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Erin Patterson has always maintained her innocence - but was convicted of many lies during the trial. (archive picture)
James Ross/AAP Image/AP/dpa
In Australia, Erin Patterson was convicted of three counts of murder - but her case has long been more than just a criminal trial. The story of the alleged poisoner has become a worldwide true-crime phenomenon.
When people in sleeping bags and beanies gather outside an Australian courthouse on a frosty morning, this is no ordinary murder trial. It is the case of Erin Patterson - and it has long since become a pop-cultural obsession.
The 51-year-old Australian woman was found guilty of three counts of murder by a jury in Morwell last week. She is alleged to have served a Beef Wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms over lunch with her in-laws and a vicar's wife in 2023 - with fatal consequences. But while the court weighed up the evidence, large sections of the public had long been discussing a different case: that of fascination with the perpetrator.
Patterson was no stranger to the true crime world before the trial. As an avid member of a Facebook group about the Keli Lane case, she had earned a reputation as a "super sleuth" - a gifted internet investigator.
The media reported by the minute, Netflix secured the rights to a documentary series, podcasters flocked to the small town. Day after day, a queue of spectators formed outside the courthouse in Morwell (Victoria) with thermos flasks and notepads, hoping for a seat in the courtroom. Inside, journalists competed for six media seats - outside, selfies were taken in front of murals by Patterson.
What attracts the public so much? "It's a bit Macbeth," forensic psychologist Tim Watson-Munro told the BBC. A woman who possibly kills - with mushrooms, in a middle-class environment, in the family circle. It is the combination of domesticity and horror that is particularly fascinating.
Then there is the media staging: on Google Maps, her home was listed as a "Mushroom Restaurant". Conspiracy theories about alleged elites in the background circulated on TikTok, and true crime fans distributed trial bingo cards with fields such as "CCTV footage" or "hospital gastro claim".
But the hype also has its downsides. "What we're seeing here is a collective loss of control over a justice system that should be working in peace," Brandy Cochrane, a criminologist at Victoria University, told the BBC. Women in particular are often sentenced twice in such trials - once by the court and once by society. "If she doesn't cry, she's cold as ice. If she cries, she's acting," says Cochrane.
The case reminds many Australians of the judicial drama surrounding Lindy Chamberlain in the 1980s - the mother who was wrongly convicted after a dingo abducted her baby. Back then, too, the public verdict had long since been reached when the guilty verdict was handed down.
