Patterson seeks retrial after triple murder conviction

THE Supreme Court of Victoria formally advised on Friday May 29 that the conviction appeal by Erin Patterson and a separate appeal against the sentence by the Director of Public Prosecutions have been listed by the Court of Appeal for a hearing on Tuesday August 19 and Wednesday August 20, 2026 at 10.15am.

The written cases, that will form the basis of the appeals by convicted Leongatha triple murderer Erin Patterson and the DPP, have not been released at this stage.

However, in court documents submitted to the Court of Appeal last November, Ms Patterson claimed “a fundamental irregularity occurred” likely when the jury was sequestered at a Traralgon hotel, during the first week of July 2025, “that has fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts and requires the quashing of the convictions”.

It is understood that this ground for appeal revolves around the fact that members of the police, prosecution and the media were staying in the same hotel, eating their meals and moving around, at the same time as the jury was sequestered there for their trial deliberations, ahead of returning a verdict of guilty on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder on Monday July 7, 2025 after a 10-week trial at Morwell.

In the documents, Ms Patterson calls for a re-trial “so that justice cannot only be done but be seen to be done”.

In other grounds for the appeal, Ms Patterson has challenged the way that cell tower data and evidence of death cap mushroom sightings in Loch and Outtrim, posted to the iNaturalist website, were brought together during the trial to indicate her movements in May 2023.

She claims that her cross-examination by crown prosecutors during the trial was both “unfair and oppressive”, that the prosecutor’s closing address “caused a substantial miscarriage of justice” and that implications by the prosecution that there was a motive for the murders, despite opening their case on the basis that there was no evidence of motive, also led to a substantial miscarriage of justice.

The Director of Public Prosecutions is expected to argue that the sentence imposed on Ms Patterson of “life”, on each of the three murder counts for killing both her parents-in-law, Don and Gayle Patterson, and Gayle’s sister Heather Wilkinson, and 25 years for the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson, with 33 years to serve, was manifestly inadequate.

In handing down his sentence in the Supreme Court in Melbourne last September, Justice Beale listed the aggravating circumstances he needed to consider when sentencing Ms Patterson.

“Your offending, which resulted in the death of three people and near death of another, involved substantial premeditation. I am satisfied that by 16 July 2023, when you unusually invited Simon, his parents and his aunt and uncle to a lunch without the children to discuss your non-existent medical issues, you did so with the intention of killing them all.

Erin Patterson, 50, was convicted of the murder of three and the attempted murder of one family member following a family lunch of beef wellington at her Leongatha home on Saturday July 29, 2023. The visitors became violently ill in the days following the lunch, from death-cap mushroom poisoning, with Justice Beale referring to their suffering in his sentencing remarks.