Erin Patterson trial: Update ahead of accused mushroom cook’s triple murder trial

Accused triple murderer Erin Patterson will face court in a newly scheduled hearing weeks before the start of her trial.

Ms Patterson, 49, will appear at Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court via video link on April 22, 11 days before her arraignment on May 3, where she will formally plead guilty to three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.

The special mention is for “case management purposes”, a Victorian Magistrates Court spokesperson told the Herald of the sun.

Mrs Patterson is accused of allegedly poisoning her former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Heather Wilkinson, 66, the aunt of her ex-husband Simon Patterson.

Victoria Police have spent 20 weeks preparing a brief of evidence against Patterson while she is detained at Victoria’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum security prison with capacity for 600 women.

Prisoners in jail include ‘Black Widow’ serial killer Robyn Lindholm, mob matriarch and assassin Judy Moran, violent ‘little terrorist’ Momena Shoma and Ms. Patterson’s new cellmate, the school principal rapist Malka Liefer.

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish director was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexual abuse of two young high school students in August 2023.

Ms Patterson has spent four months rubbing shoulders with some of Australia’s most violent women after she was arrested and charged following a beef and mushroom lunch in Wellington she allegedly served at her Leongatha home on July 29.

She was arrested at her home on November 2 and taken to Dame Phyllis Frost, where sources say she needs protection from other inmates due to her alleged crime.

“If Erin was left unprotected, the girls would hurt her,” they told the Herald Sun.

‘He allegedly killed three elderly people. There is a rule: you don’t touch the elderly or babies, that’s why you go into protection.

“She would be doing very, very hard there because she would only be able to talk to two or three girls and that’s it.”

Pastor Ian Wilkinson, 70, was the only survivor of the deadly lunch, which claimed the lives of his wife Heather Wilkinson, 66, and Don and Gail Patterson, both 70.

Mrs Patterson’s husband, Simon, pulled out of the lunch at the last minute.

Court documents revealed that Mrs. Patterson has been accused of attempting to murder her husband on four separate occasions.

They were allegedly between November 16 and 17, 2021, between May 25 and 27, 2022, September 6, 2022 and at the mushroom lunch in July 2023.

Ms Patterson is believed to be staying in a self-contained unit at Dame Phyllis Frost and has use of a bed, shower, toilet, sink, desk and wardrobe.

As she is in pretrial detention, she is not required to work and is believed to have access to a kitchen where she can cook her own meals.