even be considered.